The following workout is brought to you by one of our favorite mad scientists—the Onnit-certified Eric Leija (@primal.swoledier)—who came up with it while experimenting in his own garage gym. The routine requires only a pair of moderate-weight kettlebells (16kg are good for most guys; 8kg for ladies), and a light resistance band (we like the mini available at elitefts.com), and trains your chest, shoulders, arms, and upper back muscles in under 30 minutes.

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How To Do The Kettlebell and Band Upper-Body Workout

The workout is organized into supersets, meaning you’ll do a set for two different exercises in sequence with little to no rest in between. That makes the workout go faster while challenging your conditioning (it’s also a shortcut to a big, juicy pump).

On its own, the resistance band allows you to target your stabilizer muscles in a way you couldn’t with iron alone, so don’t underestimate the sword pull and pull-apart exercises. But when added to the kettlebell, the band brings a new dimension to your strength training. Because the elasticity of the band pulls back at you when you stretch it out, you have to do your reps harder and faster to overcome the resistance than you would using kettlebells alone. This is great for building power, and for making lighter weights (if that’s what you have) feel a whole lot heavier.

DIRECTIONS

Perform the exercise pairs (marked A and B) as a superset. So you’ll do one set of A, then a set of B, and then rest 2–3 minutes. Repeat until all sets are done for the pair, and go on to the next pair. Finish with the bent-over band pull apart, which is done on its own for straight sets (do a set, rest as needed, and repeat).

1A. Kettlebell Band Floor Press

Sets: 4  Reps: 9–12

Step 1. Grasp the band in one hand by its loop end and wrap it around your back. Grasp the other loop with the other hand. Lie back on the floor and bend your knees 90 degrees, planting your feet flat. Take a kettlebell in each hand (it will be easier if you have a partner to hand the weights off to you), holding them along with the band loops. Your arms should be at 45 degrees to your sides with your triceps resting on the floor.

Step 2. Press the weights and band straight over your chest. Lower the weights back until your triceps touch the floor—don’t let your elbows crash down.

The kettlebell floor press works the chest, shoulders, and triceps just as any bench press variation does, but the shortened range of motion emphasizes triceps gains. It’s also a good substitute for full-range benching if your shoulders hurt.

1B. Banded Sword Pull

Sets: 4  Reps: 10 (each side)

Step 1. Hold the band with your left hand down at your side, just outside your waist. Brace your arm against your side.

Step 2. Grasp the other end of the band with your right hand, thumb facing forward, and raise your arm diagonally up and outward until it’s overhead. The movement should look like you’re pulling a sword from a scabbard and holding it aloft.

Similar to Y raises (which are done two-handed, and often with a band or dumbbells), the sword pull works the lower traps, which help to stabilize the shoulder and balance the effect of lots of chest and shoulder pressing. In other words, the sword pull is a good rehab/prehab movement that pairs well with the floor press.

2A. Banded Gorilla Row

Sets: 4  Reps: 8–12

Step 1. Twist the band into an X shape, and place your foot on one loop to anchor it down. Run the band through the handles of two kettlebells on the floor. Place your other foot on the open loop of the band. Your feet should be outside shoulder width. Bend your hips back, keeping a long, straight line from your head to your tailbone, and grasp the kettlebells and the band.

Step 2. Row the kettlebells to your sides, retracting your shoulder blades completely. Keep your lower back flat and your core braced, and avoid shrugging or hunching your shoulders as you pull.

If you have a strong back already, you may find that the kettlebells you have aren’t heavy enough to provide much of a challenge on bent-over rowing motions. The addition of a band fixes that, and allows you to train your rowing more explosively—a sight rarely seen, compared with how much explosive pressing athletes, powerlifters, and CrossFitters do.

2B. Banded Push Press

Sets: 4  Reps: 8 (each side)

Step 1. Stand on one loop of the band with your left foot, and hold the other loop in your left hand. Grasp a kettlebell in your left hand along with the band, and hold the weight at shoulder level.

Step 2. Bend your knees quickly, dipping your torso to gather momentum, and explode upward, pressing the weight overhead to lockout.

The push press by itself trains power, and allows you to lift heavier than when doing a strict press, which is great for strength. Adding a band will force you to keep your speed and explosiveness up as you fatigue.

3. Bent-Over Band Pull-Apart

Sets: 3  Reps: 15

Step 1. Grasp the band with hands at shoulder width and palms facing each other, or turned upward. Hold the band at arm’s length in front of you and bend your hips back until you’re in a bent-over position with your back straight.

Step 2. Raise your arms straight out to your sides, as if pulling the band apart, squeezing your shoulder blades together.

Another rehab/prehab exercise, the pull-apart really isolates the scapular muscles, which are responsible for good posture and protecting the shoulder joints.

See another kettlebell workout for a specific body part—aesthetic abs—with our Best Kettlebell Ab Exercises & Workout To Get Lean.

The post Kettlebell and Band Upper-Body Workout appeared first on Onnit Academy.

The hex press feels intense, but it looks weird, and it seems to have only gained popularity in the past 10 to 15 years, so trainers have questioned whether the hex press is really a worthwhile exercise in a chest-training arsenal, or just another training fad that’s about to run its course. Lucky for you, we researched the move and got to the bottom of it, finding that it can be both a solid pec builder and a real help to those with shoulder problems that hamper their training.

How To Do The Hex Press Properly

The hex press takes a lot of concentration to perform correctly, but it’s technically very simple.

(See 02:55 in the video above)

Step 1. Lie back on a bench with a dumbbell in each hand and press the two weights into each other. They should meet in the middle of your breastbone, just over your chest.  Arch your back, pushing your chest upward. The weights should be very close to your pecs—even touching—but not resting on your chest.

Step 2. Squeeze the weights together—hard—as you press them straight over your chest and lower back down again. Don’t let up on the tension—you have to keep the dumbbells in tight contact the whole time. That’s one rep.

It’s easier to get the weights to stay together comfortably—and without slipping—if you use hexagonal dumbbells, or another model of dumbbell that has flat sides and corners, but any dumbbells can work. (Note that if you do use round-plated dumbbells, your grip can slip while you’re pressing them together and one weight can end up mashing the fingers holding the other dumbbell, so be careful.)

“With the hex press,” says John Rusin, PT, a strength coach and founder of the Pain-Free Training Methods Certification (drjohnrusin.com), “you can knock out two different motions for the pecs at the same time—dynamic pressing, where you’re lifting the dumbbells from your chest to straight up in the air—and horizontal adduction, where you’re moving your arms toward your midline and holding an isometric contraction [that is, the weights don’t move horizontally but you’re tensing the muscles as if they were].” Essentially, you’re combining a dumbbell press and a flye exercise into one movement. That alone should be enough to classify the hex press as a good chest exercise, but wait, there’s more.

“The hex press limits the range of your pressing motion,” says Rusin. You’ll notice that, because your arms are pressing together the whole time, they won’t be able to lower as far on the downward portion of each rep, so you won’t get much of a stretch on the pecs in the bottom position, like you would if you were doing a regular dumbbell bench press. Normally, that’s not good, because muscles often grow better when they’re taken through full ranges of motion and forced to contract hard in a stretched position, but if you have shoulder pain, this reduced range may allow you to press again without irritation! Some chest pressing is better than no chest pressing, so if the hex press lets you carry on with your training, chalk that up as a win.

Furthermore, Rusin notes that pressing the weights together—maintaining that isometric contraction—“makes the rotator cuff and other stabilizer muscles in the shoulders more active. Herky jerky shoulders usually feel bad because the stabilizers aren’t working hard enough, and the hex press ensures that they will.”

One more benefit: the hex press requires maximum concentration to maintain the squeezing action while you press the dumbbells, and that means you’ll build a really strong mind-muscle connection in your training. You can’t zone out when you do this exercise, and research shows that focusing your mind squarely on the muscle you’re training may help to activate more muscle fibers and spur growth.

So that’s the classic, original dumbbell hex press, and while Rusin loves the concept, he doesn’t dig the execution.

The flaw he sees in hex pressing is that the forearms will tend to point inward as a result of the dumbbells being so close together. “If the forearms point inward,” he says, “you’re training an isometric in internal rotation under load. This won’t necessarily kill your shoulders, but it’s not ideal,” especially if you have pre-existing shoulder injuries. “The perfect position is with your forearms parallel to each other/perpendicular to the floor throughout the rep.” This is a much more natural way to press, but it’s difficult to do unless you’re using very heavy weights. You’ll typically need hexagonal dumbbells in excess of 50 pounds to allow your forearms to remain parallel while maintaining the squeezing motion (bigger dumbbells will cause the forearms to rotate outward further), and since the hex press takes a lot of energy combining movement in two planes, it doesn’t lend itself to going that heavy.

Enter the hex press with a medicine ball.

Placing a medicine ball on your lap and then squeezing it between the dumbbells will allow your forearms some space and will keep them more vertical, making for near-perfect pressing without sacrificing that isometric feature. This is the hex press variant Rusin recommends for most people, especially those who are new to the movement.

Hex Press With Medicine Ball

(See 01:57 in the video)

Step 1. Sit on the edge of a bench with a light medicine ball in your lap—six pounds or less is plenty. Hold a dumbbell in each hand and squeeze the ball in between the dumbbells. This should cause your forearms to be parallel, but if not, get a bigger ball until they’re closer to the ideal position.

Step 2. Now lie back on the bench with the ball and dumbbells at your chest. Arch your back and push your chest up. Squeeze the ball hard, and press the weights up to lockout. Continue squeezing as you lower back down.

TRAINING TIP

Whether you choose the medicine ball version or the original, the hex press can be done in place of your normal dumbbell bench pressing whenever the latter aggravates your shoulders. It can also be a good choice for those who don’t feel their pecs working on conventional presses, in which case you might want to do it early in a session in order to warm up the chest and give it your best attention. Two to three sets of 8–12 reps are a good place to start.

If you’re just looking for a new pec exercise to experiment with, however, Rusin suggests using the hex toward the end of a chest or upper-body day to burn out the pecs. Go for the pump with higher reps, such as 15–25. Three to four sets is more than enough.

What Muscles Does The Hex Press Work?

The hex press targets the pectoralis major, the main chest muscle you’ve been trying to build with more conventional bench press movements. Pressing the dumbbells together reduces the distance your arms can travel at the bottom of the range of motion (when the dumbbells are close to your chest), so the hex press won’t put the same stretch on your pecs that a regular dumbbell bench press would. But the squeezing action means that the contraction will be stronger at the opposite end of the range—at the top of the press, when the muscles are shortened. Therefore, it can be said that the hex press emphasizes the shortened position of the pecs more than other dumbbell presses, and that alone could provide a novel training stimulus.

Some coaches, and Rusin among them, believe that hex presses can produce more activation in the inner chest—where the sternal pec fibers (the ones that run horizontally across the middle of the pec major muscle) connect to the breastbone. This is a very controversial point, as most research shows that, while the pecs can be divided into upper, middle, and lower regions and trained to bring out one area over another, inner and outer divisions don’t exist. In other words, when you contract the sternal pecs, they share the tension from one end of the muscle to the other.

Nevertheless, muscle research is still in its infancy, and bodybuilders have proven it wrong in the past (scientists used to think the mind-muscle connection was sheep dip too). “I think we’re going to see the research catch up with what the bros have known for years,” says Rusin. “You can target and place more emphasis on different portions of the pec, and it’s highly dependent on mind-muscle connection.” So, if you do an exercise that helps you focus your mind on the innermost portion of your pec fibers, it’s not out of the question that they’ll grow as a result.

Because the shoulders and triceps work synergistically with the pecs in the hex press, you can count the hex press sets you do toward your total volume for those muscles groups as well.

Why And How To Do The Incline Hex Press

(See 03:47 in the video)

Performing any bench press motion on an incline can shift its emphasis to your upper chest, and the hex press is no exception. Incline pressing involves the shoulders to a greater extent, and that can irritate the joints, so the hex press done on an incline may be a way to get around otherwise painful incline pressing and still target the clavicular head of the pecs.

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench to a 30- to 45-degree incline and lie back with a dumbbell in each hand at chest level.

Step 2. Squeeze the weights together, and maintain the tension as you press the dumbbells up and come back down.

