The 3 WORST (And Best) Chest Exercises For Growth

In this video, I'm going to show you 3 common chest exercises that are slowing your gains and the exercises you should be doing instead for a bigger chest. I’m going to give you much more effective options than the common incline bench press, dumbbell fly, and pinch press for chest growth. Start using the best chest exercises we cover in this video for your chest workout and you’ll be able to grow your chest faster than you ever have before.

For a well developed chest, you need to focus on growing the upper chest. It’s what fills out your chest and gives it a proportionate look. One of the most popular upper chest exercises, the incline bench press, may be leaving gains on the table because of the angle of the bench and the angle of your elbows. That’s because, contrary to common practice, to target the upper chest, you don’t need a very high bench angle. So, where does this leave the incline bench press? Unfortunately most incline benches are pre-set, and at too high of an angle at about 30 degrees with some even as high as 45 degrees.

A good alternative for better chest growth is to use a low incline dumbbell press set to roughly 15 degrees. This is generally the first or second notch up on the bench. We’re using dumbbells instead of barbells here because keeping the elbows tucked to 45 degrees as you press helps significantly increases upper chest activity since it better lines up the arms with the fibers of the upper chest. Since with dumbbells you can adjust your wrist position to whatever feels best rather than being locked into the barbell, you’re able to achieve this elbow angle without stressing your joints.

As a fan of Arnold, I used to love the dumbbell fly. It wasn’t until I learned more about the science behind the chest involvement during the dumbbell fly did I realize there was a better option. People often think that the dumbbell fly is one of the best chest exercises around. Admittedly, the dumbbell fly isolates the chest. So, it seems like a great option to build your chest. The downside with this movement however is that it only really works the chest at the bottom part of the movement when your chest is fully stretched and your arms are fully extended to your sides. As soon as you pass this point, your chest becomes less and less involved, which makes the exercise less effective for overall chest growth.

That being said, we still want to do some kind of fly movement in our chest workout. We’re going to do that by making 1 big change to your flyes that will keep constant tension on your chest and work it through its full range of motion. Keep the bench but move it upright and place it between two cables that are set at about the height of your chest. Grab the handles, sit between them, and perform your fly there. If you don’t have cables handy, you can mimic a similar setup by wrapping a band around your hands and performing the dumbbell fly like so. This will help keep a little bit of tension on the chest throughout the whole movement.

One of the most “Instagram famous” chest exercises for a bigger chest is often done by squeezing a weight plate or two dumbbells together while you bring your arms out and in. The general idea is to do this to target more of the inner chest. The problem here is that all the chest is doing is keeping the weights squeezed together. This type of contraction on the chest is what’s called an isometric contraction, which isn’t very effective for building muscle. The front delts and triceps are what’s actually moving the weight out and in, and are benefiting more from this exercise than the chest is.

What can you do instead? A good swap for this exercise is the cross body press using either a machine or a cable. To perform this exercise, you will get set up at a 90 degree angle so that you can push ACROSS your body one arm at a time. If you don’t have a machine handy, you can do the same thing with a cable by putting a handle attachment on and pushing across your body. This can be done with a band as well. This exercise will still allow you to get the same strong activation and squeeze on the chest as you’d get with the pinch press. But by using your chest to push the weight away from you rather than just holding a weight in place, you’ll now be providing your chest with the right type of contraction to grow.

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