Today we're
gonna cover some of the most basic but most important cues for a dumbbell chest
fly. Now before we get into this, couple of things that I want to point out.
One, start off with a really lightweight.
This is an
isolation movement, meaning that it's a single joint movement. It's not a
multi-joint movement like the Barbell bench press or even the dumbbell bench
press. That means that when we do this fly, we're actually gonna keep our joint
in a fixed position. This is actually one of the biggest mistakes that I see
when people do chest fly Rise they get in the position when they're laying down
and when they go to do the fly.
There's
movement here. There's hinging at the elbow. You don't want that. What you want
is about a 10-degree bend. So I'm not locked out, so I'm not putting stress on
the joint. I have a slight bend, about a 10-degree bend in the elbow, but it's
in a fixed position. The entire movement, which you don't want to see happen,
which is common, is people moving this while they press this is really common
right here, and you see how much more I'm bent at the elbow.
Then I start to
feel this in my bicep. So when I open up, the other thing that you see people
do when they open up into the fly is they just let the dumbbells drop they open
all the way up and notice where the weight would be if I was laying down flat,
what I want is the elbow turned up. So when I'm lying down my elbow and wrist
the weight should be lined up like this. You kind of turn your elbows up. You
do not want to just let the dumbbells fly.
This is a mistake. This will actually start to you feel major stress in the elbow and the shoulder from doing this. I wanna turn my wrist over keeping that in that fixed position. Alright, so now we're to get back into the dumbbell fly position. One thing to cover real quick that we didn't go over is our points of contact. Very similar to any of our dumbbell chest press, or barbell press exercises for your chest. You want your feet about underneath your knees. You want your butt on your on the back of the bench, you want your upper back.
And then you
want your head all on the bench. So I'm gonna kick up the dumbbells, I'm gonna
lie all the way back, and then I'm gonna get into my fly position after I get
my four points of contact feet, my butt, my head, and my upper back hole in
that position. Now when I open up, I'm going to keep my elbows in that slight
bend. It's about a 10-degree bend open up to where I have a full stretch. But
as I start to drop down really low, I'm going to feel stress on my shoulders. I
wanna keep it in the chest.
I wanna go all
the way down to where I feel a good stretch in the chest. Now even though my
body will allow me to go deeper, I have to deviate from the form to get that
low. So what I wanna do is I wanna open up slow and controlled till you feel a
nice good stretch in the chest. One of the most common mistakes that we see
when someone's doing a chest fly is as they come together they roll the
shoulders forward. This is not what we want. What we want to do is we want to
make sure the shoulder stay retracted back, the elbows, and that fixed
position.
They're not
flared way up, they're right underneath my wrist. And then when I come together
I want to close the dumbbells together while I'm also maintaining my shoulders,
peel back, and also maintaining that 10-degree bend in the elbow and the
dumbbells. My wrist should be lined up with my nipple line, so as I open up,
dumbbells are lined up with my nipple mine. As I close they're lined up with my
nipple line and I'm constantly keeping that 10-degree bend in the elbow.
This will help
keep that tension in the chest the entire time. You want to keep tension in the
muscles as you slowly contract. So three to four seconds on the way down,
contracting close as you come up.
On the way down is when we're breathing in, and then when we come to the very bottom, I'm bracing with my abs and core and I breathe out as I close the dumbbells.
People bring
the dumbbells together, they wanna squeeze the chest and when they go to
squeeze the chest at the top they actually roll the shoulders forward. Now when
we're doing a dumbbell chest fly and I'm lying back on the bench where my show
my chest is working the most is when the dumbbells are opened up. And as I
close the dumbbells, less and less of my chest is having to carry the load and
work because of gravity, cause I'm when I'm laying down all the way on the
bench.
When I'm open all the way up, that's when the most stress on the chest is. When I'm completely stretched out. Gravity's pulling straight down the dumbos as I close. So to try and put a lot of emphases, you see guys, sometimes they rotate their wrist this way or rotate their wrist that way. A very little movement and work is happening with my chest at this point.
