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Chest exercises

The most significant muscle on the front of the upper body is the large pectoral muscle Pectoralis Major. There are very many who struggle and struggle hard to get well-developed and good-looking chest muscles. Below we have lots of chest exercises for just this.

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Anatomy of the chest

To get the maximum effect from your chest training, you should know the anatomy of the pectoral muscle. The most important muscle for the chest is the Pectoralis Major, and it originates high up on the humerus (below your shoulder muscles). Then it goes out like a triangle and attaches upwards at the far end of your collarbone and downwards at the far end of your sternum and upper ribs. It almost forms a fan where your muscle fibers go obliquely upwards towards the collarbone, straight to the side towards the sternum, and obliquely downwards towards the lower parts of the sternum. To train your chest in the best way, you must perform exercises that load the muscle in these three angles, obliquely upwards, straight to the side, and downwards.

Functions of the pectoral muscle

The pectoral muscle has two main functions; push things in front of your body with your arms and pull your arm towards your body, as when you clap your hands with straight arms. The function of pulling in the arm also applies when the arm has passed the center of your sternum, so feel free to perform cable exercises and pull the handles over the center. These two functions also affect how you should train the muscle.

Structure of the exercise guide

With the anatomy and functions in mind, we have collected many chest exercises below that train your entire breast at different angles divided into upper, middle, and lower chest.

Lower Chest

Decline Bench Press

The lower chest is hard to harget. This exercise does the job

Dips

Dips for the chest is an excellent exercise, but the first thing we have to say is that it is possible to do dips in two different ways. One that mainly focuses on the triceps, or the other that mainly focuses on the chest. On the other hand, both will train the chest and triceps, but through a couple of changes, the main focus is shifted to only one muscle. This page is about how we maximize dips for the chest.

Mid Chest

Dumbbell floor press

Singel Arm Cable Fly

One of the essential functions of the chest is to retract the arms, adduction, which is what this exercise does. Running flyes with cable compared to dumbbells has its advantages. You will always have tension in the chest compared to a dumbbell fly where the top position does not load the muscle as much. You can also pull your hand past the center of the chest, which will compress the inner middle part of your chest a little extra, whereas, in a dumbbell fly, they must stay in a vertical position. Like all cable exercises, this one is also suitable for drop sets because you can quickly lose some weight.

Laying Cable Fly

Lying Cable Fly works with adduction, i.e., inserting the arm over the body. This is one of the essential functions of the pectoral muscles. In this exercise, you use a cable machine instead of dumbbells, which has its advantages. You can go the extra far with your arm over the center of your sternum. This will activate the muscle even more. The second advantage is that the load is more constant from the cable machine. Dumbbells do not load the chest as much when the arms are straight up over the body. However, even the cable machine is complicated in this position. It is also possible to quickly reduce the weight in a cable machine, so the exercise is very suitable for drop sets.

Cable crossovers

The exercise mainly trains the chest but also the front of your shoulders. Depending on how you set up the bracket on the cable machine and how you pull the arms, different chest parts will be loaded differently. If you pull the arms straight forward, the middle part will be loaded the most. Obliquely upwards, the upper part of the chest will be loaded the most, and obliquely downwards, the lower part will be trained – Try it out! In the text below, we focus on the middle part of the chest.

Cable Chest Press

Exercise were you can do quick drop sets and cross your mid chest for greater gains

Chest Press Machine

Machine chest press is a good isolation exercise for your chest muscles. It is a great exercise for beginners or as the final part of a really tuff chest workout. The fact that it is performed in a machine means that it really insulates the chest because you do not have to stabilize the movement with the rest of the body, but it also becomes easy to quickly remove weight and run drop sets.

Dumbbell Chest Press

Dumbbell Chest Press mainly trains your chest muscles but also the triceps and front shoulders. The exercise is done lying down with your back on a bench. If the bench is entirely flat, the focus will be on the middle part of your chest, but the more inclined the bench is, the more the shoulders will take over. When you sit completely straight back, the exercise has turned into a clean shoulder and triceps exercise.

Pec Deck

Pec Deck is a good isolation exercise that activates large parts of your chest muscle and the front part of the shoulder. The exercise is easy to perform because it is performed in a machine, but it must be performed correctly. There is a significant risk of injury to the shoulder, as they are exposed to great strain during the exercise, and that it is in an unnatural position, making them fragile. Pec Deck machines have either cushions or handles, avoid the static cushions and run with flexible handles if you have the opportunity.