How To Stretch Before Doing The DB Hex Press

Warm up your shoulders and pec muscles, and lubricate your joints, before any workout that includes hex presses with this mobility sequence from former Onnit Chief Fitness Officer John Wolf (@coachjohnwolf). Do 3–5 sets of 3–5 reps for each movement.

Alternatives To The Hex Press

Some coaches argue that the hex press doesn’t work the chest as advertised because the tension from the adduction (the arms pushing inward) comes from your active squeezing, not from overcoming resistance in the horizontal plane. It’s the same, they say, as flexing any other muscle—sure, you can feel it working and maybe even burning, but it’s not being overloaded to produce gains.

This point is debatable, but if you’re an advanced lifter and want to make the hex press even more challenging, you can attach exercise bands to it. The tension of the bands will try to pull your arms apart, so you’ll have to work that much harder to hold the weights together, and that undoubtedly makes the hex press more like a hybrid press-cable flye movement.

Hex Press With Bands

(See 04:00 in the Pro’s Guide To The Dumbbell Hex Press video)

Step 1. Set up as you would for a normal hex press but attach bands to dumbbells on the floor, or some other sturdy objects. The bands should be set to where your hands will be when you lie back on the bench. Now hold the end of each band along with your dumbbells and lie back on the bench.

Step 2. Squeeze the dumbbells together, fighting through the band tension, and press them up.

The post A Pro’s Guide To The Dumbbell Hex Press appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Why Do People Usually Work Out Back and Bis or Chest and Tris?

Back and biceps is a common workout pairing, as is chest and triceps… so what’s with this chest and biceps idea? To understand why these are popular options, let’s back up a bit and look at the whole idea of workout splits.

A workout split is the way in which you break up the muscle groups you train over the course of a week. One of the most common splits among lifters of any kind (regardless of their goals) is the push-pull, wherein you train the muscles that perform pushing movements one day and pulling movements on another. A push day, for instance, could train the chest and triceps together—or chest, shoulders, and triceps—because all of these are involved in pressing exercises of any kind.

A pull day would target the back and biceps directly, and may also include some extra work for the rear delts and forearms as well, since all these muscles are recruited for row and pulldown movements. (Legs may be trained on a third workout day, or they may be split up and added to the push and pull days. For example, you could train quads and calves on the push day and hamstrings and glutes in the pull workout.) There are many benefits to this kind of programming.

For one thing, training two or three body parts at a time allows you to focus on just a few areas, as opposed to the whole body, which saves you energy and time, and it lets you direct more effort into each exercise and muscle group. For another, each workout works totally separate muscles, so you don’t have to worry about training a body part again (however inadvertently) the day after you just worked it—for example, it’s not a great idea to train triceps the day after chest and/or shoulders, because the triceps will still be recovering from the pressing you did.

The push-pull split is also a very convenient, intuitive way to train. On push day, for instance, you’d typically start by training the biggest muscles first, and work your way down to the smaller ones. So you could do bench presses for chest, overhead presses for the shoulders, and finish with triceps extensions for the tris. The chest exercises warm up your shoulders and triceps, so the rest of the workout flows smoothly. You won’t need many warmup sets by the time you get to your triceps exercises. All the muscles that perform related functions get worked on the same day, and therefore don’t need to be worked again for a while. (I.e., you don’t need separate days for chest, shoulder, and triceps training.)

The same goes for back and bis. Back exercises work the biceps and forearms automatically, so you might as well finish the workout with some direct arm work while those smaller muscles are warmed up and ready.

Why Train Chest and Biceps Together?

Push-pull splits are perfectly fine, but, like any split, they can have their drawbacks. One argument against the push-pull split is that, because the shoulders work to support the chest and the triceps are trained in all pressing movements, the delts and tris can get fatigued from the chest work, limiting your ability to train them with the heaviest possible weight and the greatest focus.

In other words, by the time you get to triceps, you’re tired, and not able to train them as hard as if you were fresh. The same goes when biceps are trained after back. If your goal is to drastically increase your strength or muscle in these areas because they’re lagging, the push-pull split may not be ideal, particularly if it’s the only split you’ve followed for years.

Pairing the biceps with chest eliminates any carryover fatigue. Since the biceps really aren’t involved with pressing exercises (well, they are as a stabilizer, but not to a degree that causes real fatigue), you can train them when they’re very fresh. “I think a great change of pace is to group together muscles that are not synergistic,” says Jonny Catanzano, CES, an IFBB pro bodybuilder and coach to physique competitors as well as recreational lifters (@jonnyelgato_ifbbpro).

Catanzano points out that since the pecs and biceps don’t compete at all, you can do sets of each in alternating fashion. (Note: this is sometimes called supersetting.) For instance, do a set of bench presses, rest briefly, or not at all, and then a set of curls. Your chest can rest while you work your biceps and vice versa, so your workout moves along at a brisker pace while each muscle gets a little extra time to recover.

A study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that, when lifters alternated sets of unrelated muscle groups, they saved workout time and were able to lift more overall weight. “Practitioners wishing to maximize work completed per unit of time,” said the study authors, “may be well advised to consider [paired set] training.”

If you train chest and biceps together, it would make sense then to have a back and triceps day, or do a shoulder and triceps day and train back by itself on a third upper-body day in the week. “This kind of split is a good idea for anyone who considers their arms to be a weak point,” says Catanzano. The biceps will be fresh when you train them with chest, and the triceps will be able to handle more load if worked with back or shoulders, so the extra stimulus should produce gains.

One caveat here is that while the biceps don’t compete with the pec muscles, they do overlap with back—remember, any back work you do will work the biceps to a degree by default. So it’s best not to train back the day before or after a chest and biceps workout. You shouldn’t do triceps a day before or after either, because you’ll have worked them when you hit chest.

Dorian Yates, a six-time Mr. Olympia and widely considered one of the cleverest bodybuilders when it came to program design, used this very split himself (as laid out in his book, Blood and Guts). Yates trained delts and triceps on Monday, back on Tuesday, and took Wednesday off. He then did chest and biceps Thursday, legs on Friday, and took Saturday off. On Sunday, the cycle repeated. (Notice how Yates spaced out the chest and biceps day in his training week.)

Such a training split will probably require you to take a day off every third day or so, as Yates did, but that’s OK. You won’t be able to train each muscle group quite as frequently as you would following the classic push-pull split, but it will be frequent enough to elicit growth.

In its 2021 position stand on muscle-growth training, the International Universities Strength and Conditioning Association reported that the training frequency needed for a muscle to grow may be only one session per week—provided that a minimum of 10 working sets (not including warmups) are performed for the muscle area. As 10 hard sets can be difficult to achieve in one workout, many coaches recommend training a body part twice every seven days to get adequate volume—so chest and biceps workouts as prescribed in the split above (repeated every 6 days) would suffice just fine.

The Science of Chest and Biceps Training

“When approaching chest training, I try to focus on different angles to place tension on the different heads of the pec major muscle,” says Catanzano. Flat pressing, or exercises where your arms reach straight out in front of you, will emphasize the sternal section of the pec muscles (“middle chest”), while incline movements and an arm path that reaches upward at an angle will target more of the clavicular heads (“upper chest”).

Decline pressing, where the arms move downward at an angle, targets the costal heads of the pecs, or the muscles’ bottom-most division. “You don’t need to work all the parts of the pecs in one workout,” says Catanzano, but a complete program should attack one or two of these areas each session. He emphasizes the upper pecs in the workouts he designed below, because it’s such a common weak point in most physiques.

For biceps, Catanzano likes to stress the muscles at different lengths, which is accomplished by curling with the arm in different positions. Curls done with the elbows in front of the body make the biceps work hard in their most shortened position, while just the opposite is true of incline curls and stretch curls. (Standard curls with the elbow in line with the torso work the muscle most at its mid-range.) As with chest training, playing all the angles, so to speak, leads to the greatest development, forcing the muscles to get stronger no matter what their leverage advantage (or disadvantage).

How To Stretch Before Your Chest and Biceps Workout

The shoulders are the most mobile joints in the body, and that means they’re also the most unstable, which makes them susceptible to injury. When you’re doing a chest and biceps workout, remember also that the biceps get trained after chest, and chest pressing and flyes don’t do much to pump blood into the biceps muscles. Your biceps can be nearly cold when you go to do your first set of curls, and that’s not ideal from the standpoint of preventing injury (it’s not ideal for promoting good performance either).

Shane Heins, Onnit’s Director of Fitness Education, put together a sequence of mobility drills that will warm up your shoulder joints, chest muscles, elbows, biceps, and forearms, preparing your body to lift heavy weights and stimulate the muscles you’re training safely. They’re also great for maintaining flexibility in these areas, which can diminish if you add a lot of muscle size but fail to balance it with mobility training (and what good is being big and strong if you don’t have the athleticism to use these qualities?).

DIRECTIONS

Perform the exercises as a circuit, completing one set of each in sequence. Do 10 reps for each exercise, and repeat the circuit for 4 total rounds.

1. Scap Pushup

(See 01:06 in the video above)

Step 1. Get on all fours with your hands under your shoulders and your knees under your hips. Brace your core.

Step 2. Squeeze your shoulder blades together so that your chest lowers toward the floor, and then spread your shoulders apart so that it rises back up. Your arms do not bend—keep the movement at your shoulders. That’s one rep.

2. Kneeling Pushup Elbow Circle

(See 01:45 in the video)

Step 1. From the same quadruped position as the scap pushup (all fours), turn your elbows to point out to the sides and then bend them, lowering your body to the bottom of a pushup.

Step 2. Turn your elbows toward your body and extend your arms to return to the starting position. That’s one rep.

3. Mobile Table

(See 03:02 in the video)

Step 1. Sit on the floor and place your hands by your hips, fingers pointed out to the side.

Step 2. Press your hands into the floor as you extend your hips until your torso is parallel to the floor. Be careful not to extend your hips above your shoulders—that would mean you’re hyperextending your lower back. That’s one rep.

4. Shinbox to Tripod Extension

(See 03:50 in the video)

Step 1. Sit on the floor as you did for the mobile table, and let your knees fall to your left side. Reach your left hand behind you and plant it on the floor behind your tailbone.

Step 2. Press your hand into the floor as you extend your hips and reach upward with the opposite arm. Keep your core braced so you don’t overextend at the spine. Spread your shoulders apart as wide as possible, allowing the rotation to open your upper back. That’s one rep.

At-Home Chest and Biceps Workout

Forget the heavy bench presses, fancy chest machines, and variety of curl bars—you don’t need more than a few pairs dumbbells and some resistance bands to work your chest and biceps at home, or in a bare-bones gym. The following workout, designed by Catanzano, should take about 45 minutes and can be done almost anywhere.

DIRECTIONS

The exercises in the workout are organized into pairs, marked A and B. Perform a set of the A exercise, rest, then perform a set of the B exercise, rest again, and repeat until all sets are complete for each move in the pair. Then go on to the next pair and do the same thing. Rest 2 minutes between sets. You’ll do 3 sets of 15 reps for each exercise.

1A. Feet-Elevated Pushup

(See 00:43 in the video above)

Pushups work your chest, but when you elevate your feet on a bench or boxes, you recruit more of the upper-chest muscle fibers, the same way you do if you were performing an incline bench press.

Step 1. Get into pushup position with your hands shoulder-width apart, and rest your feet on a bench or boxes so that your body is angled toward the floor.

Step 2. Keeping your body in a straight line and your core braced, lower yourself until your head is just above the floor, and then push back up. That’s one rep.

1B. Resistance-Band Stretch Curl

(See 01:13 in the video)

Curling with a band that pulls from behind you puts more tension on the biceps in their lengthened position, an effect you don’t get from conventional barbell and dumbbell curls.

Step 1. Anchor a resistance band to a sturdy object behind you and hold the free end in one hand, allowing the band to pull your arm behind your torso. Stagger your stance for balance.

Step 2. Without moving your upper arm forward, curl the band until your biceps are fully contracted. Complete your reps on that arm, and then switch arms and repeat.

2A. Single-Arm Incline Dumbbell Chest Press

(See 01:46 in the video)

Here’s some more work for the upper part of the chest, and you don’t even need an incline bench to do it.

