First and foremost, know this: Yes, you DO want to build a strong chest (a.k.a. pectoral) muscles. “Unfortunately, many women tend to neglect the muscle group, emphasizing lower-body movements and forgetting that the chest and back require the same attention,” says Elise Young, CPT, CFSC, of Elise’s Bodyshop.
A balanced approach to upper-body strength training will help keep your posture nice and proud and allow you to feel strong throughout daily activities, whether that’s carrying groceries or rearranging your furniture for those home workouts. Something else chest exercises and workouts can do? Help you avoid back and neck injuries.
Bonus: Pushing exercises that work your chest often also work your triceps. “I always hear, ‘well what can I do for triceps?’ and although there are specific triceps exercises, the best way to work the triceps is going to be through compound pushing motions such as chest presses and pushups,” Young notes.
The Chest Muscles—Explained
The chest is made up of the pec major, pec minor, and serratus anterior. Here, Young breaks them down.
- Pectoralis major: The largest of the chest muscles, this fan-shaped muscle spans across your chest. It is responsible for flexion, adduction, and internal rotation of the humerus (arm at the glenohumeral joint, aka shoulder).
- Pectoralis minor: Smaller and with a more triangular shape, this muscle serves many functions, such as moving the ribs and shoulder blades.
- Serratus anterior: More laterally located within the chest wall, this muscle is responsible for scapular protraction (translation: pushing away from your body).
Pro Tips For Working Your Chest
- Retract your scapula. Essentially, you want to think about pulling your shoulder blades down and back. “Retracting your scapula requires full recruitment of your chest muscles for the specific pushing movement,” Young explains.
- Pair chest moves with lower-body pulling moves. “I prefer to work in full-body strength-based training so I balance my training with lower-body push (think squats, lunges) paired with upper-body pull (think rows) and lower-body pull (think deadlifts, bridges) with upper-body push,” says Young. “When we think of upper-body push we are focusing on pushing away from the body.”
- Start with a barbell. It may sound counterintuitive but Young suggests doing chest presses with a bar (sans any added weight!), rather than dumbbells, when you’re first starting out. “It is often challenging to maintain control with dumbbells so you can focus on using a bar to create that control,” she explains.
- Don’t do pushups on your knees. “I highly suggest elevating your upper body on a bench, couch, or chair before dropping to your knees,” Young says. “When we drop to our knees on an exercise such as pushups, we are losing our full core function and therefore it becomes more difficult to progress the exercise. Pushups require a ton of core control, so the more we can practice the same motion, even from an elevated surface, the quicker we will get stronger.”
- Consider tempo training. Once you master a particular chest exercise, consider switching up your “tempo” or how long it takes you to execute the three components of the movement, says Mike Simone, CPT, founder of humanfitproject: the concentric (or “upward” phase of the movement like popping back up to plank from a push-up), the eccentric (or “lowering phase) and the isometric (when you’re holding a move in peak contraction — think: about an inch off the floor for a pushup). The great thing about the tempo strategy is that it allows you to make light weights feel “heavy,” says Simone. “The only way you really get stronger is when you progressively overload your body. When you don’t have access to progressively heavier weights, you can challenge yourself by extending the duration of any component of the move.”
The 20 Best Chest Exercises
The moves ahead are some of the best-of-the-best for your chest because they challenge your upper-body from every angle. After all, your triceps, shoulders, core, and back also help you perform lots of moves that really fire up your chest.
The key to incorporating these exercises into solid chest workouts, though, is to mix things up. Select a variety, including a move or two that requires just your bodyweight, one or two that you perform lying down on the floor, one you do seated or kneeling, and a couple that use dumbbells. Choose your own adventure!
If you can’t do full pushups just yet, you’ll be cranking them out before you know it once you start incorporating these chest exercises in to your fitness routine on the regular. Speaking of pushups, you’ll see lots of ‘em in this guide. “Variations help ensure you’re hitting all of the muscle fibers of a particular muscle group since you’re attacking them from different angles and approaches,” says Simone. “You’re still working the main muscle group, but slightly differently each time so you’re leaving no fiber untouched.”
Time: 20–25 minutes
Equipment: dumbbells, mat
Good for: chest, arms, upper body
Instructions: Choose 5 to 8 moves below. After a quick dynamic warm-up (see box below), perform 10 to 12 reps of each, rest for 15 seconds, then continue to the next exercise. Once you’ve completed each, rest for 1 minute, then repeat the entire circuit twice more for a total of three rounds. Consider alternating chest moves with lower-body pulling moves like deadlifts for a total-body workout.
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Source: Women’s Health Mag