No day divides the genders more than Chest Day: Whilst men count down the days until they bench again, women often steer clear of the day altogether.
It’s no surprise, really: Do a quick search, and you’ll find videos of built, topless men flexing through their favorite chest exercises. After all, a round, popping chest like Carlos Belcast is what many men dream of.
But despite what you may think, training the chest isn't just for the bro-splitters—and it’s not just for aesthetics either: A strong chest is essential for good posture (especially if you’re putting in time to train your back and spend a large part of your day desk-bound). It’s also the secret to building strength in some of the best (but often most challenging) movements, from bench press to pull-ups.
But love it or hate it, chest exercises are something that everyone should be doing. And one thing’s for sure: However much you love (or hate) chest day, you want to attack it in the most time-efficient way possible – which is much easier said than done.
Luckily, we know that the best chest workouts are well-structured, focused, and, most importantly, don’t take all day. We’ve put together the ultimate guide, giving everything you need to know about the chest muscles and sharing the secrets of the best chest exercises guaranteed to build strength, size, and power.
Contents:
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What Are The Chest Muscles?
If you’re chasing a pumped chest to fill your muscle fit shirt (or perk up your chest in that sports bra), then let us tell you that things would be a whole lot easier if you understood the specifics of what you’re actually working on underneath that t-shirt.
The chest is made up of two muscle groups:
The Pectoralis Major (attached to the front of the body on the rib cage. This muscle helps to move the shoulder joint and attaches the arms to the body.)
The Pectoralis Minor (sits underneath the Pectoralis Major and helps to move the shoulder forward.)
Within these muscles, there are three different areas of the chest:
The Upper Chest (Clavicular Head)
The Inner Chest (or Mid Chest / Sternal head)
The Lower Chest (Abdominal Head)
When performing chest exercises, you’ll be hitting each area of the chest rather than one at a time. You can, however, emphasize different areas depending on the angle of the exercise; for example, your upper chest is best worked using incline pressing exercises, the inner chest pressing on a flat bench, whereas the lower chest is targeted using decline pressing movements.
What Are the Best Chest Exercises to Build Your Chest?
Many physique-oriented lifters start by focusing overly on the inner chest. Don’t worry—we’re not pointing fingers, and we don’t blame you—but if you’re after puffed-up pecs, you need to start focusing on all three areas of the chest.
But how do you do that? Well, you likely know that pressing exercises are great for building the chest, but did you know you should also include adduction exercises in your chest fitness training program? These involve bringing your arms together towards the midline of your body, hitting those chest muscles from a different angle.
Luckily, our best chest exercises take this into account, giving the perfect balance of exercises to work each part of the chest and from different angles, too. Add these to your chest and tricep workout, or sprinkle them into the mix on shoulder day, and you’ll be seeing results pretty quickly.
The 5 Best Chest Exercises To Build A Huge Chest:
1. Flat Barbell Bench Press
Main Target: Inner Chest
Not only is the bench press a great chest builder, but building strength in this movement is probably one of the biggest ego boosts out there. Nothing beats the feeling of loading up those 45lb plates, moving under the bar, and pressing it with ease. And nothing earns you much more respect in the lifting world, either.
The barbell bench press is a great inner chest workout, but it also recruits muscle fibers from the entire chest, alongside assistance from the anterior deltoid (shoulder) and triceps.
You can also perform the bench press using a pair of dumbbells, but using a barbell is often favored because it allows the muscle groups to work as one, moving the bar away from the torso before controlling the eccentric portion of the rep. The barbell also allows more weight to be added to the bar compared to a flat dumbbell bench press, making it an excellent exercise for increasing overall strength and power.
Tip: Grasp the bar slightly wider than shoulder width. Your elbow, forearm, and wrist should all be in line at the bottom of the movement.
Whether you’re a beginner looking to master the bench press or an advanced lifter looking to take your pressing to the next level, check out our top 5 tips to improve your bench press.
2. Incline Dumbbell Bench Press
Main Target: Upper Chest
Okay, we’ll admit this one sounds very similar, but you’ll be surprised how a small tweak to the bench's position can completely change the focus of the bench press.
