Reply With QuoteYou can't be serious? How would a bigger stronger chest make you less effective and less powerful at Kung Fu or any other martial art. Mike Tyson had a big powerful chest and had no issues with punching power...
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Avoiding Chest Excercises
Hi all,
I've been following the program for about one and a half years with some pretty good results. (I did SS and then moved onto Texas Method which I'm still following).
My main issue is that for my main focus - kung fu training - we need to keep the chest in and relaxed, and as my chest was getting stronger I was finding it harder, so I stopped doing bench presses.
In the past few months, even though I'm not benching I'm still finding my chest has still been growing and so I'm thinking I might need to stop doing Overhead Presses as well. It has been affecting my kung fu negatively.
For my type of kung fu, big chests take away from our powe.
Does anyone know of another nice compound exercise which I could do in place of benches or presses. I currently do quite a bit of deadlifting and chin ups etc. but I was thinking of maybe doing some RDL or something. The issue there is that I'm already doing pretty intense back and leg training, and I don't want to overdo it. I wonder if I'm better just not replacing the exercise, instead doing some planking or something like that.
Peoples thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks,
David
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You can't be serious? How would a bigger stronger chest make you less effective and less powerful at Kung Fu or any other martial art. Mike Tyson had a big powerful chest and had no issues with punching power...
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The OP's very first post. Hmm...
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Bruce Lee something something
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What is causing the problem? 1) Chest size 2) Chest strength 3) Not relaxing properlyOriginally Posted by davidpbsmith76
I'd put my money on #3
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That's true, lots of fantastic punchers with big chests. But it's a different type of punch, starting with the arm in line with the shoulders, whereas in my kung fu we bring our arms towards the middle of our body. Imagine putting your elbows around your belly button and punching from there, you can feel that a big chest gets in the way. Same would be true of plenty of martial arts I would think.
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I would agree with you for the most part. I guess the point is that I want to punch using my shoulder and back and not having any activation at all in the chest. You can see guys who do chest exercises as they punch their pec does a little bounce and the punch looks very slow, whereas better guys tend to look like it's coming just through the shoulders.
The size thing is a minor problem but when I bring my arms to the middle of my body, the pec stops my upper arm from getting all the way across where I want it sometimes.
So I guess you are right mostly. Either way, it's really noticeably slowing my punches down so I need to do something about it. Any ideas?
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From one of the best accounts of Bruce Lee's training: In chapter 12 which dealt with his chest training, John Little reiterates that Lee did not want to build a big, bodybuilder chest.
That's the problem. My legs won't grow very much, but my chest just seems to respond really well. I wish it was the otherway round.
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Just wanted to add in case it wasn't clear, I really enjoy the SS and now the Texas Method program. It's the first structured weight training I've done in my 30 year martial arts career and it's been giving great results. At 42 I'm feeling stronger than I ever have. Wish I'd learned about it in my 20s!
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