Step 1. If you have an adjustable bench, set it to a 30 to 45-degree incline. If you don’t have a bench that inclines, elevate the head of a flat bench on some mats or weight plates. Hold a dumbbell in one hand and lie back on the bench with the weight at shoulder level.

Step 2. Press the dumbbell over your chest. Complete your reps on that arm, and then switch arms and repeat.

2B. Standing Single-Arm Preacher Curl

(See 02:14 in the video)

You can use a flat bench here, or really any sturdy, flat, object to sub for a preacher curl bench. Just elevate it so that your armpit can rest at the top. The preacher curl stresses the biceps in their shortened position and makes for a very strict movement.

Step 1. Incline your bench or elevate the surface you’re using so you can brace the top of your arm against it. Check that your forearm won’t be completely vertical at the top of the movement—that would mean your wrist and elbow are stacked and there’s no tension on the biceps.

Step 2. Hold a dumbbell and curl the weight with strict form. Complete your reps, and then repeat on the other arm.

3A. Seated Band Press

(See 03:11 in the video)

This move mimics a cable press exercise. An advantage here over pressing with free weights is that the bands keep tension on the pecs at the end range of motion, rather than letting the tension drop off, which is what happens when you reach lockout on dumbbell and barbell pressing.

Step 1. Attach resistance bands to a sturdy object at about waist height and grasp the open ends in each hand. Sit with your back braced against a bench or a sturdy chair. You can also do the exercise standing if you don’t have a bench.

Step 2. Press the bands as if they were dumbbells, but bring your hands together to meet in front of your chest in order to fully shorten the pec muscles.

3B. Arnold Concentration Curl

(See 03:45 in the video)

This is an old-school move we all owe the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, for popularizing. The concentration curl really lets you stretch the biceps in the bottom position, and allows you to focus your mind on the muscle while you’re training it.

Step 1. Stand and hold onto a bench or other sturdy object for stability. Hold a dumbbell in your other hand, and bend at the hips. Allow your working arm to hang.

Step 2. Without moving your upper arm much, curl the weight to a full contraction and control its descent back down. Complete your reps, and then repeat on the opposite side.

The Best Intermediate Chest and Biceps Workout For Getting Stronger

If you’ve been training a year or more, try this chest and biceps routine from Catanzano (who also demonstrates it in the video below). It uses dumbbells and cables (or resistance bands), and will work the muscles from some angles and positions you probably haven’t tried before. It should only take you about 45 minutes to complete.

DIRECTIONS

The exercises in the workout are organized into pairs, marked A and B. Perform a set of the A exercise, rest, then perform a set of the B exercise, rest again, and repeat until all sets are complete for each move in the pair. Then go on to the next pair and do the same thing. Rest 2 minutes between sets. You’ll do 3 sets of 12 reps for each exercise.

1A. Neutral-Grip Dumbbell Press

(See the video above at 00:52)

This hand position creates an arm path that’s easier on the shoulder joints and gives the pecs better leverage for more muscle recruitment.

Step 1. Lie back on a bench with a dumbbell in each hand and turn your palms to face each other, hands at shoulder level.

Step 2. Keeping your elbows tucked to your sides, press the weights over your chest. That’s one rep.

1B. Standing Cable Pulley Curl

(See the video at 01:23)

Curling with a cable or band while your elbows are in front of your body stresses the biceps in their shortened position.

Step 1. Attach a handle to the low pulley of a cable station and grasp it with your palms facing up, hands at shoulder width. You can also use resistance bands.

Step 2. Curl the weight, allowing your elbows to move forward in order to fully shorten the biceps. That’s one rep.

2A. Incline Cable Pulley (or Band) Press

(See the video at 01:41)

The incline press done with cables or bands keeps tension on the upper pec muscle fibers throughout the range of motion, and particularly as you reach lockout with your elbows.

Step 1. Set a bench at a 45- to 60-degree angle and place it between two facing pulley stations. You can also use resistance bands. Set the cables or bands to a height that will allow them to line up with your upper chest fibers—around waist height or below when you’re sitting on the bench should work. Lie back on the bench and hold the cables or bands at shoulder level at your sides. Make sure there’s tension on the cables or bands in this bottom position.

Step 2. Press the cables or bands over your chest to lockout. That’s one rep.

2B. Stretch Curl

(See the video at 02:10)

Curling with a band that pulls from behind you puts more tension on the biceps in the fully contracted position, an effect you don’t get from conventional barbell and dumbbell curls.

Step 1. Anchor a resistance band to a sturdy object behind you at or below knee height, and hold the free end in one hand, allowing the band to pull your arm behind your torso. Stagger your stance for balance.

Step 2. Without moving your upper arm forward, curl the band until your biceps are fully contracted. Complete your reps on that arm, and then switch arms and repeat.

3A. Incline Flye

(See the video at 03:00)

The flye motion can be done with dumbbells, cables, or bands. It isolates the pecs better than pressing does, and, if you’re using bands, they’ll give you more tension in the top position (where it usually drops off with free-weight exercises).

Step 1. Set a bench at a 45- to 60-degree angle. Lie back on the bench and hold the weights over your chest.

Step 2. Lower your arms out to your sides, bending your elbows as you go to take tension off the shoulders. Your elbows should be bent 45 to 60 degrees in this bottom position. Bring your arms back in front of your chest again as if you were hugging somebody, straightening your elbows as you do. That’s one rep.

3B. Alternating Cross-Body Hammer Curl

(See the video at 03:28)

This move puts more focus on the shorter head of the biceps, contributing more to a biceps peak.

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand and turn your palms inward to face your body.

Step 2. Curl the weight in one hand in the direction of your opposite shoulder. Lower it, and repeat on the other arm. One curl on each side equals one rep.

The Best Advanced Chest and Biceps Workout For Getting Stronger

If you’ve been training for a few years and feel you’ve hit a plateau in your gains, try this routine from Catanzano to break through. It has a finisher at the end that combines three exercises with little to no rest in between. Called a tri-set (or giant set), it’s an advanced training technique used by bodybuilders to completely exhaust a body part and force as much blood into the area as possible.

DIRECTIONS

Most of the exercises in the workout are organized into pairs, marked A and B. Perform a set of the A exercise, rest, then perform a set of the B exercise, rest again, and repeat until all sets are complete for each move in the pair. Then go on to the next pair and do the same thing. Rest 2 minutes between sets.

You’ll do 3 sets of 10 reps for each exercise. The last three exercises are done as a tri-set. So you’ll do one set of 4A, then 4B, and then 4C before resting 2–3 minutes.

1A. Cable (or Band) Incline Press-Around

(See 01:08 in the video above)

Even though you’re not lifting on an incline bench, this exercise targets the upper chest in the same way, but puts more tension on the muscle in its fully contracted position.

Step 1. Set a cable or resistance band at around knee height and grasp the handle or open end, holding it at shoulder level. Stagger your stance for balance, and rest your free hand on a bench or other sturdy support in front of you for extra stability.

Step 2. Bring your arm up and across your body so you feel a full contraction in your working pec. Complete your reps, and then repeat on the opposite side.

1B. Seated Curl on Lat Pulldown

(See 01:50 in the video)

Curling against the knee pads of a lat-pulldown station may seem strange, but it’s one of the strictest movements you can do for the biceps. The stability that the pads provide lets you really isolate the biceps, avoiding any momentum from swinging the arms.

Step 1. Sit at a lat-pulldown station with your back to the machine. Hold dumbbells and brace your arms against the knee pads.

Step 2. Curl the weights using the pads to keep your arms stationary and stable. Note: if there are people waiting to use the lat-pulldown for actual lat-pulldowns, be considerate and pick a different biceps exercise!

2A. Converging Chest Press with Cables (or Bands)

(See 02:24 in the video)

Bringing your arms together in front of you fully shortens the pec muscles, an effect you can’t get from dumbbell and barbell pressing while keeping tension on the muscles. A converging press done with cables or bands does it perfectly.

Step 1. Attach handles to the pulleys of two facing cable stations, or, use resistance bands set to knee height. Bend your elbows up to 90 degrees in the bottom position to take pressure off your shoulders.

Step 2. Press the cables or bands in front of your chest, bringing your hands together in front of you.

2B. Dumbbell Preacher Curl

(See 03:07 in the video)

The preacher curl stresses the biceps in their shortened position and makes for a very strict movement. You can perform it one arm at a time, or, if you have a preacher bench, you can train both arms at the same time.

Step 1. Incline your bench or use a preacher bench and brace the top of your arm against it. Check that your forearm won’t be completely vertical at the top of the movement—that would mean your wrist and elbow are stacked and there’s no tension on the biceps.

Step 2. Hold a dumbbell and curl the weight with strict form. Complete your reps, and then repeat on the other arm.

3A. Decline Dumbbell Press

(See 03:50 in the video)

The decline press targets the costal head of the pectoral muscles—“lower chest” in layman’s terms.

Step 1. Set a bench to a 15 to 35-degree decline. If you don’t have one that adjusts to a decline, elevate the foot of a flat bench on some weight plates or mats.

Step 2. Lie back on the bench holding dumbbells at chest level, and press the weights over your chest.

3B. Incline Dumbbell Curl

(See 04:18 in the video)

The incline curl trains the biceps from a stretched position, which research has specifically shown helps build muscle.

Step 1. Set a bench at a 45- to 65-degree angle and lie back against it with a dumbbell in each hand.

Step 2. Without allowing your upper arms to move, curl the dumbbells until your biceps are fully contracted, and then control their path back down.

FINISHER

4A. Landmine Press

(See 05:43 in the video)

More work for the upper chest here. If you don’t have a landmine unit, you can wedge a barbell into a corner.

Step 1. Load a barbell into a landmine and hold the opposite end with both hands at chest level. If you have the V-handle from a cable row machine, use that on the bar to give yourself a better grip. Stagger your stance for balance and lean forward so your weight is on your front foot.

Step 2. Press the bar up—it will move on an angle, similar to the path your arms travel when you’re performing an incline press.

4B. Iron Cross Chest Flye

(See 06:13 in the video)

Since your arms are moving on a downward path, this flye targets the lower chest.

Step 1. Use cables or resistance bands, set to above head level. Allow the cables or bands to pull your arms out to your sides at shoulder level.

Step 2. Keeping your arms fairly straight, flye the cables/bands down in front of your belt line, bringing your hands together.

4C. Alternating Cross-Body Hammer Curl

(See 06:44 in the video)

This move puts more focus on the shorter head of the biceps, helping to develop the biceps peak.

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand at your side, and turn your palms inward to face your body.

Step 2. Curl the weight in one hand in the direction of your opposite shoulder. Lower it, and repeat on the other arm. One curl on each side equals one rep.

See a great series of back/lat exercises from Catanzano in a similar article, How To Lat Spread Like A Bodybuilder.

The post The Ultimate Chest & Biceps Workouts for Building Muscle appeared first on Onnit Academy.

But if benching hurts your shoulders, you train at home without a trusty spotter, or you’ve found that barbell training just doesn’t give you a bigger chest, dumbbell work is the answer.

Strengthen Your Chest with Dumbbells

Dumbbell training may not be as sexy as loading up the bar till it bends, but for most people, it’s actually a better road to a bigger, stronger, set of pecs, and offers less risk of injury to boot.

We’re about to show you the best dumbbell exercises and workouts to develop your chest, top to bottom.

What Are The Benefits of Working Out My Chest With Dumbbells?

“The second you put two weights into your hands, it becomes doubly hard to stabilize them,” says Dr. John Rusin, a strength and conditioning coach and author of Functional Hypertrophy Training (available at drjohnrusin.com). That’s a good thing, he says: the smaller muscles in your shoulder joints learn to stabilize those joints, while the big muscles (the pecs, mainly) work harder to control the weights, preventing them from drifting in all directions. Dumbbell training offers the following benefits for chest gains.

#1. Dumbbells Allow a Greater Range of Motion

When you perform bench presses with a barbell, the bar hits your chest before your pectoral muscles achieve a full stretch. That’s not so bad if your goal is to press the biggest weight you can. But if you want to gain size and athletic performance, you may be better off with dumbbells, which allow you to lower the weights past chest level—maximally stretching the pecs and activating more muscle fibers. A study from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research suggests that larger ranges of motion lead to more muscle growth.

