Lee Hayward: Hello, it's Lee Hayward here from LeeHayward.com and I'm working on a video clip here where I'm showing the forgotten exercise. Well, I guess it's technically not forgotten, but very few people do it anymore and it's the pullover. Now, there is a couple things from exercise variations to this, you can do a barbell pullover or you can do a dumbbell pullover. Now, what is not necessarily better than the other, you know both work great for helping to expand your chest and then expand your rib cage. It really depends on you and your individual preferences, which one you do. Now, me personally, I like to do both variations.
So, while I actually cycle back and forth between doing the barbell pullover for a little while and then doing the dumbbell pullover for a while. So, anyway in this video clip, I'm going to show you how to do both exercise variations and how you can use them in your workouts to expand your rib cage and that thickness and depth to your chest.
Okay. So, here on the video I'm demonstrating the dumbbell pullover. Now you notice how I sit up for this exercise, I am lying crossways on the bench, not length wise like you normally work. And you'll also notice that my butt is lower than the height of the bench. You know, you try to keep it as lower to the ground as possible, and as you can see, this totally arches the back and expands the rib cage and then by holding the dumbbell with both hands, which you see here, lower down and to feel a deep stretch throughout the lats, the chest, the rib cage and all the supporting muscle groups along the front of the torso and I would like to hold the stretch for slight second in the bottom, they're really emphasizing. Another thing that you'll notice is that I bend my elbows a bit as I lower the dumbbell down and this helps to take some of the strain off the elbow joint and it just prevents hyperextension there because you don't want to injure your elbows.
Okay, so now I'm sitting up for the barbell pullover and you'll notice that I'm actually using an easy curl bar rather than a straight bar and this is just personal preference that I find that the easy curl bar is a little bit easier on the wrist joints, so I just preferred to use it, but if you wanted to you could use the straight bar, there is no real difference in the exercise itself and the mechanics of the movement is very similar, you just lower the barbell down until you feel a deep stretch throughout the lats, the chest and the rib cage and again I would like to keep my elbows bent at the bottom, so I don't hyperextend the elbow joint.
With the barbell pullover variation, you will feel a slightly more emphasis on the lats, like you feel to stretch throughout your lats are little more and with the dumbbell variation you'll feel a little bit more emphasis on the chest and the rib cage. Now, again both variations will stretch and work all these muscle groups, but you will feel a little bit more emphasis on the lats with the barbell pullover and the chest with the dumbbell pullover. Again, it depends on you which variation you prefer, me personally, I'd like to include both variations, so I'll just alternate back and forth with my workouts. You'll get the most benefit from doing pullovers at the end of your workout when your muscles are already pumped up and a bit fatigued, you know when your muscles are pumped full of blood and they feel tight, this helps to stretch the connective tissue, and then when you do a stretching exercise, such as the pullover, it stretches this connective tissue even more so you really get a double whammy effect and it helps to increase your muscle growth potential.
So doing pullovers in your workouts is really going to help to give you a good upper body grow spur and should also notice an improvement in your flexibility and mobility for your other exercises as well. If you would like to get some more information about how to do pullovers in your workouts, I have a full article posted up on my website at www.leehayward.com\pullover.htm and in this article, I'll go into a lot more detail about the actual sets and the ribs and how you can use this exercise to add some thickness to your chest and torso. So, there you have it. I hope you benefited from this video and I'll look forward to talking to again soon. Take care.
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