What you’re suggesting is bascially what thousands of men do in gyms across the land anyway: restrict range of motion in order to use a higher weight to exercise a particular muscle, in this case, the pecs. Whilst their pecs might get a bit bigger, their shoulders, triceps and lats remain as weak as before because they are not being trained, making them more likely to injure themselves.

Now if you’re a competitive bodybuilder training your pecs or you are a powerlifter training the lock-out, go right ahead and do partials. But for trainees who want to be strong, healthy and look good, full range of motion is preferable.

What is important is not being obsessed with particular muscles such as the pecs or biceps. You need to take care of all the muscles, particularly the small but incredibly important muscles around the shoulder joint. How many people do you know who regularly train the infraspinatus?

Honestly, I don’t see tearing the pectoral muscles as being a particular danger for anyone unless they are being stupid and trying to bench weights that are too heavy. You could argue (indeed it has been argued) that the difficulty of benching to the chest or squatting deep is itself a built-in safety mechanism to prevent people trying to lift loads that are too heavy.

Yes it is true that touching the chest will resrict the weight used, however as the muscles used at the start of a bench press are the triceps which are a smaller and weaker muscle than than the pectorals, surely there is an argument to use a higher weight than the triceps can cope with, NOT bring the bar all the way to the chest and therefore allow the pectorals to work harder than if the weight was lower.
I may not have explained myself very well but I hope you can see what I mean.

As our websites are closely related, I feel the exchanging of links would be a mutually beneficial arrangement. If you are interested in exchanging links, please feel free to contact me (email) at your earliest convenience.

Link Details
URL: http://bryanking.net/
Title: Health and Fitness

It’s good to revamp one’s site every so often but your photos and videos are a fantastic resource and rather than replacing I think it would be good to create a comprehensive library. You’ve built up a good collection over time and I still find the ‘old’ stuff innovative and interesting. That stuff is still new to a lot of people!