This Exercise Helped Arnold Get His Legendary Chest
The very fact that Arnold himself suggests a specific exercise gives it
all the credibility it needs for you to try it out. If there’s anyone you
should take advice on how to build muscle, it’s him.
He won the Mr. Olympia title seven times in the course of his
bodybuilding career, before he decided to switch to a career in Hollywood
that would make him famous worldwide and truly turn him to a legend.
One of the things that made him stand out from the bodybuilding crowds
was his enormous chest, and old school training footage proves that it was
one of the muscle groups he trained the hardest. Even though for the
majority of people the bench press is the main movement for adding
mass to their chest, there is one exercise which Arnold loved above all
other to add thickness to his chest.
It’s an exercise which some hardcore professional bodybuilders use to
this day, however it’s an exercise that sadly lots of people have
forgotten or no longer wish to include in their chest training
regimen.
The exercise is the dumbbell pullover. Arnold claims that this is the
movement that gave him that thick, barrel chest and wide back development
that helped him win all those titles. Other great bodybuilders from the
Golden era of bodybuilding such as Dorian Yates and Frank Zane also swore
by this movement for developing perfect upper chest, triceps, lats and
even the serratus muscles.
You must have heard bodybuilders using the phrase ‘attacking the muscle
from every possible angle’ and it’s true. If you can train the muscle
through as many different planes and ranges of motion, you’ll inevitably
achieve better muscular development. This is the reason why doing only
bench presses and dumbbell flyes, for example, will never give your a
chest a complete training and the look you want to achieve.
This is why you need the dumbbell pullovers. They train the chest muscles
through a completely different plane of motion compared to the bench press
variations which only rely on pressing a load away from the body. Even
though these variations are excellent for developing the pecs, back and
lats, studies involving EMG activity tests have shown that they target the
pectoralis major more.
Dumbbell pullovers also work the pectoralis minor muscles which lay under
the pectoralis major, which gives you a more complete chest workout and
results in a greater thickness in the upper chest.
How to perform a dumbbell pullover
- Lie on a bench with only your head and shoulders over the end.
- Form a diamond shape with your hands and with your palms turned upwards, grab a dumbbell and position it over your chest with a slight bent in your elbows.
- Start the exercise by slowly lowering the dumbbell over and behind your head in an arch-like movement until the upper arms are in line with the torso and parallel to the floor.
- After a short pause, pull the dumbbell back in the same arch-like movement over your head to the starting position where you finish the movement by squeezing the chest isometrically.
- Do this for anywhere between 8 to 12 reps.
