I can't imagine someone going out of their way to intentionally tear a pec, but when you consider how often this injury occurs (more than any other muscle tear by far) I sometimes wonder. Bodybuilders have been known to do some ludicrous things and if you watch how some train, you can't help but think that they're actually out trying to tear something.
There is something venerable about the bench press. Above all exercises it is the one that seems to define one's strength. When someone wants to know how much you can lift they are generally referring to your bench. While squats and deadlifts can yield higher poundages, no one gives a rat's ass about either move. If you've got a big bench you've got a big image; everyone understands a bench press. And, if you understand the bench press, you know where the pec tear lives.
The term "tear," in this case refers to a partial or total ripping (avulsion) of the pectoral muscle (pectoralis major) either by pulling apart or breaking the fibers of the muscle belly. Or more commonly, a tear from where the muscle connects to the tendon which connects it to the bone. In most cases, that would be at the point of insertion (the pec's insertion point is in the bone of the upper arm (humerus)). Since the pec originates at the sternum and flares out in a starburst pattern up the sternum and then the clavicle, this broad surface area gives the origin a lot of strength. The weak link in the pec chain is at the point of greatest concentration of muscle connecting to tendon: The insertion. I've never heard of a pec tearing off the sternum, but partial or complete tears off the clavicle are not unheard of. Still, the tear at the point of insertion is the most common.
Although the actual tearing of a pec hurts, considering the amount of damage it involves you'd think it would hurt a lot more. I never tore a pec, but I have torn my bicep so I have some clue as to the sensation. I do know a few guys who have torn their pec and I've been assured that my assumption is pretty close. What seems to hurt more than the tear itself is the thought of what the tear means to a bodybuilder. Even if reattached within the recommended 72 hours, and even if the surgeon was that rare artist who made the reconnection flawless, the scar is still massive. Not necessarily the scar on the body, but the one on the brain. Long after the doc gives you the green light, chances are better than good that you'll never lift again like you used to. But that's probably a good thing.
The following three examples illustrate the most common causes of pec tears. While each example is true, they may have been embellished slightly just for fun and of course the names have been changed. Judging by how often this injury occurs, it is not my intention to amuse you as it is to keep your attention. With what we know today about exercise physiology, there should be relatively no pec tears. Unfortunately, as long as a big bench means so much to some people, there will always be pec tears. I hope the following will illustrate a few ways you can keep it from happening to you.
HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU BEEN TOLD ABOUT LIFTING COLD?
The original World Gym in Santa Monica was a thrifty sort of place back in the early 80s. Owning up to his spendthrift ways, the owner never turned on the heat. Southern California is indeed a sunny and warm place, but at 5 AM on a dreary February morning the iron can feel so cold you'd think it would stick to your skin. This was but a minor nuisance to Gary and Charles, owners of egos so large they barely fit in the gym. Their competitive nature left little room for constraint when it came to challenging one another in various feats of strength. Having competed furiously in almost every lift known to man, it was only the bench press that was left for a challenge. It soon came to pass that the two would duel over the bench to see who would finally reign supreme in the strength department.
Their bench press competition was slated for a very early morning time slot, before each of them had to go to work. Low clouds and a light mist in the air created a chill that seeped right down to your bones when the two squared off. Garry considered himself by far the better bencher and had benched himself into a serious state of overtraining in the weeks leading up to this competition. He sat on the side lines while Charles worked up to weight worthy of Garry's lifting abilities. After Charles racked the 275 he had just repped 10 times, Garry pulled off his sweatshirt and got under the bar without so much as even tugging on the nearby dip bar to stretch out. Forget about even warm up with some light reps of anything involving his chest. This impressed the gathering crowd almost as much as much as it did Charles, who was now sure something bad was about to happen. Before he could voice his concern, Garry had un-racked the weight and lowered it. He pushed up the weight with what seemed a bit of difficulty as the crowed urged him on. His second rep came down a bit faster than the first and hit his chest. Garry held his breath and exploded out of the hole. He hesitated for second while something seemed to jiggle under his tee shirt. Gary let out a scream that could have shattered a bowling ball, but it was quickly stifled when the bar landed on his sternum. His spotter had to accomplish what amounted to a 275 pound bent over row to get the weight up off Garry, who sat up abruptly holding onto his pec with the opposite hand.