By moving the bench to an incline, you’ll still target the pectoralis major but with an increased emphasis on the clavicular head (upper part of the chest), making this a great upper chest exercise. The section of the chest can sometimes lack growth in comparison to the rest, especially among beginners in strength training, so incorporating exercises that emphasize this part of the chest will help develop a well-rounded chest.
Just like above, you can also use a barbell for the incline bench press, but using dumbbells will increase core activation (as it’s a less stable option compared to a barbell) and allow you to work on improving muscle imbalances between sides.
TIP: Don't angle the bench any higher than 60 degrees - this will keep the focus on your chest rather than your shoulders.
3. Bodyweight Dip
Main Target: Lower Chest
A known tricep-building favorite, but did you know that bodyweight dips are also a great pec exercise, particularly when it comes to hitting the lower part of the chest?
Don’t be fooled: this may be a bodyweight movement, but this lower chest exercise requires a ton of strength and stability to carry out. If you’re a beginner, you’ll likely want to try this exercise on the assisted dip machine first or grab a resistance band to assist you. Alternatively, if you’ve already nailed the bodyweight dip, grab a weight belt and attach a plate, or place a dumbbell between your legs. This is a great way to increase the intensity of the exercise and skyrocket your strength gains during your chest and tricep workout.
TIP: Leaning forward during the exercise will place more emphasis on the chest. Keeping the torso upright will result in more of the triceps being used.
4. Incline Bench Cable Chest Fly
Main Target: Upper Chest
We promised we would include some chest exercises that allow you to work across the midline, and here’s our best pec exercise for the job: the bench cable chest fly.
But why do we love cable flyes so much? Well, to put it simply, using adduction in this way works the pecs in a stretched position, allowing more muscle fibres to be recruited. Using cables rather than dumbbells makes flyes more challenging, providing equal tension throughout the entire movement. This is a great exercise to help develop the chest, often used in hypertrophy training, where muscle growth is the main goal.
Using a bench rather than performing a standing cable fly helps isolate the chest muscles. By changing the angle of the bench, you can alter which part of the chest is emphasized more. To make the cable fly an upper chest exercise (which, as we’ve said, is often neglected), you’ll want to set the bench on an incline of 45 degrees.
TIP: Crossing the arms during each rep helps place more focus on the sternal head (in the inner chest).
If you’re looking to target your lower chest using cable flyes, come to a standing position, set the cable height to the top of the tower and perform high-to-low cable flyes instead.
5. Bodyweight Push-Ups
Arguably the first chest exercise invented, the push-up has been around for quite some time and requires no equipment. But can push-ups build your chest?
The answer is yes. Although the push-up utilizes a variety of muscle groups, it focuses mainly on the pectoralis major and triceps brachii, making it a great addition to your chest and tricep workout to hit both muscles at once. If that’s not enough, the anterior deltoid (shoulder) and forearms also play a key role during push-ups, helping to stabilize the body, while a certain level of core strength is required to keep good form.
Push-ups may be a bodyweight exercise but don’t underestimate its effectiveness (and convenience!).
TIP: By raising the feet on a bench to perform a decline push-up, the upper part (clavicle head) of the chest can be isolated. This is a harder variation, making the resistance you are pushing heavier, but it will shift the work from the mid to upper chest.
Read our ultimate push-up guide to discover our top push-up variations to add to your chest workout.
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What Are The Benefits Of Training Your Chest Muscles?
For some, chest workouts are all about aesthetics, but training your chest muscles can have many benefits beyond those you see in the mirror. In fact, our chest muscles play a part in any movements that involve moving the arms toward the midline of the body, and it’s these muscles that allow us to perform any pushing movements. This makes it even more important to include the most effective chest exercises in your workout.
Benefits of chest workouts (other than the obvious physical definition) include:
Improved posture
Increased strength
Greater shoulder joint stabilization
Transferable strength across everyday movements, e.g., pushing, lifting, carrying.
