Dumbbell flyes
An extremely popular free weight chest exercise, the dumbbell fly is an exercise which isolates the chest muscles to a greater degree than the pressing exercise, and is often performed at the start of a chest session to pre-exhaust the chest.
Pre-exhausting the chest involves performing an isolation exercise at the beginning of a workout to tire the target muscle before proceeding onto compound exercises where additional muscle groups aid in the lift. The theory is the isolation exercise will tire the chest, and when it comes to performing the compound exercises the chest will tire before the additional aiding muscles, reducing the chance of other muscles over powering the target muscle.
The dumbbell fly has a sister exercise, the cable fly, which is similar although the cable fly allows for continual tension throughout the exercise, unlike the dumbbell variation. The resistance to the chest throughout the dumbbell range of motion reduces significantly the further up the arc, due to the gravitational pull causing the resistance to be transferred down the arms and not opposing the force of the chest fibres.This is not the case with the cable variation where the resistance is universal throughout the range of motion.
Performing dumbbell flyes
When training for muscular size it is often best to train in a rep range of 6-12 repetitions, although there is often much debate on the optimal rep range. It would be advisable to experiment with different ranges to see which suits you.
- Find dumbbells that are of a suitable weight for you to execute the exercise.
- Sit on end of bench with dumbbells resting on thighs.
- Lay back to lay on bench, whilst bring thighs up so that they manoeuvre the dumbbells above you. Lay flat on the bench with dumbbells in starting position above upper chest area.
- Alternatively, have someone pass the dumbbells into position if easier.
- Keeping good body posture, bring the dumbbells down, keeping a slight bend in the elbow joint. The reverse action of if you were hugging a tree.
- Once your upper arms are just below parallel to the ground, contract chest and bring dumbbells to the start position via the same hugging motion.
- Arms should remain perpendicular to your body at all times during the execution of the movement.
- Repeat for desired amount repetitions.
Dumbbell fly courtesy of Fitness Uncovered - Bodybuilding & Fitness
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