Unable to continue, Gary bowed out of the competition before it even started and left the gym to seek medical attention. The next day he looked like someone had beaten him about the chest, under his arm and down his side with a baseball bat. Surgery was scheduled for later that week to reattach his pec to the tendon that inserts into his humerus. Charles, meanwhile, won the bench press contest with perhaps the lightest weight ever recorded.
COMMENTARY
An out of work political strategist couldn't have engineered a better recipe for disaster. Garry's weeks of overtraining riddled his muscles with little micro tears that weaken the muscle and heal only at rest. Since his concern was with lifting, he opted not to rest. This combined with the cold damp weather and lack of warm up sets caused the greatest stress on the weakest link of the system: Where the muscle connects to the tendon that inserts into the upper arm. This is the most common area to pull or partially tear. In this case, the loading was so abrupt and the muscles so cold, that the muscle tore completely off the tendon. Even with immediate surgical reconstruction, Garry will surely never achieve his full benching potential.
PREVENTION
It would seem that even a 60s throw-back who fried his brain on crystal meth and bad acid would know enough to warm up before lifting anything heavy. While there are conflicting studies regarding the effectiveness of stretching, clearly warming up is an essential part of training, especially heavy training. The cold damp climate should also have had Garry stay in his sweatshirt to help retain the heat. Lifting cold in light of weeks of overtraining left Garry open to just what he got. Adequate rest and warming up prior to this not so heavy lift would surely have seen Garry fare much better than he did.
DAVE SHOULD HAVE DECLINED TO INCLINE
Dave (not Palumbo) neglected to do incline work for the better part of his bodybuilding career. Consequently, his poor contest placings were a direct impetus for him to embark on an accelerated plan to beef up his upper chest. Feeling the need to make up for lost time; Dave decided that he would do only incline moves and do them often. To further facilitate the birth of his upper pecs, Dave laid in a prodigious stack of androgens. This cycle was a long one and eventually showed all the signs that Dave was well oiled.
His method seemed to be achieving the desired results. In fact, the results were so good that instead of cycling off and taming his training a bit to recuperate, Dave went at it full bore. Aside from the bad skin and slight case of bitch tits, Dave's pecs were rounding out and filling in quite nicely.
On one of Dave's many trips to the bathroom, he was reading an article in a popular bodybuilding magazine that told of one bodybuilder with a truly amazing pair of pecs who did his benching with a very wide grip and his elbows pulled back. Dave had always favored a narrow grip with his thumbs just over where the knurling starts on an Olympic bar and his elbows fairly forward. This new grip strategy intrigued Dave as it was his intention to improve his chest at all costs and changing his grip was right in line with those intentions.
On his next chest work out, Dave and his training partner were about half way through doing incline bench presses on a Smith machine when Dave recalled the article he had read and decided to expand his grip almost out to where the bar ties into the hooks - a distance of about double his norm. Three plates were stacked on either side of the bar when Dave adjusted his grip and pulled his elbows back into an unnatural and uncomfortable position. His training partner looked sort of quizzically at this adjustment and asked Dave if he was sure he wanted to try it at this heavy a load. Dave smirked and told him that he didn't feel this was heavy and to just give him a lift off the pegs. He'd power it up for at least six, no problem.
There was no way to un-psyche Dave once he got his mind to believing he could do something, so on his command, the training partner lifted the weight off the hooks with Dave's help. Dave rolled the bar forward to free the hooks of the pegs, took a deep breath, and lowered the weight. About a third of the way down the weight picked up more speed than Dave had hopped because of the unusually wide and decidedly weaker grip and he put his all into slowing it down. With stump pulling effort, the weight slowed to an almost complete stop just inches off Dave's chest. He planted his feet and torqued the bar as hard as he could but the weight just kept going down until it rested on his chest. Dave wanted to let his training partner know it was time to lift the weight off him, but he could barely move his jaw for the grievous pain. The training partner eventually got the message and pulled enough of the weight off to turn the hooks and rack it just about where it lay. Dave climbed out and onto the floor, sat up and looked down at a lump the size of a pot roast sitting where his right pec used to be: Completely disconnected from his clavicle. The writhing around that ensued could have tilled virgin soil. Dave was finally restrained and hauled off to the hospital.