#2. Dumbbells Build More Stability

Yes, they’re harder to control than a barbell or machine handle, but that’s kind of the point. Your arms may shake a bit when you’re doing a dumbbell bench press or flye for the first time, or the first time in a long time, but that’s because your muscle are learning to stabilize your shoulder joints while they’re producing force. This is helpful for making you functionally stronger in the long run, so your muscles can produce force under various conditions—not just when the object they’re pushing against is perfectly balanced or moving in a straight line.

#3. Dumbbells Place Less Stress on Your Joints.

Funny thing about the human body: it only looks symmetrical. In fact, your shoulders, hips, wrists and other joints are all slightly different from one side to the other. So, when you force the body to move with perfect symmetry—as when you lower an evenly-weighted bar directly to the middle of your chest—one side will always take on a little more of the stress than the other. Do this often enough, and the joints on that side will start to complain.

Dumbbells allow both sides of your body to find their optimal path when performing an exercise. Your wrists are free to rotate, and your elbows and shoulders can travel along the path that’s most comfortable for them, essentially customizing the exercise for your body. That places the stress of the exercise right where it belongs—in your muscles, and not your joints.

#4. Dumbbells Give you Balanced Development and Strength.

This builds on our last point. You may feel like your right and left arm push with equal force on the barbell bench press, but humans are very good at compensating—throwing a little more stress onto their stronger side while favoring their weaker one. That’s not possible with dumbbells: your right and left sides have to stabilize and push with equal force—and if one side lags behind, you feel it immediately. This ensures that you never push a set farther than your weaker side can handle. Eventually, the strength on your two sides should roughly even out. And if you need extra work to bring up the weaker side, dumbbells make doing a few more reps or sets with it simple to do.

#5. Dumbbells Work the Pecs Harder.

Bench-press a pair of dumbbells and you’ll feel that the chest muscles have to contract at the top of the movement to prevent the weights from drifting outward. That’s not something you need to worry about when your hands are connected by a steel bar. A 2017 study found that dumbbell bench presses activate the pectoralis major—the impressive slab that makes up most of the chest musculature—more effectively than both the barbell bench press and the Smith machine bench press.

#6. Dumbbells Are Safer

We all know somebody who’s gotten trapped under a barbell when he couldn’t press it back up (you probably see him in the mirror every day). When you train at home, alone, such accidents can be extremely dangerous, so dumbbells are the better equipment choice for solo chest training. If your muscles give out sooner than you expect, you can easily drop the weights to the floor and live to lift another day.

What Kind of Dumbbells Should I Buy?

If you’re tired of schlepping to the gym and are ready to build a weight room of your own at home, dumbbells should be one of your first buys. You basically have two choices in the dumbbell market:

1) Adjustable dumbbells. Plates can be added and held on with collars, or the turn of a dial or lever.

2) Fixed dumbbells. The weight is secured to the handle. This means you’ll need multiple pairs of dumbbells to cover an array of weight increments.

While fixed-weight dumbbells are inexpensive, indestructible, and have a nice old-school vibe to them (your grandfather probably had a pair), they’re not all that practical. If you work out at home, you’ll need at least three pairs (something that feels light, medium, and heavy) right off the bat, plus new ones whenever you get too strong for the old models. Over time, you’ll be tripping over dumbbells, and wondering why you didn’t shell out a little more for the adjustable type up front.

But, if you like the real-gym feel of one-piece dumbbells, and money and space are no object, it’s hard to beat CAP Barbell Rubber-Coated Hex Dumbbells, which feel great in your hands and won’t nick up your flooring if you drop them. You’ll pay about 25 bucks for a pair of 10-pounders, 60 bucks for two 25-pounders, and 110 for a pair of 45s.

With adjustable dumbbells, you’ll save money in the long run, and space right away. PowerBlocks ($160 per bell for the Elite model, adjustable from 5–50 pounds in 2.5 or 5-pound increments)—are industry standard, and easy to use after some practice shifting the weight around. Known as selectorized dumbbells, the handles sit in the center of square-shaped plates, and you can load and unload them quickly with the flip of a lever. Try a pair before you buy though, as some people find the handgrips a little awkward.

Another adjustable option is Bowflex Selectech Dumbbells, which range in weight from 5 to 52 pounds in 2.5 or 5–pound increments. They work similarly to the PowerBlocks and they’re about as pricy (you’ll pay around 300 dollars for a pair), but are a little easier to use and feel better in your hands.

If you’re after a classic strongman feel, and don’t feel like plopping down three bills for hand weights, you can’t beat a pair of York Fitness Cast Iron Dumbbells. You load and unload plates with these guys like they were mini-barbells, spinning the collars into place around the ends of the threaded bars. Not as convenient as the other adjustable options, but at about $120.00 for a 5 to 45-pound pair, they’re way less expensive.

One other thing about adjustable dumbbells vs. fixed: sometimes it pays to get both. Most selectorized sets only go up to around 50 pounds, and ones that do offer more weight tend to be long and bulky and cumbersome to use. To economize space as well as cash, it’s a good idea to get a selectorized set that goes up to 50 pounds, and then fixed-weight dumbbells for every increment you need beyond that.

What Chest Exercises Can I Do With Dumbbells?

Any chest move that you can do with a barbell can be replicated with dumbbells. Here are our favorites—many of them classic moves you’re probably already familiar with, but with a clever twist that elicits even greater gains—courtesy of Rusin. We categorized them by the area of the chest they emphasize most.

Upper Chest:

#1 Slight Incline Dumbbell Bench Press

(See the video above at 0:31)

Step 1: Elevate one end of a flat exercise bench on two or three heavy barbell plates, or a small box or step. The angle should ideally be 30 degrees or less.

Step 2: Lie back on the bench, your head at the elevated end, holding two dumbbells at arm’s length above your chest.

Step 3: Slowly bend your elbows and pull your shoulder blades together on the bench, lowering the dumbbells until they are close to the sides of your chest. In the down position, your elbows should be at a 45-degree angle to your torso—not straight out to the sides.

Step 4: Pause in the stretched position, and then press the dumbbells back up, flexing your chest as you push.

Standard incline bench presses put your hips in a flexed—or bent—position, says Rusin. This basically takes your entire lower body out of the exercise, which isn’t always what you want. By elevating the bench just a little bit, you can incorporate leg drive into the movement in the same way you do (or should) perform a flat barbell bench press. This effectively turns the move into a full-body exercise, which will allow you to handle more weight.

The incline also works the pec fibers that attach to the clavicle more strongly.

#2 Incline Fly-Press

(See the video at 1:20)

Step 1: Elevate one end of a flat exercise bench on two or three heavy barbell plates (the same as you did for incline press described above).

Step 2: Lie back on the bench with your head at the elevated end, holding two medium-heavy dumbbells at arm’s length above your chest, palms facing inward.

Step 3: Slowly lower the dumbbells directly out to the sides, simultaneously bending your elbows and squeezing your shoulder blades together until your chest is comfortably stretched and your elbows are at about a 90-degree angle. (If you experience shoulder pain in the fully stretched position, limit the range of motion).

Step 4: Reverse the movement, contracting your pecs as you straighten your arms fully, until you are back in the starting position.

Standard flyes are great for building muscle—but brutal on the shoulders. Bend the arms as you lower the weights, explains Rusin, and you maintain the stress on the pecs while taking it off the shoulder joints.

Middle and Inner-Chest:

#3 Crush Press (aka Squeeze Press)

(See the video at 1:55)

Step 1: Lie back on a flat exercise bench holding two heavy dumbbells on your chest, palms facing one another.

Step 2: Press the dumbbells together in the center of your chest (this is your starting position).

Step 3: Keeping the dumbbells pressed together, slowly push them to arm’s length over your chest. Pause for a moment, squeezing your chest muscles.

Step 4: Slowly reverse the movement, returning to the starting position.

Crush presses force the pecs to contract hard in a shortened position. This makes for a good contrast to flyes and dumbbell pressing movements—where the weights lower past your chest, emphasizing a stretch on the muscles. Squeeze hard at the top on crush presses and you’ll get a similar effect to cable crossovers, without needing two fancy cable stations to do it.

For an even better contraction, attach bands to the dumbbells so they’re pulling the weights away from each other when you do the exercise. You’ll have to work much harder to maintain the squeeze.

#4 Fly-Press

(See the video at 2:39)

Step 1: Lie back on an exercise bench holding two dumbbells at arm’s length above your chest, palms facing inward. This is your starting position.

Step 2: Slowly lower the dumbbells directly out to the sides, simultaneously bending your elbows and squeezing your shoulder blades together, until your chest is comfortably stretched and your elbows are at about a 90-degree angle. (If you experience shoulder pain in the fully stretched position, limit the range of motion).

Step 3: Reverse the movement, contracting your pecs as you straighten your arms fully, until you are back in the starting position.

Flyes take the triceps virtually out of the equation, largely isolating the pecs and working them hardest in the fully stretched position—where the maximum amount of muscle fibers can be recruited.

Lower Chest:

#5 45-Degree Dumbbell Floor Press

(See the video at 3:16)

Step 1: Lie on your back on the floor, holding two dumbbells at arm’s length over your chest. You can either lie back from a sitting position while holding the dumbbells, or have a partner hand them to you.

Step 2: Rotate your wrists so that the thumb sides of your hands are closer together than the pinky sides (as if holding a steering wheel at 10 and two o’clock). This is your starting position.

Step 3: Slowly lower the weights, keeping your elbows close to your sides, until your triceps lightly contact the floor.

Step 4: Press the weights back to the starting position.

The floor press works similarly to the crush press, working the pecs when they’re in a shortened position. Because the range of motion is abbreviated, resulting in little stretch on the shoulders, they’re a good option for people with shoulder pain.

#6 Feet-Up Slight Decline Dumbbell Bench Press

(See the video at 3:56)

Step 1: Elevate one end of a flat exercise bench on two or three heavy barbell plates.

Step 2: Lie back on the bench, your head at the lower end, holding two heavy dumbbells at arm’s length above your chest. Place your feet flat on the bench.

Step 3: Slowly bend your elbows and pull your shoulder blades together on the bench, lowering the dumbbells until they are close to the sides of your chest.

Step 4: Pause in the stretched position, and then press the dumbbells back to the starting position.

The slight decline works the pecs with the shoulders in a centrated—or neutral—position. This balanced position permits maximal drive from your muscles, while the decline angle recruits more of the muscle fibers that connect to the sternum (targeting the lower chest). Want to load up on a chest exercise? Choose this one. It’s safer than doing flat or incline presses with heavy weight.

How To Stretch Before A Dumbbell Chest Workout?

Warm up your chest, shoulders, and elbows before you train pecs with these moves from Onnit’s former Chief Fitness Officer, John Wolf.

What Is the Best Dumbbell Chest Workout?

If you’re ready to build some serious pressing strength and size in your chest, try one of the workouts below. Each is designed to suit a specific goal and experience level.

Dumbbell Chest Workout For Beginners

If you’re fairly new to the iron game and are looking to dumbbells to build your chest, start with this simple, two-move workout. You can do it as part of a full-body workout or upper-body day. On the pushup, perform each rep at a deliberate pace, stopping before you reach failure on your first set. On the final effort, get as many reps as you can. Then hit the second move, leaving a couple of reps in the tank on all your sets. Perform this workout up to three times a week on nonconsecutive days.

1. Pushup

Sets: 2 Reps: Stop two reps shy of failure on the first set; last set, as many reps as possible

Step 1: Place your hands on the floor, or on a stable elevated surface (a bench, box, or table work well—the higher the surface the easier the exercise). Set them slightly wider than shoulder width and do the same with your feet. Your arms should be locked out and your body straight from your heels to the top of your head. Tuck your tailbone under, brace your core, and squeeze your glutes, so your pelvis is perpendicular to the floor.

Step 2: Keeping your body straight and your head in a neutral position, simultaneously bend your arms and retract your shoulder blades until your chest is just above the floor—or as far as you can go without losing good form.

Step 3: Press back up, spreading your shoulder blades at the top of the movement. (Think of yourself as pushing through the floor.)

