Quote (bones0187 @ Feb 28 2015 12:41am)
Understandable on the last line, but keeping your elbows in more would eliminate or alleviate the last 2 points, also for the first two I still don't see how that would not HELP keeping pressure off your shoulders and joints, as they are recruited more heavily on freeweights to stabilize the weight. I still get the best chest pump and most chest pain from smith machine bench than freeweight and using correct form on freeweight kills my shoulder that I had torn out of socket.
I should have specified that you should be keeping your elbows in regardless but I wasn't sure as alot of people don't especially on a smith machine.
But, look where the weight is throughout the entire bench. You're correct that it takes out some of the stabilization in your shoulders, but your elbows are still taking a massive load. Look where the bar is next time you do it. It's constantly over your elbows as you can't make it other than straight up. This means that you're putting holding that load on your triceps, elbows mostly.
As far as recruiting your chest, you still will as you will always recruit it with any push, but when you push the bar in more of a curved pattern, you move the most from the lower section your pec (at the bottom) to your upper chest as you drive upwards and slightly back. Look where the bar is. It would be more near your upper chest. When you bring it down, it'd be more over your lower chest.
Someone like Lightman should look into this as I'm not the king of bio mechanics around here, but he could elaborate. I might be missing something from my explanation
Put your hand on your upper chest and push where the bar would be on a smith in a straight up and down pattern. Now drive slightly backwards as you would a bb bench. Notice the contraction in the upper pecs? That's what I'm getting at.
This post was edited by PureOwnage2 on Feb 28 2015 12:07am