COMMENTARY
You can't make up for a lifetime of omission with six months of feverish work as Dave so eloquently showed us. His lack of upper pec training, while foolishly remiss, could have been rectified in due time. Unfortunately, Dave chose the fast track which included plenty of overtraining and steroid abuse. I covered the perils of overtraining in the previous example and it is no less applicable here. It certainly contributed to his injury. The use of anabolic steroids also contributed to the problem because, while the steroids did indeed cause his muscle bellies to grow, they did nothing to strengthen the tendons and connective tissues. In short, his muscles became stronger than their connections and the weak link eventually failed. What probably accelerated the process was Dave's newfound hand position. This was clearly a mistake; especially at the weight he tried it. The combination of risk factors Dave brought to the gym that day were spot on for the injury he suffered. Although this type of pec tear is less common, it is no less unlikely given the circumstance. Dave tore his pec right off his clavicle.
PREVENTION
Far be it for me to dissuade an athlete from taking steroids. They have their place in almost every athletic endeavor these days and if you want to be a bodybuilder, they will have a very strong appeal. What you must understand is the difference between use and abuse and the consequences they bring. Steroids only effect muscle growth. They do nothing to strengthen tendons, ligaments and the like. In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that these tissues may even become weakened by steroid use. The more you use the larger and stronger the muscle grows while its ability to stay anchored becomes compromised. If you have small joints and thin tendons by nature, adding slabs of muscle could put you in a high risk group for problems such as Dave's.
Newfangled lifting techniques can also be problematic as Dave illustrated. Clearly, he employed an overextended type of hand placement and one to which he was not accustom; that magnified the damage his months of overtraining had wrought. In any type of movement where you are over stretched or pulled into an uncomfortable or weak position, it is best to try it with practically no weight. With minimal stress you can decide if this new move is going to work for you. It didn't for Dave and unfortunately, attaining this level of enlightenment cost him dearly.
TWO NEGATIVES MAKE A NEGATIVE
Andy, Eric and Joe, three dudes with nary as chest between them, decided they would employ the latest training principal proffered by a certain trainer of champions. They hoped to effect maximal muscle growth in the area where they were lacking. This training principal required three people to accomplish properly, and as luck would have it, three they were. Unfortunately, that's where their luck ended.
After the trio completed several sets of incline benches, flat benches and pec deck, they were ready to employ this new training method. A flat bench was positioned inside a power rack and the stop bars adjusted so that an Olympic bar's decent would be arrested barely an inch above the chest of the one who was lying on the bench. The two fellas not doing the lift would be positioned at either end of the bar in order to lift the weigh up into the start position. The object here is to load the bar with an amount of weight far greater than the one under it could possibly bench. Since one is considered stronger in the eccentric (negative) part of the movement, slowly lowering a much heavier weight than one could lift would work the muscle where it is strongest, and thus effect greater muscle growth.
Joe, the strongest of the bunch, had a max bench of 275. He was to go first and loaded up the bar with 335, and got into position underneath it. He got his grip right and gave the go ahead to Andy and Eric who lifted the bar up until Joe's arms were locked out. On three, Andy and Eric let go, Joe's arms collapsed and the weight crashed into the stops. As soon as Andy and Eric stopped laughing, they implored their friend to resist on the next rep. They lifted the weight, let go, and it crashed into the stops once again. Realizing just how much resistance this was going to require, Joe dug his feet firmly into the rubber mat, arched his back and had at it again. This time the weight slowed down some, but still smashed hard into the stops. Andy and Eric raised it back up and let it go again. Joe struggled like a pit bull chained to fence post with every ounce of strength he had left. He held the weight for a second or two then let out a scream that was heard in the next county as the bar crashed into the stops for the last time. Pec torn at the insertion.
COMMENTARY
As ludicrous as this maneuver sounds, it is one of the best ways to increase your bench. The problem is, when you is trying to increase your bench, there is a good chance you are employing other means as well. This could mean steroid use as well as a variety of training methods that could leave one over trained, thus making this move one of the very best ways to tear your pec. As previously stated, a pec tear at the insertion (where the muscle blends into the tendon that inserts into the upper arm) is the most common variety of pec tear, best accomplished with heavy eccentric loading, just as Joe found out.
PREVENTION
While heavy negatives are indeed a tried and proven way of beefing up most muscle groups, extreme care must be taken when employing this method to chest training (especially in the bench). Make sure you are well rested and start with a weight that you can actually control. It should be more than you can lift, but just barely - perhaps 20 - 25 pounds. Control is the key here, if you find yourself unable to stop the weight, try dropping it by five pounds. As Lee Haney would say, the object should be stimulate, not annihilate. As I would say, a small pec is better than a torn pec - be careful!
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