Weight Lifting - Bench Press or Chest Press?!


Question: Weight Lifting - Bench Press or Chest Press?
The gym that I go to does not have any barbells (health and safety gone mad) for doing bench presses. But... they do have a chest press machine which is essentially the same as a bench press but you are sat up-right instead of lying down.

Am I working the exact same muscle groups by doing a chest press, obviously I know it's working the pectorals and the triceps as a secondary muscle group so it is basically the same? Is either one better than the other?

My other option if a chest press is not as good as a bench press, is to do a bench press in the gym just with 2 dumbbells as appose to a bar bell.

Please give your thoughts...
Thanks!

Answers:

The equipment does not determine which muscle get worked. It's your brain that does that. Think about it.

The equipment will help you get in the ballpark and involve the general muscle group. However, your mind makes the final determination as to which muscles are working at any given point in time and how hard they are working. That is a very important distinction to make because not making it is the reason so many lifters fail to perform a maximal muscle contraction on that last rep.

For example, the bench or chest press will involve the pec, the anterior delt, and the triceps. So, when you are failing on that last rep, which muscle is it that cannot support the full motion? It's not all three at the same time. Only one muscle can fail to perform...one has to go first. What controls how much more the other muscles support the failing muscle is your mind and just knowing that can help many people squeeze out one or two more reps...possibly even more. Unfortunately YA does not provide sufficient room to fully explain why that is or how that works. It's a complex psychic/somatic phenomena.

Generally machines are better than free weights for a variety of reasons. However, one is they allow us to concentrate, focus the mind, more on the muscle concentration than on balancing the weight and racking it if we don't have a spotter. And if the chest press machine has a cam or digitally or pneumatically controlled resistance as a function of displacement, the barbell's constant resistance can't compete. Additionally, a machine will allow us to adjust our body position so as to focus the resistance on different part of the body such as the difference between the upper and lower pec which is more difficult with barbells. For these and other reasons, machines or "chest press" apparatus is much better than the barbell which, of course, is why you see gyms spend so much more money on machines. Free weights are comparatively inexpensive but they don't preform as well. Nautilus was the first to make that clear by involving the cam to vary the resistance as a function of displacement.

Go to YouTube and search for Arthur Jones, the inventor of Nautilus, and/or Ellington Darden and you'll see some videos which explain why machines can outperform free weights.

Good luck and good health!!

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The Bench Press is better, that's why you hear a lot more about it on the internet and in the gym.




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