2. Incline Fly-Press

Sets: 2–3 Reps: 12–15

See the directions above.

Dumbbell Chest Workout For Intermediates

If you’ve been hitting the weights consistently for at least six months, this trifecta of pec punishers will nudge you up another level. Use it in place of the chest day you were doing, or add it to your program for extra work (spaced out a few days from any other chest work you do). Rest about 2 minutes between sets of the first move, 60 seconds between sets of the second, and 30–45 seconds between sets of the third. On each exercise, choose weights that allow you to complete the lowest number of reps listed. Over time, work up to completing the highest number of reps listed for every set before increasing the weight. Perform the workout twice a week on nonconsecutive days.

1. Slight-Incline Dumbbell Press

Sets: 4–5 Reps: 4–6

 See the directions above.

2 Press-Fly

Sets: 2–3 Reps: 8–12

 See the directions above.

3 45-Degree Dumbbell Floor Press

Sets: 1–2 Reps: 15–20

 See the directions above. 

Advanced Dumbbell Chest Workout

Ready to sear your chest? This workout will do it. Use it in place of your current chest day and limit any other chest training you do in the same week to ensure recovery. Load up on the decline presses—they’re a serious strength builder—and use progressively lighter weights as the workout goes on and fatigue sets in. Finish with two sets of old-fashioned pushups, which will feel shockingly difficult after the other moves.

1. Feet Up, Slight-Decline Dumbbell Bench Press

Sets: 4-5  Reps: 3–5

See the directions above.

2. Incline Fly-Press Hybrid

Sets: 3–4  Reps: 6–10

See the directions above.

3. Crush Press

Sets: 2–3  Reps: 12–15

See the directions above.

4. Pushup

Sets: 2  Reps: As many reps as possible

See the directions above. If you can do more than 20 reps, wrap an elastic exercise band around your back and grasp an end in each hand for extra resistance.

The post Strengthen Your Chest with Dumbbells appeared first on Onnit Academy.

We consulted a pro bodybuilder/strength coach to bring you the definitive guide to chest and back workouts—including three sample routines you can try. Whether you have aspirations of competing in a physique contest, you train at home with minimal equipment, or you’re just trying to make the most of a limited amount of workout time, you’re about to find the plan for building up your chest and back that’s right for you.

Can You Train Your Back and Chest Together?

“Chest and back make a great pairing because they’re antagonistic,” says Jonny Catanzano, an IFBB pro bodybuilder and owner of Tailored Health Coaching (@tailoredhealthcoaching on Instagram), “which means that while one is working, the other is resting.” This gives you the opportunity to speed your workout along by alternating sets for each muscle group with little or no time in between them, since there’s almost no fatigue that carries over from one to the other.

Imagine training only chest or only back by itself. You pick an exercise, do a set, rest, do another set, rest, and so on until your sets are complete, and then you go on to another exercise. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, but if you rest for two minutes or longer between sets (as the latest research suggests you should, if you want to maximize muscle gains), your workout time can easily extend to an hour or more—and you’ll have only worked one muscle area.

On the other hand, if you alternate sets of chest and back exercises, you can train both muscle groups at a much brisker pace. Your chest will recover while you work your back, and vice versa, so it’s possible to use shorter rest periods between each set and get your workout done in much less than an hour’s time—without rushing either muscle group’s recovery.

A study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research had subjects perform three traditional sets of rows followed by three sets of the bench press, and, in another session, do the same routine again but with the back and chest exercises paired off and alternated. Researchers found that, when the lifters went back and forth between the two exercises in the second workout, they didn’t have to reduce the weights they were using as much from set to set. They were able to lift more total weight compared to when they did straight sets in the first workout—probably because each muscle got more rest before it was worked again.

Chest and back pairings are also great if your goal is fat loss. “You’ll burn more calories in a session training two big muscle groups together,” says Catanzano. “You’ll get your heart rate up higher than training one area at a time, and higher still if you decide to superset exercises.” That is, perform a set for chest and then one for back without any rest in between.

Furthermore, merging your chest and back training into one ensures that you’ll balance the work you do for each area. Many people (guys, mostly) will train chest voraciously, and then treat their back workouts as an add-on, doing only a handful of sets of lat pulldowns or rows. But if you plan to train both regions in a single session, you can easily keep track of the sets you do for one and match them with sets of the other.

If you’re interested in building strength, chest and back workouts will help you understand and focus on the relationship between a big back and a big bench press. “A stronger back lets you press more,” says Catanzano. “The lats help stabilize your torso when the bar is at your chest,” which is why many powerlifters do chinups or rows between sets of bench presses.

What Muscles Are Used?

Generally, when you’re talking about training chest and back together, you’re referring to the pectoralis major and minor (pecs), latissimus dorsi (lats), and upper back—comprising the rhomboids, trapezius, and teres major. The lower back—specifically, the spinal erectors—can certainly be trained as well, but many lifters prefer to work it on a lower-body day, as the lower back contributes automatically to squat and deadlift variations.

The deltoid muscles of the shoulders can’t help but get involved as well when you do any pushing and pulling, and the triceps assist on pressing exercises while the biceps and forearm/grip muscles work on your back movements.

Here’s a quick and very general anatomy course on where each of the chest and back muscles are located and what they do. (This isn’t a complete list, but these are the primary muscles you’ll target in a chest and back workout.)

Pectoralis major

This muscle has three heads and thus three different actions. The clavicular head, which runs from the collar bone to the humerus, raises the arm up and across to the other side of the body. The sternal head starts on the breastbone and reaches across to the humerus, so its fibers work to bring the arm around the front of the body. The costal head goes from the cartilage of the ribs and the external oblique muscle to the humerus, allowing the arm to pull downward from overhead.

Pectoralis minor

Lying underneath the pec major, the pec minor begins on the third to fifth ribs and attaches to the scapula (shoulder blade). It draws the tip of the shoulder downward, protracts the shoulder blade, and raises the ribs during inhalation.

Latissimus dorsi

The lat originates on the thoracic spine, lumbar spine, lower ribs, and iliac crest of the pelvis and connects to the humerus, just below the shoulder joint. It extends the shoulders, draws the arms to the sides, and helps with inhalation.

Rhomboid

A rhombus-shaped muscle (hence the name), the rhomboid runs from the cervical and thoracic spine to the scapula. It elevates and retracts the shoulder blade.

Trapezius

Like the pecs, the traps can work in three different directions. They start at the bottom of the back of the skull and the spine and reach over to the shoulder blade and collarbone in order to raise the scapula, retract it, and depress it.

Teres major

This is a small back muscle that assists the bigger ones. Originating on the back of the scapula, it inserts on the front of the humerus, and works to rotate the arm toward the body and draw it behind the body.

How Do You Set Up A Chest and Back Workout?

The way you combine chest and back exercises in a session is highly dependent on what you want to achieve. During his bodybuilding prime, Arnold Schwarzenegger liked to superset chest and back moves with little or no rest between them. For instance, do a set of incline presses followed immediately by a set of seated cable rows, rest a minute or two, and repeat. As we explained above, this a solid plan for speeding up your workouts and burning more fat, but it sets a pace that may be too intense for many people.

Research suggests that longer rest periods help you train with more challenging weights, thereby stimulating more muscle growth, so you could alternate chest and back moves with plenty of time between them—say, 90 seconds to two minutes downtime between your press and row—if muscle gain is your main priority.

There’s also no rule stating that you have to toggle between chest and back exercises. You could do all your chest moves first and then go on to back, or the other way around. “This may be better for less experienced trainees,” says Catanzano. “You won’t gas too early in the workout like you might if you were supersetting.” It’s also a good option if you want to zero in on one area at a time, giving your full attention to each one in turn, but without having to break them into two different workouts.

Finishing off one body part before you do the other may be wise if you see it as a weak point. Most people’s backs are underdeveloped, so doing all your back training when you’re fresh will let you work it with the greatest possible effort and focus. “If you have shoulder problems,” says Catanzano, “you might want to put back first, because it will warm up your shoulders and make your pressing feel smoother when you get to chest.” Yes, doing chest second may mean sacrificing some weight on your chest exercises due to fatigue, but if you’re dealing with cranky shoulders or other pressing-related injuries, learning to stimulate the muscles with lighter weight may be just what the doctor ordered.

How Many Chest Exercises and Back Exercises Should I Do?

The short answer to this question is roughly three to five moves for each muscle group per workout. For example, a typical old-school chest and back session might look like this:

1A Bench press

1B Bent-over row

2A Incline dumbbell press

2B Seated cable row

3A Dip

3B Chinup

(The exercise pairings can be alternated with rest in between sets, or superset without rest.)

But the right number of exercises for you depends on several factors. If you only have 30 minutes or less to train, you may have to cap your workout at two exercises per body part. On the other hand, if you plan on doing shoulder and arm work on a second upper-body day in the week, and therefore won’t be working chest and back again for another week, you may want to do more chest and back exercises to get enough volume in.

Volume is a major consideration when planning out any training program. A bodybuilder looking to fully stimulate every muscle will need to hit the chest and back from all angles, and that means more exercises and more sets. Whereas a busy professional who only wants to maintain strength and some athleticism can get by with much less work.

If you want the best muscle gains possible, research suggests you need a volume of 10–20 hard sets per muscle group, per week, to do the job. “I’d recommend a minimum of 10 sets,” says Catanzano, “and closer to 20 sets for weaker body parts.” All of these sets should be taken to within one to three reps of failure, he says—the point at which your reps slow down and you’re about to break form due to fatigue. As long as you keep these volume parameters in mind, the way you set up your workouts is really up to you.

Let the number of exercises you choose suit the volume of work you’re shooting for. For instance, if you’re aiming to do 10 sets for chest and back in a week, that could break down to five sets for each in two different workouts. This is a moderate and very doable amount of work for most people, and won’t put you at risk for overtraining. See below.

Chest & Back, Day I

1A Incline press, 3 sets

1B Chest-supported row, 3 sets

2A Cable fly, 2 sets

2B Straight-arm pulldown, 2 sets

Chest & Back, Day II

1A Dumbbell bench press, 3 sets

1B Inverted row, 3 sets

2A Dip, 2 sets

2B One-arm dumbbell row, 2 sets

You could finish each session with some shoulder and/or arm work for a complete upper-body workout, or leave the gym after chest and back alone if that’s all you have time for, or you plan to work those other muscles on a different day.

If back is a weak point, you should emphasize it with more volume. In this case, you could do 10 sets for it on Monday, and then another six sets on Friday for 16 total sets that week.

Chest & Back, Monday

1. Machine row, 3 sets

2. One-arm lat-pulldown, 3 sets

3. Seated cable row, 2 sets

4. Chinup, 2 sets

5. Dumbbell bench press, 3 sets

6. Feet-elevated pushup, 2 sets

Chest & Back, Friday

1. One-arm dumbbell row, 2 sets

2. Wide-grip lat pulldown, 2 sets

3. Dumbbell shrug, 2 sets

4. Machine press, 2 sets

5. Cable fly, 3 sets

Chest & Back Workout Tips

Catanzano offers some of the following pointers to help you get the most out of your training.

• If muscle size is your main goal, the amount of weight you’re lifting isn’t as important as taking your sets near to failure and using exercises that best recruit the target muscles. Catanzano says the barbell bench press is overrated for pec gains. Let the majority of your chest training come from dumbbell, machine, and cable work, which is easier on the joints and can allow you to work the muscles through greater ranges of motion and with better isolation. The same goes for back training.

• If you’re over 40, or trying to work around injuries, the way you sequence your exercises is extra important. Rather than starting with your heaviest lifts, begin sessions with dumbbell or machine work and put moves like the bench press and bent-over row later in the workout when you’re fully warmed up and mobile. “You could do a dumbbell row and dumbbell bench press first,” Catanzano says, “and then go into bent-over rows and barbell bench. Or, you could do flys before bench presses, and chest-supported rows before bent-over rows or rack pulls.” Your joints will thank you.

• If strength is a big priority for you, however, and you’re sure your body can handle it, you can sequence your workouts the opposite way. Do your heavy work like bench presses first, when you can give them your best effort, and then move on to lighter dumbbell and bodyweight work afterward.

