Top 5 Chest Exercises
Like most guys, you probably want a bigger, stronger chest. I don’t blame you; a developed chest is a sign of power. As a result of this being such a desirable group of muscles, there are dozens of different workouts you can find to help strengthen your pectorals. But in this list, I will try to narrow down the many many chest exercises out there to just 5 extremely effective and easily performed exercises that can hopefully better your physique as well as increase your bench.
5. Cable Crossover
Coming in at number 5 in this list of great chest exercises is the cable crossover. Adding this exercise to your workout can greatly increase your gains because it maintains stress of your muscles all the way through the motion.
To perform: Using a cable pulley machine that has a pulley on two opposite sides, set each pulley up so that it is locked in the high position. While standing, grab each high pulley using a small one-hand attachment for each hand. The position your body will be in will look like a giant letter “T.” Slowly bring your arms together in a slow and controlled fashion. While doing so, visualize that you are hugging a giant tree trunk. At the peak of this movement, really flex your pec muscles together for a one-count and then return to the start position and repeat.
4. Barbell Bench Press
The bench press may be by far the most popular chest exercise out there, but that does not necessarily mean it deserves to be number one. Regardless, it still is a great exercise that can really help develop your chest and should be worked into your workout plan.
To perform: Lie face-up on a flat bench. Grasp bar with an overhand grip. Lift off of rack and lower weight to upper chest. Press bar until arms are extended. Repeat. It is highly encouraged you have a spotter while bench pressing.
3. Dips
Recently, dips and seemingly vanished from the workout scene. While everyone has heard of pushups, very few people have heard of dips, despite the fact that I would argue they are actually more effective for the chest as well as triceps than pushups.
To perform: Find a set of dip bars and position yourself on them with your knees bent and your lower legs crossed. Slowly lower your torso down to where your chest nearly touches the front of the dip bar and then return to the start position and repeat until failure.
2. Dumbell Fly
Despite the fact that the dumbbell fly is such a great exercise, I hardly ever actually see it in the gym. This is very surprising as the dumbbell fly is one of the few isolation exercises for the chest.
To perform: Lie face-up on a flat bench with dumbbells directly above chest with arms extended. Slowly lower the dumbbells to the bottom of the movement, which is just above your chest. Now raise the dumbbells back to the starting position.
1. Dumbbell Bench Press
So here it is, my favorite chest exercise, the dumbbell bench press. I personally love this exercise not only because it helps develop many stabilizing muscles, but also because it does not absolutely require a spotter.
To perform: Sit down on bench with dumbbells resting on lower thigh. Kick weights to shoulder and lie back. Position dumbbells to sides of chest with bent arm under each dumbbell. Press dumbbells up with elbows to sides until arms are extended. Lower weight to sides of the upper chest until slight stretch is felt in chest or shoulder. Repeat.
*Bonus Tip* For maximum strength gains, train with the dumbbell bench press using 4-5 sets of 3-5 repetitions.
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then,what about incline and decline bench press… does it have any significant effect.Push ups is also thought as one of the best for chest rite… so effects due to the above mentioned top 5 are better than those i mentioned?
yes incline and decline can have a significant effect in that it works the muscles slightly differently. perhaps the most important benefit to incline and decline variations is that they help mix up a workout routine and keep the body from getting overly adapted to a standard bench press (which would limit further gains). And pushups are also a good chest exercise I just did not feel they deserved a top 5 placement (though perhaps top 10)
is there an order in which these five exercises can be done?
depending on how you structure your workout routine, you might not use all of these exercises in one day. But if you do choose to do one day of a week to work the chest (in a one muscle group/day routine) then I would recommened starting with the bench presses and ending with the cable cross and/or the pec fly.
I am already looking forward to getting home tonight so I can hope on again and go for another 20…maybe even 30 minute workout. With this new motivation I will kick those last 5 lbs out of the park, and who knows, maybe even lose a few more than the 5…time will tell!
I start exercise for 3 months,,,and I want Size for my Body and Specialy Chest plz help me and tell that what can i do for it….
thanks
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i start exercise last 2 months and my body size is not growing. what i do for grow my body specially in my arms and chest?
My advice to you is to focus more on what you are eating rather than what exercises you are doing. For growth, you should be eating plenty of food throughout the day, espeically high-protein foods. For more info on how to eat to build muscle and grow I encourage you to read my other article Gaining Weight: A hardgainer’s guide. As for exercises, you should be weight lifting with weights that are heavy enough to be challenging (no more than 15 reps per set, and i would encourage possibly as low as 5-8 for someone like you). You should also be using free weights instead of machines and perform complex lifts like the bench press, squat, deadlift and military press. These lifts will get you the fastest results and even if you dont think you need to work on your legs doing squats is still a great idea because the stress from such a powerful exercise actually increases growth hormone and testosterone levels and will therefore make other muscles grow faster. For your arms I have found that if you perform these complex lifts and do things like pull-ups, barbell rows, pushups/dips, lat pulldowns that your arms will grow naturally even though you arent directly working them. If you do want to directly train your arms, remember to train your triceps just as much and possibly MORE than your biceps with exercises like the close-grip bench press and skullcrushers.
If you have any more questions feel free to post more comments and I will DEFNINTLY respond!
I plan to start with 5 sets of DB bench press, then 3 sets of DB fly, then 3 sets of dip. Is that too much for one workout? If not, what do you think of the order of those exercises? Thanks!
if you are doing a split workout plan (one day chest, another back, etc), then that sounds fine. personally though, I don’t like to workout the same muscle without breaks, so what I do is I put ab exercises in between my various chest exercises to give myself a bit of recovery time. that is personal preference though, I know some people really adamantly believe that the pectorals can handle sequential exercises.
anyways, here is a typical (although i always vary from week-to-week) chest workout for me: 3×8-12 flat DB bench press, weighted crunch machine, 2×8 incline DB bench press, decline sit ups w/ weight plate, 2×10 DB fly, hanging leg raises, 1 set of max reps push ups.
Good Luck!
Thanks a lot for your advice!
I am looking for a work out session that gives you a good toned sides on the chest. I want a nicely toned shaped chest. I keep doing the normal bench press and dumb bell flyers and similar stuff. These things target the upper and lower pecks but I want to target the outside portions surrounding the chest so that it does not look your growing a pair of man boobies. It should look like there nice curves around teh pecks.
any suggestions|?
well I would love to help you but I am afraid that I have not ever read of toning the sides of the chest. Keep doing research on the topic because there is a slight chance I am wrong, but I feel fairly confident in saying that you really cannot train a muscle to grow in a certain way. Muscles know how to grow, but varying how you work them should not significantly change how they grow. I would say that there is hope, however, because I do know that incline and decline variations of chest exercises work the upper/lower chest and so you could say that these exercises do affect how the muscle grows. Growing man boobs from chest workouts is likely genetic, but if you can keep your body fat reasonably low and make sure to include some incline presses into your workout to keep your upper chest balanced with your lower chest, you should not develop man boobs.
I didn’t know that cable crossovers and dips are for the chest. I thought that on dips you train only triceps and that on crossovers you train shoulders. Now I learned something new. Thanks for this post.
well dips definitely hit the triceps hard as well put as long as you lean forward and take a reasonably wide grip it targets the chest more than the triceps.
this captured me eye thanks
do we have a substitute for Dumbbell fly???? which is easier during the initial stages
Sorry I don’t really understand your question. If you use a light enough weight you should have no problem on the dumbbell fly.