Deeper breathing (your chest attaches to your ribs)
So, whatever your fitness goals, a well-rounded chest training program is beneficial for appearance, strength, and longevity.
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Chest Workout Programming
How Should You Structure Your Chest Workout? (inc. sets & reps)
As with all workouts, you’ll generally want to program your heavy, compound lifts (i.e., bench press) at the start of your workout before moving on to accessory work (i.e., chest flyes or pec dec). To build the best chest workout, we recommend including all the exercises above in your chest day program at least twice a week, progressively overloading each week to make every exercise increasingly challenging to continue to elicit growth.
Chest Workout Sets & Reps
When it comes to sets and reps, this is again dependent on your goal.
For muscle growth, keep the rep range at 6 to 12 reps for 3 to 4 sets. For strength, you’ll want to keep things heavier, performing 2 to 6 reps for 3 to 5 reps (always allowing adequate time for recovery between sets).
What Is The Best Workout To Pair With Chest Day?
Sure, you could do a full-focused chest day every week, but there are a few reasons why we wouldn’t recommend this. Firstly, we know that the sweet spot for gains is training each muscle group twice a week. If you’re only doing one chest workout a week, that’s some serious gains you’re missing out on. Secondly, doing an hour of the chest in the gym can get pretty tiring (and boring too, to say the least).
For this reason, many lifters choose to combine chest exercises with other upper-body workouts. The most common pairings are:
Chest and triceps workout
Chest and shoulder workout
Chest and biceps workout
Chest and back workout
Full upper body day (this will likely contain fewer chest exercises but will train more overall muscles in the upper body)
So which should you choose? Well, there isn’t really a right or wrong answer, but we can help you decide. Discover the best workout splits for every goal to determine when to program your chest exercises.
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Chest Workout FAQs
Luckily, spending hours benching or hunting out the nearest cable machine isn’t the only way to grow your pecs. Sure, building your chest in the gym does make things a little easier, but thanks to the push-up (and its wide range of variations), there are still ways you can train your chest at home.
From the regular push-up to a wide push-up or even a plyo push-up to train explosively and power, there are many ways to adapt to the push-up to challenge your chest. Invest in a pair of dumbbells, and you open up a whole host of other chest exercises, too, from bench presses to dumbbell flyes or even a dumbbell pullover.
As with all home workouts, the challenge often lies in how to effectively implement progressive overload, and chest workouts are no different. Whereas in the gym, we can easily pop another plate onto the barbell, or select the next dumbbell up, when working out from home, you need to get a little more creative. Luckily, adding weight isn’t the only way to progressively overload, so if you don’t have access to a range of dumbbells, don’t worry. Other ways to progressively overload when doing chest exercises at home include:
Increasing the reps or sets
Reducing the rest time
Increase time under tension (by slowing the movement down)
Absolutely not! Although chest workouts are generally favored by men, women should still include chest exercises as part of their routine. While men typically have more developed chest muscles than women due to higher levels of the hormone testosterone, chest exercises will still build your chest muscles, making your breasts look perkier (which looks great in a Peek A Boo Sports Bra). Plus, chest exercises will also work surrounding muscles such as the shoulders, back, and triceps, making chest workouts a great addition to any upper body workout.
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Get Ready For Chest Day
If you want a rounded chest that pops in a stringer or gives your boobs definition in your sports bra, you need to be doing these five best chest exercises at least once (but ideally, twice) a week. Chest workouts don’t have to be complicated, and the chest exercises above make excellent pairings with your shoulders, back, or arm day workouts to build and sculpt your upper body.
Chest day ready? Download The Gymshark Training App, add these exercises to your chest workout, and easily track your sets, reps, and weights. Or, train like your favorite Gymshark athlete with hundreds of free workout programs.
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WRITTEN BY: Alex Kirkup-Lee
Alex is an inhouse Content Writer for Gymshark’s Health & Conditioning categories. A qualified Personal Trainer, CrossFit Level 1 and Functional Fitness Coach, Alex is experienced in training clients from a range of sporting backgrounds. With a passion for functional training, her favorite workout is anything that includes deadlifts, rowing, or wallballs.
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