Best Chest Exercises

The best chest exercises are a huge topic for discussion and debate. It has not lost interest for 20 years. It all started with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who repeatedly stated that dumbbell flyes are the best movement for the pectoral muscles. At the same time, Dorian Yates was a supporter of heavy presses, especially on an incline bench. Modern bodybuilders, including Sadik Hadzovic and Jeff Seid, practice a more comprehensive approach, using the entire arsenal of bodybuilding exercises. So what to choose? How to train your chest? Let's consider this question in more detail.

Basic Theory

The function of the pectoral muscles is to bring the shoulder to the body in a plane in front of you. Bring your hands together as if you were trying to hug someone - you did this largely due to the effort of the pectoral muscles. All exercises for this muscle group repeat this movement.

The same principle is used in barbell or dumbbell presses – the arms move towards each other and towards the body. A pressing adduction occurs, but with the additional participation of the triceps. It is quite easy to isolate the pectoral muscles – adduction of the arms in the “butterfly” simulators or adduction of the arms in the crossover are bright examples of pure isolated movements, where the work is performed only by the chest.

Arnold was impressed by these movements. Dumbbell flyes lying on a horizontal bench were his favorite "weapon" for gaining huge pectoral muscles.

How are chest exercises different?

The angles of the body, the angles between the arms and the torso, and other small nuances. They are united by only one thing - the main movement - bringing the arms together. From the point of view of biomechanics, different angles of loading activate different segments of the pectoral muscles, but physiology does not share this theory. As EMG tests and other laboratory studies have shown, despite the different options for performing the classic barbell press, the pectoral muscles worked identically, with the exception of a small error.

It turns out that the angle of the bench, the width of the grip, the position of the legs, etc. do not play such a significant role as is commonly believed. Pumping up the upper chest or accentuating the "load" of the lower chest is a stereotype that has migrated to our time from the distant 90s. It is now known that exercise variability is not needed for targeted loading of certain muscle segments. Different exercises are different stress for the muscles, which eliminates early adaptation and the corresponding stop in progress.

You can pump up your chest with just one exercise, such as push-ups. You just need to regularly increase the tonnage of the load. Why do other exercises? The answer is: to progress faster. In any exercise, the pectoral muscles will work 100% of their entire area, so you should not perform any movement just because of the ability to "load" a certain segment of the chest. This is a myth.

How to choose the best chest exercise?

If even a few exercises are enough, which one should you choose? They probably differ in effectiveness. Yes, this is true, but the differences will be strictly individual. Everything depends on your data. Some have long arms, some can boast strong triceps, and others cannot “turn off” the back muscles at all, which take the load in the negative phase of all chest exercises.

Because of such individual differences, it is impossible to single out just one effective exercise. You need to try everything and find the most comfortable ones for you. If the exercise is performed without discomfort, and you gradually increase the weight of the weights without significant violations of the correct technique, you have found the best exercise.

Best Chest Exercises

Incorrect technique can ruin the experience and reduce the chances of finding the perfect move. Therefore, we will list the most "popular" moves and tell you about the important nuances of their execution.

Bench press

On an incline bench, the risk of injury decreases, but the working weight decreases proportionally. In any bench press, you need to adhere to the "right angle" rule. In the middle of the trajectory, the forearms are strictly perpendicular to the floor. Also, do not forget about the angle between the shoulders and the torso. The biceps and triceps should be perpendicular to your latissimus dorsi. The armpit should resemble a right angle.

Lifehack: mentally push off the barbell downwards during the pressing movement. Imagine that you are doing push-ups, and the barbell is the floor. This psychological attitude significantly increases the productivity of the exercise.

Breeding hands with dumbbells or in a simulator

No matter which option you choose, the basic movement will always be identical. During the abduction, try to arch your chest as much as possible so that the pectoral muscles are stretched. This will create ideal conditions for the subsequent maximum contraction of the pectoral muscles.

At the end point, when your hands are close to each other, you need to straighten your arms completely, trying to touch your biceps to your chest. This will make your pectorals contract by 100%. During your first workouts in this mode, you may feel discomfort - this is normal, because you are not yet accustomed to such a load.

Lifehack: keep the angle in your elbows no more than 90°, otherwise you will feel pain in your biceps and shoulder joints. This will only lead to injuries with a huge working weight, but still avoid it. In addition, such execution is distracting with its discomfort.

Dumbbell press

Consider the dumbbell press as a mixed press and fly. The dumbbells should be brought as low as possible with a ribcage arch, and then pressed up using the triceps. At the end of the movement, the arms should be brought together as tightly as possible, almost to the point of knocking the dumbbells.

Lifehack: Don't let your arms hang too far from your body. In barbell presses you have no choice, so you have to keep your arms wide, but here it's different.

Style summary

Chest exercises are a controversial topic, because only you can determine the best movements for yourself. We will give you just one piece of advice: combine different types of exercises: presses and flyes. Also, do not forget to change the working equipment, be it a barbell, a machine or dumbbells.