Dumbbell Flyes

Keep your arms bent during the entire exercise, like hugging a tree. Straight locked wrist, do not bend them. Pinch your shoulder blades together, push your chest forward.

Bench Press

Your head, upper rear, buttocks and feet should be “fixed”. Pinch your shoulder blades together and press them down as well. Move the bar obliquely downwards and obliquely upwards, it should not go straight vertically. Keep your shoulders pulled back, do not push them forward when it gets heavy.

Push Ups

Push-ups are often forgotten due to all sorts of machines, barbells, and dumbbells. However, it is a traditionally good exercise, especially for beginners who want to build the muscles in the chest, triceps, and shoulders. The exercise is also perfect as a Drop Set or Super Set for Bench Press or other chest exercises with heavy weight.

Close Grip Bench Press

Bench press with a narrow grip is a very good triceps exercise. Dips, where you can use a weight plate, and bench press with a narrow grip are exercises where you can load a lot of weight and overload your triceps, which is important for muscle growth. In addition, both exercises train all three mounts in a good way. Therefore, make sure to run at least one of these two exercises during your triceps workout as often as possible.

Upper Chest

Low Cable crossover

Pulling from low to high is great for upper chest contact

Pike Push Ups

Pike Push Ups is a challenging exercise based solely on body weight for your shoulders. Mainly your front shoulders. Many people practice Pike Push Ups before moving on to handheld Push Ups.

Dips

Chest Dumbbell Pullover

Pullovers for the chest mainly train your chest muscles and your lats, triceps, shoulders, and serratus anterior. To really focus on the chest, there are several tips that we will address here. The exercise is largely about lying on a bench with your back. You should go then with both your arms and move a dumbbell backward until the arms are parallel to the floor and upwards until the arms are almost vertical again.

Incline Dumbbell Chest Press

Incline Dumbbell Chest Press mainly activates the upper chest muscles but the exercise activates the whole chest. Your triceps and the front of your shoulders will also get a little round.

Incline Cable Flyes

This exercise is similar to classic Dumbbell Flyes and regular Cable Crossovers. The big difference from Flyes is that it is made with cable runs, which means that the load is more evenly distributed compared to Fly’s where it is the hardest at the bottom of the movement and no load at all for the chest in the top position. We can also let our hands cross each other and squeeze the inner chest even more in a cable machine than dumbbells.

Incline Dumbbell Flyes

Your chest muscles have two major tasks. To push things in front of you with your arms and help pull your arms over your body. Incline Dumbell Flyes mainly train the latter. As you do the exercise on an inclined bench, the resistance will go from the bottom up, which puts more strain on the upper part of your chest muscles.

Incline Bench Press

The incline bench press is one of the best exercises to train the upper part of your chest muscles. The inclination on the bench means that the load on the bar ends up higher up on the chest, but there must not be too much inclination because then the front part of our shoulder muscles is engaged, and we do not want that. We recommend that you run about 30 to 45 degrees angle on the inclined bench. Put both feet firmly in the ground, have your butt pressed against the bench, but it is okay to sway slightly. A significant detail is to pinch the shoulder blades together and press them slightly obliquely downwards. This means that our shoulders are pulled back, and the load on them becomes less when we do the lift, which means that the chest can work more, which we want that!

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More about chest exercises

Although chest exercises are often divided into three different groups, the chest muscle is a single cohesive muscle. All muscle parts are activated when you perform exercises, but to varying degrees depending on the angle of your arms when performing the exercise. It can be said that exercises where the arms have more than 90 degrees mainly train the upper part of the muscle. Arms at a 90 degree angle mainly train the middle part and angles below 90 degrees train the lower part.

Exercising the chest can be difficult at first, but once you get a grip on the technique, the payoff is great. Especially in the press exercises when lying on your back, you can put on a lot of weight and expose your muscles to great tension. This will make you achieve very good results, but first and foremost make sure you lift correctly. The risk of injury increases very much if you do heavy lifting with the wrong technique. Firstly think of shape, then volume in the amount of reps and first to last the weight, not the other way around.

If you are unsure of how to perform a certain chest exercise, despite our descriptions and pictures, you should ask a more experienced strength trainer or instructor at your gym to demonstrate the exercise to you.

Tips on chest exercises

Always pull the shoulder blades back so that the shoulders go backwards
Push your chest forward in the exercises
Be careful with your elbows and wrists
Do not lift too heavy! Think shape, volume and finally weight
Do different exercises that focus on all three parts
When you train your chest, the triceps are often trained in the same exercise. It can therefore be good to run the chest and triceps during the same workout