This exercise is a nice way to hit the upper/inner chest area that is extremely hard to target with pretty much every other movement.
This is an excellent one for men and for women looking to enhance the upper chest cleavage.
All you need is a single dumbbell and an incline bench and you're all set.
It's done in a partial range of motion and for fairly high reps (you'll see why once you see the exercise in action - I'll explain it then).
Set the dumbbell on the ground in front of the bench. Lean over and pick it up with both hands.
Now set it on one thigh.
While it's resting on your thigh, get your PALMS underneath the bottom of the top plates of the dumbbell (like a goblet position). You'll be pushing with the heels of your hands for this one.
Lean back into the incline and bring the dumbbell up with you.
Hold the dumbbell directly over the top of your upper chest.
Now lower the dumbbell down to your chest until it's just touching, then press back up, squeezing the pecs HARD at the top.
As you'll see in the video, I use a fairly fast "pumping" movement with this one. The idea is to get as much blood into the area as possible. It's not an easy area to hit and part of the problem may be blood supply (if you have trouble developing it). This type of pumping training can help with that.
You'll see with the dumbbell position why it's a partial range of motion...the physical size of the dumbbell prevents you from coming all the way down. No problem, though, because it's the top that's the valuable part here, which is another good reason for a partial range of motion.
So as you come to the top, focusing on not only squeezing the pecs but also on forcing the elbows together as closely as possible while squeezing. This targets that upper/inner cleavage perfectly.
The higher reps will help keep the tension on the area longer, help increase the blood supply to the area with improved circulation (which will help with muscle-building in the long term) and because the heavier the dumbbell you use, the shorter your range of motion, you're not going to be able to go TOO heavy on this one.
Learn how to perform Incline Barbell Bench Press here.
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