all right hi everybody John Meadows here and today we're training chest specifically what I want to do is I'm going to talk about the smith machine and I want to talk about how you can use the smith machine to get a bigger chest a lot of people you say the word smith machine and people go crazy they go out of their minds all you're gonna hurt yourself and there is some truth to that if you don't use the Smith machine properly you can't hurt yourself just like every other piece will come in in the gym with the Smith machine when you're training chest I first of all I really like using the Smith machine when I train chest but you do have to be very careful with the angles that you're using and so forth so now I want to show you what I mean by that and I also would never make some as machine the foundation of my work for chess unless I really had to but I do think it can be very effectively I've been using a little bit more lately because there's a couple exercises I'm going to show you today that feel really good I want to start with a little bit of a decline now when you look at a smith machine to look at the angle of the machine so this angle is probably hard for you to tell but it's actually going back a little and what I want to do is I'm going to set up a little decline so if you notice down here I've got a couple plates underneath the bench to create a little decline here now if you're wondering well why didn't you just will decline in here most declines are just a little too steep for my liking and I feel a lot of rotator stress and uncomfortable feeling in general in my shoulders when I'm on a really steep decline I prefer smaller declines and uh actually if you look at my chess manual that I have on my website I talked about the studies that show a small decline getting the best activation in your pets but anyways so I've got a slight decline here and my goal is going to be I want to say lower Peck but really it engages our whole pet pretty well this angle you generally generally speaking you get a lot lower PEC when you're doing this anyway just from the way the fibers around so setting up the decline almost makes it that way you're not going to see a steep angle as I'm pressing but I am on a little bit of a decline now watch as I do these they're the word the bar comes down to you and the way you're positioning your elbows is really important so the bar should come down to just right on your lower PEC right below your nipple okay if you let the bar come down real high you're going to start internally rotating and you will hurt your shoulders so when people say you can hurt yourself they're right you can also if you lower the bar too low way too low in your stomach you can also create a lot of internal rotation that can also hurt you so you got to literally find the exact spot on your chest where you're at the right angle okay for me it's just right below the nipple and I take it down there and I actually touch now the other thing is your elbows I would rather instead of C and you do and really stretch your shoulders I would rather see you take your elbow down this way almost like we're training our upper pecs like this so instead of like this I want to see your elbows come down more like this okay and if you know Anatomy and your upper PEC the clavicular head it actually runs that way so we're not that's what I'm saying it's it's kind of a decline but really we're working our whole PEC pretty well so let's give this a shot I prefer you use a medium grip not real wide so we're gonna take it down to right here sitting right below my knee now take them up right now notice how my elbows are not flaring out to the side right there right there it's burn [Music] so I feel that all over my chest but quite a little bit more man lowered outer part so again remember the keys on that take the bar right here that's really important don't go down like this okay come down like this okay right here on your nipple I don't want to see me this you'll hurt yourself if you do that now now I want to flip it around we're gonna do some incline work okay now I'm going to go with a slight incline so I've just bumped the bench up I don't even know if that's 10 degrees by 10 degrees so the same things are important on the inclined where the bar goes and where your angles where your elbows are angled at same thing here I don't want you up here I want you here and you're gonna feel like anytime you want to work that upper PEC you always want your arms to come down this way okay those fibers run that way okay so I don't want to see this I don't want all the tension right here I want tension here so you're gonna see my elbows come down like that now in this one you don't want to go to your lower PEC you would definitely hurt yourself by the time you're coming down to here look at that rotation of my shoulder so I want these to come up real high now here's the problem a lot of people myself included when you're coming up that high you come down all the way that's also a little stressful when your rotator cups so what I do is I cut the wrap an inch or two short and actually when I do that I feel I feel even more tension the tension kind of doesn't go away so when the decline I like to come all the way down touch my chest come up I actually like the Flex we'll knows these I feel I feel a little better with kind of a