Chest Workout & Chest Exercise

Pectoral Exercise and Best Chest Workout

There are many different chest workouts and exercises you can perform to develop your pecs: bench press, incline bench press, dumbbell press, cables flyes, db flyes, pec dec, and more - but the grand daddy of it all is the flat bench press. Almost by instinct, it's the very first exercise any beginner will head for their first time in the gym.

At the most basic level, there are two types of chest exercises:

1. Presses - where weights are pushed away from the chest, also involving the deltoid and triceps muscles.
2. Flyes - extended arms are drawn together toward the center of the chest in a hugging motion.

The most fundamental chest exercise would have to be the flat bench barbell press. This is unquestionably one of the most effective chest muscle development exercises, and it's also the favorite chest exercise for many people. The bench press is also one of the three movements used in power lifting competitions. With proper form and a full range of motion, you can develop the overall mass of the chest muscle.

Besides flat bench press, I believe the incline dumbbell press should also be the staple of any chest workout routine. I choose dumbbell incline press over barbell incline press simply because you can get a fuller range of motion using dumbbells. As well, using dumbbells will require much more effort from the stabilizer muscles.

Best Chest Exercise Workout

When it comes to bodybuilding, after a certain period of weight lifting, you'll start to notice areas where you really excel in, and other muscles that are lagging behind. You may notice that certain areas of your chest are developing better than other areas. Perhaps your lower and outer pecs have great development, but your upper and inner chest needs some work, or vice versa.

When you begin to notice such differences, you can always put more focus on the lagging area to bring it up to par. Like I mentioned before, if flat bench alone could build a complete chest, other chest exercises such as dumbbell press, incline and decline press, and flyes wouldn't be needed.

Below is a general list of exercises that you can use in your workouts to target the lagging areas.

Upper Chest Muscle Workout

• Incline barbell press
• Incline dumbbell press
• Incline machine presses
• Incline flyes

Lower Chest Workout

• Decline barbell press
• Decline dumbbell press
• Hammer strength decline (or other decline machine presses)
• Decline flyes and cable flyes
• Dips

Outer Chest Exercise

• Dumbbell Flyes
• Dips
• Flat dumbbell press
• Wide grip bench press
• Wide grip machine press

Inner Chest Building Exercise

• Cable crossover
• Dumbbell flyes
• Close grip bench pres

A basic, yet effective chest workout routine could look something like this:

• Flat Bench Press x 3 sets
• Incline Dumbbell Press x 3 sets
• Dips x 3 sets

See here for chest workout program.

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