• Cycling your rep ranges can help you avoid plateaus and hit big PR’s on your exercises. Catanzano likes to use three-week cycles, performing sets of 12–15 reps the first week, 8–12 the second, and 6–8 the third. Then he repeats the process. “You need to hit all rep ranges to maximize gains,” he says.

How To Stretch Before Doing Chest & Back

Prepare your chest and back muscles for a workout by first reducing the tension in them with some light rolling on a ball or foam roller—sometimes called a “smash.” This will help you access greater ranges of motion in your exercises; it also drives blood into the muscles to warm them up.

Chest Smash

Place the ball or roller against your pec muscles, right under your collarbone between your shoulder and breastbone. Allow your body to rest on the ball just enough to apply moderate pressure to the muscle—it shouldn’t hurt. Roll an inch or so in each direction, lingering over any positions where you feel the most tenderness, until they release. You can also extend your arm, reaching it overhead with palm facing up, and then taking it down to your hip while rotating your wrist as shown, to increase the stretch on the muscles in different ranges. Perform the smash for about a minute on each side.

Lat Smash

Place the ball or roller under your shoulder and into the meaty muscle on the side of your back (your lat). Lie on your side and apply gentle pressure to the muscle as your reach your arm overhead and out in front of you, rotating your wrist as shown. Perform the smash for about a minute on each side.

After you’ve rolled, perform the following mobility drills to further activate the muscles you’ll train. Do 2–3 sets of 5–10 reps for each exercise. Rolling and mobility drills are courtesy of of Cristian Plascencia and Natalie Higby, owners of The Durable Athlete (@durable.athlete on Instagram).

Cat-Cow

Step 1. Get on all fours with your hands under your shoulders and knees under your hips. Brace your core.

Step 2. Press into the floor, spreading your shoulder blades apart as you round your mid back toward the ceiling. Make sure only your mid back moves—the lower back should be neutral and braced.

Step 3. Pinch your shoulder blades together again as you extend your spine back to neutral.

Sky Reach To Arm Thread

Step 1. Get on all fours with your hands under your shoulders and your knees directly beneath your hips. Brace your core.

Step 2. Draw your right arm up and across your chest as you twist your right shoulder toward the ceiling and reach overhead. Be careful to keep your hips facing the floor.

Step 3. Reverse the motion, reaching your arm across your body and behind the support arm. Twist as far as you can, ideally until the back of your right shoulder touches the floor. Complete your reps on that side, and then switch sides and repeat.

Banded Shoulder Circles

Step 1. Stand holding an elastic exercise band (or dowel) with both hands outside shoulder width. Draw your ribs down, tuck your pelvis so it’s parallel to the floor, and brace your core.

Step 2. Keeping your arms straight, raise the band over and behind your head as far as you can. Reverse the motion to bring the band back in front of you.

The Best Chest & Back Workouts

Catanzano wrote up the following workouts, each with a different user in mind. One is ideal for the lifter who has access to a well-stocked gym, complete with free weights and machines. The second one is for the guy or gal training in a bare-bones home gym—a barbell, dumbbells, bands, and your bodyweight are all that’s needed. Lastly, there’s a workout for targeting common physique weak points—the upper chest and lower lats.

Choose the one that suits you best for now, and bookmark this article to refer back to the others. You may need them in the future!

Directions

For each of the workouts, follow the rep prescriptions below for every exercise. They will change weekly. Repeat the workouts for 6–8 weeks.

Week 1: perform 12–15 reps for each exercise.

Week 2: 8–12 reps.

Week 3: 6–8 reps.

Week 4: Repeat cycle.

Begin with 2–3 working sets for each lift (sets that aren’t warmups), and add volume over time. You can build up to 4–5 sets for some of the exercises, and consider having an additional chest and back day in the week to further increase the volume. If you consider either chest or back a weak point, aim to eventually perform 15–20 sets for it per week.

Remember that when chest and back exercises appear back to back, you can pair them off and alternate sets of each, with or without rest between them.

Videos are courtesy of Jonny Catanzano, @jonnyelgato_ifbbpro on Instagram.

Full-Gym Chest & Back Workout

1. Bench Press

Step 1. Set up with the bar just over your eyes. Make sure that your feet are flat on the floor and your shoulders, back, and butt maintain contact with the bench. Arch your back, drawing your shoulder blades back and down. Grasp the bar with hands just outside shoulder-width apart (you may have to slide them an inch or two in either direction), so that when you lower the bar to your chest, your elbows make a 90-degree angle.

Step 2. Unrack the bar and hold it over your chest. Lower the weight to your chest, tucking your elbows about 45 degrees to your sides. After touching your chest, press the bar back to the starting position.   

2. Incline Dumbbell Press

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench to a 30–45-degree angle, grasp a pair of dumbbells, and lie back on the bench, making sure your entire back is in contact with it—do not arch your back so that it causes your lower back to rise off the pad. Start with the dumbbells just outside your shoulders, elbows bent, and your forearms/wrists angled slightly (a V-shape).

Step 2. Keeping your elbows pointing at about 45 degrees, press the dumbbells straight up. Lower the dumbbells back down under control, until they’re just above and outside your shoulders.

3. Clavicular-Head Fly

Step 1. Attach single-grip handles (D handles) to two facing pulleys at a cable station set at shoulder height. Grasp the handles with hands angled 45 degrees and palms facing each other. Step forward so that your arms are extended at your sides, and there is tension on the cables.

Step 2. Keeping a slight bend in your elbows, bring your arms together in a wide arcing motion. Lower the weight under control until you feel a stretch in your chest.

4. Machine Low Row

Many gyms have a Hammer Strength low row machine, as shown here, but if yours doesn’t, try to mimic the exercise on a similar row machine, or set up an incline bench at a cable station.

Step 1. Adjust the seat of the machine so that, when you sit on it, the middle of your chest rests against the pad. Sit at the machine, brace your core, and bend at the hips—while keeping a long spine—until your chest is against the pad. Don’t let it come off the pad at any point during the exercise. Grasp the handles with a neutral grip (palms facing each other). Place your feet on the floor, and make sure your knees are out of the path of your arms when you row.

Step 2. Draw your shoulder blades down and together as you row the handles past your ribs. Be careful not to shrug your shoulders, and keep your chin tucked (don’t let your neck stretch forward).

5. Mid-Back Cable Row

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench to a 45-degree angle, and place the bench in front of a cable station with two side-by-side pulleys. Set the pulleys on the lowest level, and attach a single-grip handle (D-handle) to them. Rest your chest against the bench and grasp the handles with arms extended. Make sure you’re far enough away from the machine to feel a stretch on your back. Arch your back and brace your core.

Step 2. Drawn your shoulder blades back and down as you row the handles to the outsides of your chest, flaring your elbows about 60 degrees. Lower the weight with control.

6. Block Pull

Step 1. Rest the bar on blocks or mats so that it sits just below knee level. Stand with your feet hip-width apart. Bend your hips back to reach down and grasp the bar, hands just outside your knees. Take a deep breath into your belly and brace your core. Pull your shoulders back and down—think about trying to bend the bar around your legs like a pretzel; this will help you activate the right muscles. You can use straps, as shown, to support your grip.

Step 2. Keeping your head, spine, and hips aligned, drive your heels into the floor and pull the bar up along your shins until you’re standing with hips fully extended and the bar is in front of your thighs. Lower back to the floor under control.

At-Home Chest & Back Workout

1. Landmine Suitcase Row

Step 1. Load a barbell into a landmine unit, or wedge one end into a corner. Load the other end of the bar with weight, and stand behind the plates, both feet on one side of the bar. Keeping a long spine with your core braced, bend your hips back to reach down and grasp the bar. Your torso should be about 45 degrees.

Step 2. Draw your shoulder blade back and down as you row the bar the bar, stopping when your elbow reaches the middle of your torso. Lower back down under control. Complete your reps, and then repeat on the opposite side.

2. Incline Dumbbell Press w/ Neutral Grip

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench to a 30- to 45-degree angle and lie back against it with a dumbbell in each hand at shoulder level. Turn your palms so that they face each other, and your elbows are tucked at about 45 degrees to your sides.

Step 2. Press the weights overhead to lockout, and lower them with control.

3. Chest-Supported Dumbbell Row

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench to about a 60-degree angle and lie down with your chest against it. Your spine should be long and your core braced. Grasp dumbbells with your arms extended, and allow your shoulder blades to spread apart while the weights hang at arm’s length.

Step 2. Row the dumbells to your sides, drawing your shoulder blades back and down. Lower under control.

4. One-Arm Band Press

Step 1. Attach a band to a sturdy anchor point at shoulder level behind you, and grasp the free end in one hand. Hold the band at chest level with your arm angled about 45 degrees from your torso. Step away from the anchor point to put tension on the band.

Step 2. Press the band in front of you to face level. Lower under control. Complete your reps, and then repeat on the opposite side. 

5. Low-Lat Row w/ Band

Step 1. Attach a band to a sturdy anchor point overhead, and set up an adjustable bench behind it at a roughly 60-degree angle. Grasp the band in one hand and brace yourself on the bench with the opposite hand and knee. The working arm should be angled 120–150 degrees from your torso (i.e., if your arm hanging at your side is at zero degrees, and your arm extended in front of your chest is 90 degrees, the exercise should be done with your arm 30–60 degrees above that).

Step 2. Row the band down to your hip, stopping when your elbow is in line with your torso. Control the motion as you extend your arm again. Complete your reps, and then repeat on the opposite side.

6. Incline Dumbbell Fly

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench to a 30- to 45-degree angle and lie back against it with a dumbbell in each hand at shoulder level. Turn your palms so that they face each other, and your elbows are tucked at about 45 degrees to your sides. Press the weights overhead.

Step 2. Keeping a slight bend in your elbows, lower your arms slowly in a wide arcing motion until you feel a stretch in your pecs. Bring your arms back up in an arc until they’re overhead again.

7. One-Arm Dumbbell Row

Step 1. Place one knee on a flat bench and brace yourself with the hand on the same side. Your spine should be long and your core braced. Grasp a dumbbell at arm’s length.

Step 2. Draw your shoulder blade back and downward as you row the weight to your side with your elbow flared out about 45 degrees. Lower the weight under control. Complete your reps, and then repeat on the opposite side.

8. Deficit Pushup

Step 1. Place blocks or mats on the floor, or pile some weight plates as shown, so you create an elevated surface for your hands to rest on. Get into pushup position. Your body should form a straight line, with your pelvis slightly tucked so that it’s perpendicular to the floor. Brace your core.

Step 2. Lower your body between the blocks or plates until you feel a deep stretch in your chest, but don’t lose your pelvic position. Press back up.

9. T-Bar Row

Step 1. Load a barbell into a landmine unit, or wedge one end into a corner. Load the other end of the bar with weight, and stand behind the plates, feet straddling the bar. Grasp a V-grip handle (as used with cable stations) and, keeping a long spine with your core braced, bend your hips back to reach and hook the handle onto the bar. Allow your knees to bend. Grasp the handle with both hands, palms facing each other. Maintain your long spine and tight core as you pick the bar off the floor.

Step 2. Draw your shoulder blades back and down as you row the bar the bar, stopping when your elbows reach the middle of your torso. Lower back down under control.

Upper-Chest & Lower-Lat Workout

If you’ve been training a while, you’ve surely noticed that some of your muscle groups aren’t developing as well as others. When it comes to the chest and back, the upper portion of the pecs and lower section of the lats are commonly the weakest areas. Filling out the upper pecs will make your chest look bigger overall, and developing the lower lats will make your back appear wider (which makes your waist look smaller by default).

While you can’t isolate these areas completely, you can bias them with certain exercises and technique tweaks. Catanzano says that any row done with a neutral (palms facing in) grip and bringing the elbows tight to the side of the body—and stopping when the elbows are in line with the torso—will emphasize the lats over the upper back. To zero in on the lower-lat fibers (sometimes called the iliac lats, because they originate on the iliac crest of the pelvis), you need to perform pulling motions with your arm over and a little in front of your head (120–150 degrees of shoulder flexion), and driving your elbow toward your hip.

