Chest Exercises: Movement and Loading of Shoulder, Elbow and Wrist Joints

Abstract

Injuries to the shoulder are very common in sports that involve overhead arm or throwing movements. Strength training of the chest muscles has the potential to protect the shoulder from injury. Kinematic and kinetic data were acquired in 20 healthy subjects (age: 24.9 ± 2.7 years) using motion capture, force plates for the bench press exercises and load cells in the cable for the cable pulley exercises with 15% and 30% of body weight (BW). Joint ranges of motion (RoM) and joint moments at the shoulder, elbow and wrist were derived using an inverse dynamics approach. The maximum absolute moments at the shoulder joint were significantly larger for the cable pulley exercises than for the bench press exercises. The cable cross-over exercise resulted in substantially different joint angles and loading patterns compared to most other exercises, with higher fluctuations during the exercise cycle. The present results indicate that a combination of bench press and cable pulley exercises are best to train the full RoM and, thus, intra-muscular coordination across the upper limbs. Care has to be taken when performing cable cross-over exercises to ensure proper stabilisation of the joints during exercise execution and avoid joint overloading.

Popular gym fitness sport – an analysis of 1378 recreational athletes regarding injury prone exercises and the corresponding localizations-

“…Of the 1378 respondents, n = 732 (52,5%) answered having complaints in relationship to the tness training in a gym and n = 655 (47,4%) denied that. We can show a signi cant positive in uence of the female gender on the absence of pain which is comparable to other studies dealing with gender differences in sports [20][21][22][23]. Training plan design seems to play a crucial role in pain prevention.…”

“…In our research, we found few similarly designed studies that focus on the recreational tness sport. However, some studies deal with this topic in speci c population groups such as sports students or focus on speci c exercises [3,[5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Different authors agree that athletes often have very speci c injury patterns, which also require a correspondingly tailored therapy.…”

“…Thus, terms such as "bench-presser'sshoulder" have long been established in literature [7,9,12]. It is common to nd patients who report that, after years of training certain muscle groups with certain exercises, they can no longer perform them due to pain or injury [5,7]. Complaints in the form of pain, limited range of motion or instability are often the rst symptoms before a manifest injury occurs and should be taken seriously as warning signals.…”

The Effect of Different Weight Plate Widths (Bumper vs. Standard) on the Biomechanics of the Bench Press

“…The shoulder horizontal abduction and elbow extension peak moments measured in this study (Tables 3 and 4) were similar to shoulder horizontal abduction (123.0 6 48.50 N) and elbow extension peak moments (22.15 6 8.35 N•m) in a study by Mausehund et al (23) at 80% of 1RM. Parallel to a previous study, peak moments for shoulder abduction, elbow extension, and ulnar deviation significantly increased with an increase in weight (31). Electromyography activity of the anterior deltoid, triceps brachii, and pectoralis major all increased as weight increased, which is similar to results found in a study on the effect of weight on the bench press by Kr ól and Gołaś (17).…”

“…It is not clear why this was the case. Schütz et al (31) also found differences in peak joint moments across different bench press weight conditions, but these researchers did not measure average joint moments. However, others have also found inconsistency when comparing average and peak joint moments.…”