There are many more chest exercises than you might think. Coach Jeff Nippard lists 27 of them, from best to worst. He pays attention to stretch and tension, how good an exercise feels (for example, friendly to your shoulders) and whether you can easily achieve progressive overload with it.
1. MACHINE CHEST PRESS
A good bench press machine is perhaps the best chest exercise. This provides a good stretch and high tension in the pectoral muscle, is comfortable for the shoulders and you can easily create progressive overload, simply by raising the pin. It is also safer to train to muscle failure with this exercise, compared to the barbell bench press.
2. SEATED CABLE PEC FLY
The seated cable pec fly is the best isolation exercise for the chest. By sitting you do not have to struggle with balancing as with the standing cable crossover. The seated cable pec fly is a stable exercise where all the tension goes to your pecs.
3. BARBELL BENCH PRESS
The barbell bench press is considered the basic exercise for the chest. And yes, the exercise provides good stretch and tension, and you can easily apply overload. But it does not feel equally good for everyone: some complain of pain in their shoulders. In addition, you can sink slightly less deeply with a barbell than with dumbbells.
4. INCLINE BENCH PRESS
This exercise does the same thing as the barbell bench press, but with a little more emphasis on the top of the chest. Nevertheless, a recent study shows that the middle and lower chest are trained just as hard as with the flat bench press.
5. FLAT DUMBBELL PRESS
The dumbbell press provides a deeper stretch than the barbell press because the dumbbells can freely pass your ribcage. In addition, most people are less likely to experience shoulder pain than with the barbell version. A disadvantage: advanced users need heavy dumbbells to be able to apply overload and they are quite difficult to handle.
6. INCLINE DUMBBELL PRESS
The incline dumbbell press is the same as the flat dumbbell press, with the same advantages and the same disadvantages. However, with this version you put a little more tension on the top of your chest.
7. DIPS
With dips you can achieve a deep pec stretch and you can apply progressive overload in many ways, with a weight belt if desired. The only disadvantage with this exercise is that some people experience an uncomfortable feeling in the shoulders. In that case, it is better not to do the exercise.
8. DEFICIT PUSHUPS
If you want to incorporate push-ups into your routine, do deficit push-ups. You place your hands on a raised surface so that you achieve a deeper pec stretch than with regular push-ups. That means more overload and therefore more muscle growth. You can make the exercise more difficult by pausing for a few seconds in the bottom position.
9. DUMBBELL GUILLOTINE PRESS
The guillotine press is a controversial chest exercise. But by doing the exercise with dumbbells instead of a barbell, you remove an important point, namely the safety of the shoulders. In addition, a bar cannot fall on your neck, as is the case with a barbell. At the same time, you benefit from the great advantage of extended elbows, namely a huge stretch in your pecs.
10. SMITH MACHINE BENCH PRESS
The Smith machine does not have a very good name, but studies show that it is indeed suitable for building muscle mass. In fact, you benefit from the same benefits as the regular barbell bench press, with the added benefit that you can train to muscle failure more safely in the Smith machine.
11. INCLINE SMITH MACHINE BENCH PRESS
Same as the Smith Machine Bench Press but with a little more top chest.
12. CABLE CROSSOVERS
Cable crossovers provide a great stretch to your pecs, with smooth, even tension throughout the entire range of motion. The only disadvantage of the standing version is that the cable pulls your body back a bit, making the exercise less stable. This mainly applies to advanced users who use relatively heavy weights. We already saw that the sitting version does not have this disadvantage.
13. PEC DECK
Just like the seated cable pec fly, the pec deck machine provides a stable movement with a great stretch on your pecs. But with a cable, the exercise feels just a little bit better, because the machine directs you into a specific movement pattern, so you can’t determine the perfect shoulder position for you. Nevertheless, an excellent choice.