To attack the upper chest, you need to isolate the clavicular pec fibers as much as possible. The arm path to do this is similar to the one that trains the lower lats, but, of course, the resistance comes from the opposite direction. Incline presses and flys are the typical exercise choices, but make sure you perform them with a neutral grip and elbows tucked, so that your arms travel the same direction that the clavicular fibers run.

1. Incline Dumbbell Press

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench to a 30–45-degree angle, grasp a pair of dumbbells, and lie back on the bench, making sure your entire back is in contact with it—do not arch your back so that it causes your lower back to rise off the pad. Start with the dumbbells just outside your shoulders, elbows bent, and your forearms/wrists angled slightly (a V-shape).

Step 2. Keeping your elbows pointing at about 45 degrees, press the dumbbells straight up. Lower the dumbbells back down under control, until they’re just above and outside your shoulders.

2. Chest-Supported Low-Lat Row

Step 1. Rest your chest on an elevated bench, high enough so that your arms can hang straight down while your body is parallel to the floor. Keep a long spine and your core braced. Grasp a dumbbell in each hand.

Step 2. Draw your shoulder blades down and back as you row the weights to your sides.

3. Clavicular-Head Pec Fly

Step 1. Attach single-grip handles (D handles) to two facing pulleys at a cable station set at shoulder height. Grasp the handles with hands angled 45 degrees and palm facing each other. Step forward so that your arms are extended at your sides, and there is tension on the cables.

Step 2. Keeping a slight bend in your elbows, bring your arms together in a wide arcing motion. Lower the weight under control until you feel a stretch in your chest.

4. Incline Low-Lat Pulldown

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench at about a 60-degree angle in front of a cable station. Attach a bar to the pulley at the highest setting, and then attach single-grip handles to the bar so that you can grasp them with palms facing in. Lie with your chest against the bench and your arms extended overhead. Keep a long spine, and your core braced. There should be tension on the cable to start.

Step 2. Draw your shoulder blades back and together as you row the handles, stopping when your elbows are at your sides. Lower the weight under control.

5. Close-Grip Incline Press

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench to a 30–45-degree angle and lie back on it. The bar should be just over your eyes. Make sure that your feet are flat on the floor and your shoulders, back, and butt maintain contact with the bench. Arch your back, drawing your shoulder blades back and down. Grasp the bar with hands about shoulder-width apart.

Step 2. Unrack the bar and hold it over your chest. Lower the weight to your chest, tucking your elbows about 45 degrees to your sides. The bar should touch the upper portion of your chest, just under the collarbone. Press the bar back to the starting position.   

6. Rack Pull

Step 1. Set the bar on blocks or the spotter bars of a power rack, as shown, so that it sits just above knee level. Set up as you did for the block pull above—long spine, shoulders packed down and positioned directly over the bar, and core braced. Actively pull the bar tightly into your body, and maintain this tension throughout the rep. You can use straps, as shown, to support your grip.

Step 2. Extend your hips to lockout, standing up tall, and then lower the bar back under control.

Need more upper-chest training? See our guide to upper-chest workouts.

The post 3 Killer Chest & Back Workouts For Building Muscle appeared first on Onnit Academy.

A guy or gal at the intermediate level also has license to start isolating certain regions of muscles in order to sculpt their physique to the dimensions they choose. For example, using lower-chest workouts to zero in on the costal division of the pec major muscle. Whereas a beginner can focus on basic bench press exercises to activate all the muscle fibers in the chest, a more experienced lifter may need to target the costal pecs more directly in order to see continued gains.

When well-developed, the costal pecs can add volume to the lower part of your chest that makes it stand out from the ribcage. It’s an awesome look rarely seen outside of bodybuilding or physique competition, and it signifies an advanced level of progress.

We brushed up on the research and consulted one of the world’s top muscle experts to bring you the best plan of attack for lower-chest gains, but be warned: it’s probably not what you’re expecting. (Hint: no decline pressing.)

What Are the Muscles In the Lower Chest?

In order to understand how to train the lower chest, we have to look at how it’s constructed and the way it functions. When lifters say they want to target their “lower chest” with a certain exercise, they’re talking about working the costal head of the pectoralis major. Note that most anatomy charts will identify the lower-most portion of the pecs as part of the “sternocostal head” of the muscle, but hypertrophy researcher Chris Beardsley says, based on the muscle’s actions, it’s more accurate to divide the sternal and costal muscle fibers into separate regions.

To understand what a muscle does, and therefore know what movements you need to train it, you pretty much just have to look at the direction the muscle fibers run, and know that, when they contract, they’ll pull the insertion point (where the muscle attaches) closer to the origin (where the fibers start from). For example, the sternal fibers of the pec (the ones in the middle area of the muscle) run straight horizontally, originating at the sternum and attaching to the humerus (upper arm bone). That means that when they contract, they’re mainly working to pull the upper arm straight across the front of the body. Therefore, fly motions and flat bench presses work the sternal pec fibers, primarily.

The costal (lower) fibers, however, run from the cartilage of the sixth rib and the connective tissue on the external oblique to high up on the humerus (see the illustration above). The fibers’ direction, then, goes diagonal and even almost straight vertical, so they work more so to pull the arms from where they’re out and away from the body to the front of the body and close to your sides (shoulder adduction). They also work to bring the arms from a straight overhead position to down in front of the body (shoulder extension).

(Of course, the clavicular/upper portion is another region of the pec muscle that acts on the arms. For more on this head of the pec muscle and how to train it, see our guide to upper chest training.)

3 Great Lower-Chest Exercises

Now that we’ve identified where the costal pecs are and what they do, it’s pretty easy to see what kind of exercises will work them.

1. High-To-Low Cable (or Band) Fly

Since one of the costal pecs’ main functions is to draw the arms from wide out to down in front of the body (shoulder adduction), it makes sense to do a fly motion that goes from high to low. However, according to Paul Carter, a strength and hypertrophy coach (@coachpaulcarter on Instagram), most people do these incorrectly, pulling the cable handles or bands across the midpoint of their body. This is beyond the range of motion the costal pecs work in, and it transfers the tension to the sternal pec fibers.

“The cue I give for execution is to punch the floor,” says Carter. “The plane you’re moving in has to run congruent to the orientation of the fibers, so the arms have to come pretty much straight down toward the floor.”

Another mistake to avoid is starting the movement with your arms up too high, to the point where your shoulders roll forward. “People think more range of motion is better,” says Carter, so they let the weight on the cables pull their arms farther back than they should go, exceeding the pecs’ active range of motion. Not only does this do the opposite of what you want, reducing the tension on the pecs, it can be dangerous.

Repeating this mistake can, over time, cause the humerus to poke forward in the glenohumeral (shoulder) joint, leading to a condition called anterior humeral glide, which damages the shoulder capsule. Basically, allowing your arm to go too far behind your body on any exercise will cause your arm bone to stab its way through the front of your shoulder. “You always want to keep the target muscle within the range that it can move the joint,” says Carter. In many cases, that could be a shorter range of motion than you expect.

Carter’s cue is to think about driving your elbows back as your arms come up on the negative portion of the fly (when your chest gets stretched). When they’ve gone as far back as they can go without your shoulders tipping forward, the range of motion is complete.

How To Do The High-To-Low Cable (or Band) Fly

Step 1. Attach single-grip (“D”) handles to the top pulleys of two facing cable stations, or attach bands to two sturdy anchor points overhead. Stand between the cables/bands and slightly in front of them, with feet staggered to help you keep balance. Grasp the handles with your arms out and away from your sides. Bend your elbows to take pressure off the biceps. You should feel tension on the cables/bands and a stretch in your chest, but be sure your elbows don’t point upward and your shoulders aren’t bulging forward.

Step 2. Drive your arms down toward your hips and slightly in front of your body, as if punching the floor. Don’t draw your hands across your body as you would in a sternal pec fly or dumbbell fly (don’t bring your hands together).

Step 3. Allow your arms to go back in an arcing motion to the starting position, again being careful not to let them reach to where your shoulders roll forward. You should feel a stretch in your chest but not your delts.

2. Costal Dip

The dip is mostly thought of as a triceps exercise, but if you can keep your torso fairly upright, you can change the focus to really blast the costal pecs. The form pointers here are the same as for the high-to-low fly—punch the floor, and avoid overextending the shoulders.

Using a band can help you get in the right position (Carter learned this from the biomechanics whizzes at N1 Training, @n1.training on Instagram). Sling one over dip bars and stand on it like a hammock, pushing your legs forward as much as you can—it should allow for the perfect arm path to activate the costal pec fibers. Understand that the purpose of the band isn’t to reduce the amount of your own bodyweight you have to lift, although it will do that to some extent, but to allow your arms to travel from behind the body to in front of it along the path that the costal pec fibers run. You don’t need a lot of band tension to support you—you need just enough to hold your feet in front of you.

How To Do The Costal Dip

Step 1. Loop a light band around dip bars and stand on the band. Suspend your body over the bars with arms locked out, and bend at the hips, pushing your legs forward so you’re as upright as possible.

Step 2. Drive your arms back to lower your body as far as you can without your shoulders rolling forward. Be conservative; it’s probably not as deep as you think (video yourself, or have a friend watch you to make sure you don’t go too low).

Step 3. Punch your arms down to raise your body up and lock out your elbows.

3. Dumbbell Pullover

The pullover is often thought of as a back exercise, but Carter argues that it activates the lower pecs (and pec minor) much more than the lats—and a study in the Journal of Applied Biomechanics agrees with him. Just look at the motion of any pullover (barbell or dumbbell): the arms move from overhead down in front of the body, and that’s going to require some pulling from the costal division of the pecs. Meanwhile, the extreme shoulder flexion involved (the arms moving far overhead) takes the lats out of their active range, and by the time the lats really kick in to pull your arms down for shoulder extension, the resistance the weight provides drops off considerably.

Carter believes that the high-to-low fly and dip have the costal pecs pretty well covered, but if you feel your lower chest is really lacking, experiment with some pullovers. Beardsley’s research suggests that doing reps with a partial range of motion, working near the fully stretched position, may better isolate the lower chest. So you could start a set by doing full-range reps and then, as you fatigue and can’t complete another one, finish with some half-reps.

How To Do The Dumbbell Pullover

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell by one of its bell ends and lie back flat on a bench. Press the dumbbell up and hold it directly over your chest with your elbows pointing out to the sides. Tuck your pelvis under so that your lower back is flat on the bench and brace your core.

Step 2. Keeping your elbows as straight as possible, lower your arms back and behind you until you feel a strong stretch in your chest.

Step 3. Pull the weight back up and over your chest.

Performing the movement with bands or a cable would be even more effective than using a dumbbell or barbell, as the band/cable tension would force the pecs to work harder as they get closer to the chest (which is where the resistance drops off with free weights).

For all of the above movements, Carter recommends working in the 6–10 rep range and adding reps and weight gradually.

“So is that it for lower chest? Wait a minute,” you say. “What about decline presses?”

For years, bodybuilding magazines have told readers that presses and flys done on a decline bench were the best way to hit the lower-chest fibers. Carter, however, says it’s not so.

Setting a bench to a decline that allows the arms to travel on the right path is tricky—it’s easier just to do dips, Carter says. Bodybuilders often take a wide grip on decline presses, mistakenly thinking it will activate more pec muscle, but it actually brings in more of the front deltoids and can be stressful to the shoulder joints. Remember, as with a dip, pressing needs to be done with arms close to the sides to work the costal pecs.

And the decline fly? Done with dumbbells, it would only provide adequate resistance when your pecs are lengthened (arms flared out). As your arms move closer to your body, the demand on your costal pecs would get less and less, and if you cross the midline of your body, the sternal pecs take over. You could use cables or bands to get around that problem, but again, the correct arm path would be difficult to achieve.

As we said in the beginning, an old-school barbell bench press will work the costal pecs as well—so don’t think you have to abandon benching if you want your lower chest to stick out further. Bench presses also work the middle (sternal) and upper (clavicular) pecs, which is why most trainers recommend beginners learn basic lifts when they’re starting out—they recruit a lot of muscle at once, making your training very efficient. With that said, basic, compound lifts don’t isolate any one division of any muscle, so if you have a specific area that you want to improve, they’re usually not the best choice—especially after you’ve been training a while and your gains slow down. As your training and goals evolve, and injuries come up, you may also decide that bench pressing isn’t a good fit for you anymore, and you need to work your pecs with exercises that train the muscle more in isolation.

