First of all when you’re looking to build your chest, you want to make sure that you target your body’s fast-twitch muscle fibers, because they have the most potential to grow.
You do that by exercising for strength and explosive power. Use heavier weights and low reps and try to explode on the lifting phase of the exercise. Ever notice how big the power lifters and strong men get? They don’t get that way by working on light weight and high reps.
I get disagreements on this one, but I know that it’s true. The Best Chest Exercise is the WEIGHTED DIP… hands down! Why? When you do dips or pushups, you move your body through space rather than iron.
Moving your body through space uses more brain to muscle connections than just moving iron through space because it taxes your central nervous system more. The result, more muscle recruitment.
Now, you’ll work your triceps tremendously when doing a WEIGHTED DIP as well, but you’re also working your chest at the same time. You’ll need a dip belt to do these (or a simple strap or jump rope will do the job), and you’ll have to work your way up to a decent weight, but by the time you’re doing 8 reps with a 100 lbs on the dip belt, you’ll see the improvement in your chest size and strength like no other exercise.
Next up is the PUSH-UP, yes, that exercise that you’ve done or seen done all your life, but in reality it’s one of the few chest exercises that really demands a lot of strength and agility, because you must execute this with perfect form to get the most out of it. And it works out your abs and back (that’s where you first begin to sag and lose form).
Also, there are so many variants of the PUSHUP that are even more explosive. One of those is the MEDICINE-BALL ARCHBISHOP PUSH-UP; a long name, but this exercise works.
What you do is put 3 to 5 medicine balls in a semicircle, then get in the push-up position and put both hands on the ball to the far right; your chest should be over the ball and your feet must stay anchored throughout this exercise.
Now, move your left hand to the ball at the left and do a push-up, then bring your right hand to that ball. You want to continue moving left, doing push ups until you get to the last ball on the left. Then work your way back across the balls. That’s one rep.
The reason why you want to use the medicine ball is, when you put your hands on a ball, the inherent instability forces your core to work 20% harder than when you do a regular push-up, so this exercise trains your abs and hips to remain stable longer.
Try doing supersets of weighted push-ups with lying cable flies. Have your training partner place a weight on your back for the push-ups. When you do the flies, try holding the peak contraction for 3 seconds, and then do a 5 second eccentric contraction or lowering phase.
Keep your form strict and clean to both prevent injury and to keep from cheating. However, It is acceptable to cheat and heave ho on the last couple of reps.
You can also use resistance bands to do weighted pushups or dips. They don’t require a partner, travel easily and won’t ding the floor. For pushups, just put the band behind your back. you can put it on your lower back to work your core more or up around your shoulder blades. Now put your hands into the band loop and pin it to the floor and go to town. If it’s to loose at the bottom of the stroke, just put a loose overhand knot in the center of the band and you’re set.
For dips, drape the band around the back of your neck so it comes down the front of your shoulders and then place your hands in the band and grab on to the dip bar and have a field day.
You can also use the bands to assist in these movements if you don’t have the strength to move your bodyweight yet.
The last exercise that we suggest is the BENCH PRESS. And this isn’t because the bench press is a weak chest exercise, far from it. This exercise is essentially irreplaceable when it comes to chest exercises, and no man should completely eliminate the bench press from his workout routine.
However, you can forge a chiseled chest by doing the INCLINE BENCH PRESS with dumbbells as well, instead of the traditional flat bench.
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