14. DUMBBELL FLY
The dumbbell fly is not the most popular fly variant. This is because there is no muscle tension at all in the top position of the range motion. However, you can easily remedy this by skipping the top part of the movement. So you don’t let the dumbbells come all the way together and you do, as it were, partials. Nevertheless, when it comes to the ‘feels good’ aspect, the dumbbell fly has to lose out to the cable fly.
15. CABLE PRESS-AROUND
The cable press-around is the only exercise that fully contracts the chest muscles. It is a not so well-known exercise where you press the cable over your midline.
16. DECLINE BENCH PRESS
Biomechanics suggest that a decline position when bench pressing stimulates the mid and lower pecs more. But beware, most people have difficulty growing the top of the breast and not so much the middle and bottom. In addition, the decline press has a slightly smaller range of motion than the flat and incline press. In most gyms the decline press is a bit abandoned, if there is one at all.
17. DECLINE DUMBBELL PRESS
See previous. In addition, the decline dumbbell press is somewhat clumsy to perform. You actually need someone to hand you the dumbbells.
18. BANDED PUSHUPS
Banded pushups provide extra tension, but most of that tension occurs in the top half of the movement. As a result, you still do not get optimal tension while the chest muscles are stretched. However, banded push-ups work well as a finisher.
19. PUSHUPS
The push-up is a great bodyweight exercise that you can do anytime, anywhere. But assuming you train in a gym, there are better options for the chest. The main disadvantage of the pushup is that it gradually becomes more and more difficult to apply progressive overload. Initially you can simply do more reps, but at a certain point you have to do thirty reps or more to reach muscle failure. Another option is to have a weight placed on your back, but that does not feel completely stable. Push-ups are okay to do as a finisher.
20. FLOOR PRESS
The floor press is a great option for strength athletes who want to improve their lockout on the bench press. In addition, it is an excellent exercise for more strength and muscle growth in the triceps. But due to the limited range of motion, the exercise is less suitable as a chest exercise.
21. DUMBBELL PULLOVER
Biomechanics teaches us that with the dumbbell pullover, in addition to the lats and triceps, the chest also comes into action. However, many do not or hardly feel their chest muscles during this exercise. Pullovers are probably mainly a lat exercise, but with some adjustments you can still use them to train your chest in a different way than presses and flyes do.
22. PLYOMETRIC PUSHUPS
Plyometric push-ups are sometimes used to build explosive strength for the bench press. However, they are not suitable for creating maximum tension in the negative movement or the stretch. If you want to build explosive strength, it is better to do so with a weight-bearing exercise such as the bench press, if bodybuilding is your goal.
23. HEX PRESS
The hex press is not an effective chest exercise: you never get a big stretch in your pecs because your arms don’t stretch anywhere. In addition, they do not create maximum tension because the triceps take over. And there is no evidence whatsoever that the hex press trains the inner chest.
24. GUILLOTINE PRESS
The guillotine press is like a regular bench press, but with shoulders shrugged, elbows turned out and the barbell lowered to the neck. The exercise is controversial because it could cause shoulder problems, although there is no direct evidence for this. Yet we cannot deny that this exercise produces a great stretch in the pecs, more than other barbell presses. But because the exercise is potentially dangerous – the bar could fall on your neck – we’re putting the guillotine press at the bottom of the list.
25. 1-ARM DUMBBELL PRESS
Training one arm at a time has no advantage, because each pec has to work individually in a regular dumbbell press anyway. Training one arm at a time only makes it more difficult to balance, which is at the expense of tension on the pecs.
26. CROSS BODY STANDING DUMBBELL FLYE
This is another exercise where you extend your arm across your body to fully contract the upper pecs. But unlike the cable press around, this one offers zero tension when the chest muscles are stretched. The cross-body standing dumbbell flye is very similar to a front raise, an exercise that mainly trains your front shoulder heads and not your chest.
27. PLATE PRESS
The plate press is similar to the hex press but feels even clumsier. In addition, it is difficult to apply progressive overload.