The Best Chest Exercises For Button Popping Pecs
One of the key components of having the best chest workout is selecting the most effective chest exercises.
But before I can go into detail about the most effective chest exercises, I have to explain what makes up a great chest.
A great chest is composed of 4 things: Well developed and full upper pecs, outer pecs, inner pecs and mid/lower pecs.
The majority of guys over emphasize their mid/lower pecs and outer pecs from too many flat presses and dumbbell flies. This creates pecs that don’t quite look right. When they wear a shirt their lower chest sticks out while their inner and upper chest appears flat. This makes their chest look like boobs. This is the last thing you want!
As a result, I advise people to perform an equal amount or more of incline bench work vs. flat bench work. This will balance out the upper chest. Furthermore, I recommend including inner chest work into their workouts to fill out this area. This can be accomplished by doing machine flyes, close grip bench or other specific exercises.
The Best Chest Exercises For Button Popping Pecs
The following exercises outlined are the most effective exercises for working your chest.
Dumbbell and Barbell Bench Press – Flat and Incline:
These are going to be the most important exercises for building up your chest. Simply because these exercises are going to allow for constant progressive overload (lifting heavier weight over time). When you start lifting heavy weight on these lifts, you’ll notice your chest starting to fill out nicely.
When doing these movements, ensure that your shoulders are rotated back. You want to focus on pushing your chest up as high as possible, which allows you to use your chest more during the lift.When lowering the weight, bring the bar or dumbbells all the way down to your chest (the bar should actually touch the top part of your chest for incline and just below your nipples for flat). Most people stop 4 inches above their chest! This is terrible if you want to grow your chest. Your chest performs the most amount of work at the lower 1/3 portion of the lift. Once you bring the weight up past parallel your triceps take over most of the load.
Note – You can also do machine incline presses. I like to stick with free weights for the most part, but machines are a great way to mix it up. If your goal is to increase muscle size than machines bench presses are great to do at the end of your chest workout. This is because you don’t have to think about stabilizing the weight. Instead you can just focus on working your chest.
Check out this article for some advanced tips on the incline bench press.
Dumbbell Flyes – Incline and Flat:
Dumbbell Flyes are a great chest exercise, because they allow for a deep stretch in the pecs. Furthermore, Dumbbell Flyes put a greater emphasis on the outer pectorals where the chest connects to the shoulder.
The one draw back of this exercise is that it doesn’t work the inner chest. This is because there is no resistance when bringing the dumbbells together. Performing this exercise on a flat bench puts more emphasis on the mid/lower pecs. Whereas doing this exercise with an incline works the upper chest more effectively.
Make sure to keep your elbows slightly bent when doing this exercise to avoid any shoulder pain. As well you want to push your chest up to really put the focus on your chest.
Cable Cross-Overs:
Cable Cross Overs are more effective than dumbbell flyes at working your inner chest. This is because there is constant resistance throughout the full range of motion.
You can perform this exercise by bringing the handles together at the bottom position (in front of your hips), in the middle position (in front of your chest) or at the high position (in front of your face). The higher position works your upper pecs more and the lower position works your mid/lower pecs more.
Machine Flye:
My absolute favorite exercise to hit my inner chest. With this exercise I like to focus on squeezing the weight together and holding for a 3-5 second count. I keep the range of motion pretty short to focus on my inner chest.
Weighted Dips:
Weighted dips help build a sharp line under the chest. This is known as the ‘sweep’. This combined with a solid six pack will make girls go crazy.
This exercise will also build some extreme pressing power that will transfer over to your incline and flat bench exercises.
Next Article
In the next ‘Best Workout for Chest‘ article I am going to discuss techniques you can use to add muscle quickly to your chest. This will be great for people that have trouble adding size to their chest. Check out that article here
Your Kino Question For The Day: What’s your favorite chest exercise? Which exercise do you feel works best for your chest development? Let me know in the comments below.
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Hello Greg,
Great article!
Do you have strength standards relative to body weight for the incline dumbbell bench? Its my favorite!
Thanks,
Jim
Hi Greg,
I’ve been seeing gains in almost all areas of my body except for my chest, which naturally seems to be my weakest/lagging body part. Whereas most guys seem to have problems developing upper chest and have a drooping lower chest, I seem to have the opposite problem. The upper, outer regions of both pecs has grown considerably while the middle of my chest has little to no muscle and the lower part of my pecs are non existent. I’m having a really hard time filling out my chest and getting the “chest overhang” or “chest sweep” to grow in my lower pec region and I was wondering if you have any tips/advice/suggestions on what I can focus on to fix this. Thanks!
Focus on getting stronger on the flat bench! Try and nail your technique so you really feel your chest. Wide grip dips are also very helpful and maybe some flyes.
Interesting, I may have to try that. You’re grip looks comfortable also. Do you use that style grip with Standing Millitary Press?
