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in my new workout i am doing breathing squats superset w/ breathing pullovers to expand my rib cage. i am also goin to try breathing dumbbell flyes as a streching exercise or a combination of flyes and pullovers. i was wondering what others think of stretching to expand rib cage and what exercise they used to do so.
~Deebs

Hi Deebs, to be honest with you Im very skeptical about the stuff you read in bodybuilding mags , and pretty much everything you hear from the bodybuilding establishment. A lot of the things you hear like rib cage expansion etc, im not sure if its just a complete myth.

I dont bother with rib cage expansion now, although there may be some truth to this. For me just sticking to as few compounds exercises as possible, therefore making the least inroad to recovery ability, you will end up with greater chest development. Otherwise you may expand your rib cage a little, but this may cause overtraining and you will end up with less mass. My point is I would rather have larger chest muscles, then less chest mass and a slightly expanded rib cage.

Kr0me

Deebs
If you go to Dr. Dardens site he has an article on rib cage expansion. He is one of the leading athorities on HIT training. He shows how he expanded his own ribcage when he was a competitive bodybuilder.
I guy I work with is having his sixteen year old son doing breathing squats, and he told me last week that they are definetly working big time. His son is already big, 6′3" 260lbs, but his increased chest diameter is very noticeable.
I also know a few more people who have had success with ribcage expnasion. I have to disagree with Krome, you only have a short window of opprotunity to take advantage of your ribcage being this mallable. In a short time your ribs will start to solitify more and the cartilage will turn to bone and it will be much harded to take advantage. A larger ribcage can support more muscle.
Take some time to really research breathing squats and rib cage expansion and draw your own conclusions. Many oldtime routines were build around breathing squats and they had a much more noticable rib cage size than many have today. In fact many wanted chest size without large pecs because they did not want sagging breast looking chests when they got older.They did not work pecs as hard.
If you want to someday become a competitve bodybuilder some day, a big ribcage can give you an edge. It can make your waist appear smaller, and help you in some poses like the side chest, and the vacuum poses that many can′t do today because of the large waists these guys seem to have today.

Tom

IRON395,

Youve got a point. From what you have said there seems to be something to this. Ive looked at the article on Dr Dardens website and its interesting, and to be honest if its coming from Dr Darden I′m more willing to accept it then if it was an article by Arnold Shwarzenegger.

But saying that I would rather stick to Mike′s Athletes routine, and develop as much mass as possible instead of having to add more volume in order to expand the rib cage. The reason for this is the added volume may lead to less mass being developed.

Im 28 now so my rib cage is not that pliable anyway so the time factor is not an issue for me. However in the future when I have reached near my potential when it comes to adding as much mass to my body as possible I would consider doing squat/pullover supersets to expand my rib cage, but for now my priority is building as much mass as possible.

Cheers
KR0ME

Krome,
I was curious as to what type of strength gains you have been making on each exercise since starting the Consolidation Routine. Do you train to complete, positive muscular failure or stop a rep short on the Squats and Deadlifts?