shorter range of motion but constant tension so I'm not really taking these up and lock and I'm just kind of keeping tension on that upper pekka creating a real nice - pump there so just like that medium grip okay elbows aren't coming out their elbows are here now look how high I am on my chest okay up to about 4/5 lock out right back down that tension feels awesome right there right there whoo I can literally feel that right there pumping up now sometime I want to throw in there if you watched our upper chest video that I did with Paul Carter we talked about not arching really hard and pushing your scapula down or locking them into place so you didn't see me do this you didn't see me push down real hard and create that okay that's great for power lifters who just want to move the bar from point A to point B but we want pecs will PEC activation we also want healthy shoulders so I want your upper back tight but you don't need to be pushed down like this you don't need to be pushed in like that okay just get your upper back tight a little arch is good little arch okay and you're good to go right there you got to be a little bit careful with packing down your shoulders really hard you can create some dysfunction in your shoulder there so that is the second way I like to use the Smith machine for chest now I got one more angle to show you all right so you've proud the last couple videos I've shown nice high incline Smith now had it on a front delt day and I did an exercise index video on it but believe it or not these can be really good for your upper chest now I know a lot of people you probably want to disagree with me and say it's all shoulder and that's okay but um you know what's interesting is I always if I'm not exactly sure what something's doing you saying but if I'm not sometimes what I'll do is I'll just do like ten sets of it and that's all I'll do and then I'll see how I feel the next day while I was out in California once actually I was in Venice and for whatever reason people were using the equipment I wanted to I wanted to be on and I was warming up my shoulders and I was doing this and I was chested and I was like you know what I'm just gonna do these and who's really crowded that day but anyways I did like ten sets of these then I did a couple sets of flies and then I went on and did back and other body parts but the next day my upper chest was really really sore and if you think about it is it just as I've said any other videos if your arms aren't here if they're kind of right here and drop it down you'll get more chest so I think this is a great combination for shoulders anterior delts and upper pecs actually so I know it seems weird to do something this high for your upper pecs but again if your elbows are traveling in the right path you will get some you will get some good upper PEC work so let's do some of these now you've got to keep the bar in really close though if you get the bar on front of you if nothing else from this video I want you to understand that when you're using a smith machine you don't want to get a lot of this internal rotation really hard on your shoulders and it will in German so you want to keep the bar in pretty close you know the other thing is is this one either I wouldn't take it all the way down I'll take it right here see where my elbows are traveling right there I'm not I'm not out here like this I'm in so I'm actually getting some upper PEC and shoulder now bow chin is the lowest I ever want to go and what I do is if I'm trying to get burns what I do is if I'm trying to get more shoulder I'll cut it up even higher and I'll stop like right here but if I do want to get a little Peck I feel like I got to go down like two inches lower and I'll get a little more pet like on that one there I could feel it in my chest Bernie I would me personally I wouldn't under no circumstance would I personally go down all the way as I've said before in my other videos when I do that it literally feels like a bomb went off on my shoulders the next day that's not a good thing I've got really healthy shoulders and I think one of the reasons why I have healthy shoulders because I listen to my body if something doesn't feel right or doesn't feel right the next day then I listen maybe that wasn't a good idea and what I've noticed is every time I go real deep on these I'm in pain for like two weeks so I want to cut these sort chen level four upper chest if I was trying to focus morning to your delts so I'd cut it up more like nose the forehead level so we don't notice it here chin level I look at my elbow down right there [Music] Oh who's burn so anyways that's our that's how I would like to see you all use this pink machine for your chest I think you can incorporate some of this and your chest work down you'll really enjoy it so that's it I hope you enjoyed the video I appreciate your continued support if you liked the video as always comment I'm still looking at all those comments and subscribe if you already haven't maybe even share the video thanks if you like that video I know you're gonna love my app available on the Google Play Store for Android iPhones in the Apple Store there's so much information on here it's amazing training workouts hundreds of workouts nutrition methodology questions chemical enhancement supplementation clam prep and a Q&A button check it out