Just practicing your grip at home with a 5lbs dumbell laying down, I can see what you mean about the elbow/wrist alignment. I’m going to try this grip next week and get use to it.
I don’t know, I’ve been using suicide grip for all my pressing and my pull ups/Tbar rows for as long as I can remember with no issues, but after watching some horror storys on Youtube( those were hard to watch, actually made me think twice about doing BB presses) and that guy crituqing my grip from the gym, I think it would be wise to play on the side of caution and change my grip. Besides, all it takes is one slip and lights out.
Thanks alot Greg, very much appreciate your input on this.
Yah I do this for standing military press.
For pull ups I go thumbless. Chin ups I use thumb.
Hey Greg
I just had a random question regarding grip. I personally use Suicide Grip( Thumbless) for all of my pressing movements. I was flat pressing 285 for my 4 reps/top set and this guy that I got to spot me was like ” Oh, you shouldn’t use this grip, its not safe. The bar has a higher chance to slip from your grip and falling on you” I just looked at him like o_O
So I was thinking: How the hell does having my thumb around a bar loaded with heavy ass weight going to prevent slipping?
I figure if the bar is going to slip with a bunch of weight on it, its going to be from a weak/unstable wrist, not the way I grip the bar.
I’ve been using Suicide grip for years now without a single misshap.
Anyways, Regarding safety and personal preference, Whats your take on different grips? Also, what grip do you use for your pressing movements?
Thanks
Jason.
Hey Jason!
Good question. There have been a few instances where people have been using a thumbless grip and the weight slid down and fell on their chest. You can see many videos of this on youtube. Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of this grip. In order to do it safely you have to have your wrist bent back more than optimally. As well, if you’re using anything heavier than your 5 rep max you are at serious risk
My preferred grip is with the thumb along the bar. It’s half regular and half suicide grip. Having your thumb along the bar helps maintain perfect wrist position where the bar is completely in line with the elbow. Here’s an example of me doing the thumb grip – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg6fsrX2ffY
awesome article right here greg :)
infact it exactly defines my problem…….i have well developed and defined outer pecs but my upper chest has no muscle whatsoever…….i want to develop muscle right below the collar bones and i understand incline presses are the way to go. should i completely drop the flat bench exercises/flat pushups to achieve this ?? thanks :)
I would recommend doing twice as much incline work as flat work. So 4-6 sets of incline presses and 2-3 sets of flat benching.
Hey Greg,
Firstly, gotta hand it to you man, you really brought the information together from the mess that’s out there on the internet. I have been following your ‘bulking up hollywood style’ routine for some weeks, and i have seen vast improvements in strength and size that i had never seen before! and for that i thank you :) it came so far that a girl straight up asked me once ‘how are your shoulders so cut??’ and i was wearing a long sleeve t shirt :D
All that remains is a little problem that has plagued me for the longest time which you mention in this article, and that is weird looking pecs. I have shredded off most of the fat off my body and am lean and looking great in all muscle groups except my chest.
There’s mass there but it looks droopy, i suspect its like you mention and that in my past i overemphasized my middle chest development. I had just proudly reached 163 on my flat bench press (i have a small body frame and used to be skinny as fuck) and as your article says i think i should focus on incline press instead. My question is how should i incorporate it into your ‘bulking up hollywood style’ program without losing the gains i made on the flat bench? or is it fine to lose those gains for incline gains? Should i switch out flat barbell bench for incline barbell and switch incline dumbells to flat dumbells?
any tips and your advice is deeply appreciated
You can switch to exclusively incline. Incline Barbell bench press and low incline dumbbell bench press. You shouldn’t lose your strength on flat since incline will carryover to flat.
Thank you man! appreciate the advice and applying it immediately
my upper chest is lagging if it compared to my lower chest, i think it’s genetics and i hope it’s not true, what do you recommend gerg ?!
Get lean and focus more on incline presses.
i will focus more on incline, i think it’s a matter of time to fill the gap in the upper chest , Thanks greg
Hey Greg,
For close to two months now I have been trying to bring the bottom of my inner chest closer together but nothing seems to be working. Can you suggest anything that I could do to help with this.
Thanks Cole
@Cole
I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Some people naturally have a gap at the bottom of their inner chest. If this is the case there is nothing you can do about it. Get lean and build up your muscle and you will look awesome.
Hey,
Are you sure about the inner-chest training?
During the last year I learned how to work the outside/midd/upper/lower area of the chest and I also learned that the inner area is not trainable, its all a low bodyfat thing
and overall chest mass. On many forums I was told (even from experienced bodybuilders) that this area is not directly trainable.
While there is no such thing as the ‘inner chest’ per say I do feel that you can put more emphasis on that area. I used to perform all of my bench presses with a wide grip. Now I use a closer grip and it has seemed to help my inner chest fill out considerably.
Hey,
Detailed post, a lot of great free content here!
Some exercises for the chest which I have not seen before which is nice ;)
Sam