4 Exercises to Work Your Chest

Strong chest muscles do more than make you look like The Rock. Developing strength in your chest can help support your posture, surrounding muscles and joints and even your breathing. Implement some or all of these best chest exercises into your next workout.

1. Bench Press

When people think about chest workouts, the bench press is often the first image that comes to mind. This exercise is one of the best to target chest muscles and comes in several variations. While the traditional bench press uses a barbell and weight bench, it can be modified with dumbbells while lying flat on an exercise mat.

Try out any of these bench presses to work your pectoral muscles:

• Wide-grip chest press
• Narrow-grip chest press
• Incline bench press
• Decline press
• Machine chest press

2. Push-Ups

The classic push-up may take you back to your physical education classes in grade school, but these still withstand the test of time. Push-ups and bench presses use a lot of the same muscle activity for similar strength gains, so push-ups will do the trick if you’re uncomfortable with doing a bench press or don’t have a gym partner to spot you. Try out different versions for some variety:

• Feet-elevated push-up
• Hands-elevated push-up
• Weighted push-up
• Suspended push-up

3. Chest Flys

If you’ve been doing many press exercises, add some chest flys to target your pectoral muscles. Chest flys are usually done using a cable machine but can be modified using a flat bench and dumbbells instead. For the standard version of this exercise, grip a cable handle in each hand at your sides. Pull your arms together while keeping your elbows bent until your hands meet in the middle.

For more variations, try:

• Cable cross-overs
• Incline cable fly
• Single-arm cable cross-overs

4. Tricep Dips

Tricep dips are a good combination chest exercise, using your pectoral muscles, triceps, shoulders and core. All you have to do is place your heels on the floor while hovering your bottom above a flat, stable surface. Begin with your arms straight and holding your weight. Bend at the elbows and lower yourself to the floor. Stop once your arms are at a 90-degree angle and press back up to the starting position. You can do tricep dips in a gym or at home on the side of a chair or couch.

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