“When you’re trying to bias a particular muscle,” says Carter, “there’s always going to be some overlap with other muscles, but if you do it right, the fibers you’re trying to bias will be maximally loaded while the other ones won’t be.” So while the dips we prescribed above will work your shoulders and triceps, they’ll mainly hit the lower chest as intended.

Benefits of Working Out Your Lower Chest

Building up your costal pec can help the muscle rise off the rib cage to a greater degree, rounding out the bottom of your chest. Carter also sees lower-chest training as having value for powerlifters.

“If you bench press in competition with a shoulder-width grip,” he says, “the costal pecs are going to contribute to that lift. So strengthening that division of the pecs will help your bench press.” In fact, Carter says that lower-chest work via dips, along with triceps training, should probably make up most of your assistance work for the bench press.

The Ideal Lower-Chest Workout for The Gym

The costal division of the pecs is a pretty small area, and most chest work you do (pressing and fly exercises) is going to activate it to some degree, so don’t go overboard trying to bring up your lower chest. One or two exercises for it in one workout should do it. Here are some ways you can set up sessions to focus on lower chest gains.

Sample Lower-Chest Workout Option A

If you train on a body-part split and you have a dedicated chest day, you could prioritize the costal pecs by training them first when you’re fresh. Then you could hit the rest of the chest divisions (upper and middle) as shown below.

Use several warm-up sets to work up to a weight that allows you the prescribed number of reps, and then take that set to failure (the point at which you can’t perform another rep with good form). For the costal dips, you can warm up with pushups. If you’re very strong at dips, you may need to add weight with a dip/chinup belt, or hold a dumbbell between your feet, so you can reach failure at 6–10 reps, or close to it.

1. Costal Dip (Lower Chest)

Sets: 1  Reps: As many as possible

2. High-To-Low Cable or Band Fly (Lower Chest)

Sets: 1  Reps: 6–10

3. Low-To-High Cable or Band Fly (Upper Chest)

Sets: 1  Reps: 12–15

Step 1. Set the handles on both sides of a cable crossover station to the lowest pulley setting. Grasp the handles, and step forward to lift the weights off the stack so that there’s tension on the pec muscles. If you don’t have access to cable stations, use elastic resistance bands as shown, attached to a rack or other sturdy object.

Step 2. Stagger your feet for stability, and let your arms extend diagonally toward the floor, in line with the cables—but keep a slight bend in your elbows. Your palms will face forward. Keep your torso upright and stationary throughout the movement.

Step 3. Contract your pecs to lift the handles upward and in front of your body. The upward path of motion should be in line with the clavicular fibers of the upper pecs—think: diagonal.

Step 4. At the top of the rep, your hands should be touching each other in front of you at around face level, wrists in line with your forearms. Squeeze the top position for 1–2 seconds, and then lower the weight under control, back to the start position.

4. Dumbbell Bench Press (Middle Chest)

Sets: 1  Reps: 15–20

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand, and lie back on a flat bench with the weights at shoulder level. Flatten your lower back into the bench and brace your core.

Step 2. Press the weights straight over your chest to lockout.

Sample Lower-Chest Workout Option B

Here, you’ll open with an incline press for the upper chest—a commonly weak area—and then do two lower-chest exercises back to back. Pullovers are done last when the pecs are fully warmed up and full of blood. Performing an exercise that forces the muscles to stretch so much should never be done first in a workout—put it at the end for safety’s sake.

Use several warm-up sets to work up to a weight that allows you the prescribed number of reps, and then take that set to failure (the point at which you can’t perform another rep with good form).

1. Incline Dumbbell Bench Press

Sets: 1  Reps: 6­–10

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench to a 30–45-degree angle. Grasp a pair of dumbbells and lie back on the bench, making sure your entire back is in contact with it—do not arch your back so that it causes your lower back to rise off the pad.

Step 2. Start with the dumbbells just outside your shoulders, elbows bent, and your forearms/wrists in a semi-pronated or neutral (palms facing in) position. 

Step 3. Keeping your elbows pointing at about 45 degrees, press the dumbbells straight up until your arms are just shy of full lockout. Lower the dumbbells back down under control, until they’re just above and outside your shoulders.

2. Costal Dip

Sets: 1  Reps: As many as possible

3. Dumbbell Pullover

Sets: 1  Reps: 8–12

Sample Lower-Chest Workout Option C

Many lifters like to follow a push/pull/legs split, in which they work all the pushing muscles on one day (chest, shoulders, triceps), pulling muscles another (back, biceps), and then quads, hamstrings, and calves in a third workout. In this case, your push day could start with some costal-pec work to satisfy the chest component.

Use several warm-up sets to work up to a weight that allows you the prescribed number of reps, and then take that set to failure (the point at which you can’t perform another rep with good form).

1. Weighted Costal Dip

Sets: 1  Reps: 6–10

Add weight to your body with a dip/chinup belt, or hold a dumbbell between your feet.

2. Dumbbell Bench Press

Sets: 1  Reps: 12–15

3. Dumbbell Lateral Raise

Sets: 1  Reps: 8–12

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand and bend your hips back so that the lateral deltoid (the middle head of your shoulder) is perpendicular to the floor.

Step 2. Raise the weights outward to 90 degrees.

4. Bent-Over Lateral Raise

Sets: 1  Reps: 15–20

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand and bend your hips back until your torso is nearly parallel to the floor. Keep a long line from your head to your pelvis, and brace your core.

Step 2. Raise your arms out the sides.

5. Overhead Banded Triceps Extension

Sets: 1  Reps: 8–12

Step 1. Attach a band to a sturdy object overhead and grasp an end in each hand. Step away from the anchor point and raise your arms overhead. Your legs should be staggered. Bend your hips back to put tension on the band.

Step 2. Extend your elbows without moving your upper arms or torso. Switch the front leg on each set.

The Ideal Lower-Chest Workout At Home, or Without Weights

You can target lower chest without special equipment, but we do suggest you invest in some exercise bands, and find a way to rig up a dip station (two sturdy chairs, or the parallel bars at a park could work).

1. Costal Dip

Sets: 1  Reps: As many as possible

2. High-To-Low Band Fly

Sets: 1  Reps: As many as possible

3. Pushup With Feet Elevated

Sets: 1  Reps: As many as possible

Step 1. Place your hands around shoulder-width on the floor, and raise your feet behind you on a bench, box, or other stable surface. Tuck your tailbone slightly so that your pelvis is neutral, and brace your core. Your body should form a long, straight line.

Step 2. Lower your body, tucking your elbows about 45 degrees from your sides, until you feel a stretch in your pecs. Press yourself back up, allowing your shoulder blades to spread at the top.

4. Sternal Band Fly

Sets: 1  Reps: As many as possible

Perform the same motion as the high-to-low fly, but set the bands at shoulder height, so the line of pull lines up with the middle of your chest. Bring your hands together in the end position.

Why Only 1 Set?

You may be surprised that we’re prescribing only one work set per exercise in these workouts, when you’ve probably heard for years that 3 or more sets is best. Scientists are still going back and forth on how much volume is needed for muscle growth, but Carter’s experience has led him to believe that one hard set—taken to failure—is all that’s needed, more often than not. This is backed by a very applicable study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, which showed that only three total sets for a muscle group PER WEEK was enough to spark gains, and the gains were equal to what was measured in lifters who performed as many as 12 sets!

It’s important to note that the subjects weren’t newbies, for whom any amount of training would produce results. They had between one and four years of lifting experience, and were reasonably strong.

The researchers wrote: “Hypothetically, both low and high volume training may lead to microtraumas of the muscle fibers, but the high volume training at the expense of additional time and effort…

“The equality in lower and upper body strength development… indicates that when a minimum (threshold) level of strength training volume has been performed at a higher intensity the consequent physiological adaptations may be optimized and additional workloads (e.g., 12 sets per muscle group per week) do not contribute further improvements, at least over a short training period.”

In other words, hit your lower chest hard, and then get out of the gym!

The post The Best Lower-Chest Workouts for the Gym & Home appeared first on Onnit Academy.

– Improving gains in the upper chest requires learning to better isolate the clavicular head of the pec major muscle.

– The best angle to set the bench for incline presses and flyes depends on the dimensions of your own sternum and ribcage.

– The path of motion that your arms travel is a critical factor in upper-chest training technique.

The Best Upper-Chest Workout for Getting Defined Pecs

Whether you’re a recreational gym rat who wants a well-rounded physique, or a bodybuilding/physique/figure competitor looking to bring up weak areas to win a show, there’s one portion of the body’s musculature that’s almost always troublesome to develop: the upper chest.

The pecs are sure to look fuller and more impressive when the region that attaches to the clavicle is more prominent, but for some reason, that part doesn’t seem to respond like the rest of the muscle. To improve this area, there’s one simple prescription that is given time and time again.

You’ve heard it before. “If you want your upper chest to grow, do incline presses and flyes.” The thing is, if you’ve been lifting for any length of time, you’ve probably already tried that. And if that was all there was to it, you wouldn’t be reading this now.

The truth is, putting your bench on an incline isn’t the only consideration for targeting the upper chest. Your individual anatomical structure matters, as well as your biomechanics and ranges of motion on specific exercises.

The new advice for boosting the upper chest is to know your body and train accordingly, and we asked a trio of physique-training experts to tell you how to do that for a more balanced pair of pecs, top to bottom.

What Muscles Are In The Upper Chest?

When discussing the upper chest, we’re only talking about one muscle: pectoralis major. However, the pec major consists of three distinct portions of muscle fibers, called heads, and the way they’re arranged determines their function (i.e., the mechanics you need to use to develop them). From the top down, the sections of the pec are:

1. The Clavicular Head (Upper Chest)

The fibers originate on the clavicle (collar bone) and run diagonally downward to attach to the humerus (upper-arm bone).

2. The Sternal Head (Middle Chest)

The fibers start on the edge of the sternum (breastbone) and reach across to attach to the humerus (just below where the clavicular head goes).

3. The Costal Head (Lower Chest)

Fibers run from the cartilage of the ribs and the external oblique muscle to the humerus.

To improve the upper chest specifically, you’ll want to focus mainly on training the clavicular head, but with some emphasis on the sternal head as well, because it covers the upper portion of the sternum (see the diagram above).

Now for the big question: can you really train specific portions of a muscle? For decades, bodybuilders have argued that you can, but scientists have rebutted them, citing the “all or none” principle, which states that a muscle either contracts or it doesn’t—you can’t contract one part of a muscle without the others. Due to the way muscles are innervated, when the signal to contract is sent from the brain, the entire muscle shortens at once.

The truth is, both sides of the debate are correct to a degree. That is, when you work your pecs, you work the whole muscle, but it’s still possible to zero in on specific fibers in the muscle if you set up your training accordingly.

“The ‘all or none’ principle is more around the actual depolarization of the muscle [that] causes it to contract,” says Jordan Shallow, DC, an Ontario, Canada-based strength coach and licensed chiropractor (@the_muscle_doc on Instagram). “There’s no partial contraction—the muscle’s contracting or it’s not. But people conflate that with the idea that a muscle contracts and we can’t put particular tension, or effective tension, across certain fibers… and we absolutely can.”

A study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research showed as much, with regard to the upper chest specifically. Researchers had subjects perform the bench press at various angles and tested the muscle recruitment for each. Pressing at an incline of 44 degrees resulted in greater activation of the upper-chest muscle fibers than pressing on a flat bench, or one set to 28 degrees of incline. A 2020 study on bodybuilders in the European Journal of Sport Science had comparable findings, with the incline bench press again outperforming horizontal and decline presses for recruiting the upper chest.

However, as we’ll explore below, raising your bench angle is only one component of effective upper-chest training, and research has yet to catch up with what today’s top trainers have learned by experimenting on their clients.

How Do You Target the Upper Chest?

The idea that any chest exercise done on an incline bench hits the upper pecs has been perpetuated for more than a half-century, at least. Arnold credited his outstanding upper chest to incline presses and flyes, and most bodybuilders still swear by them. Indeed, some degree of incline is important to get the clavicular pec fibers working against gravity in the most efficient way, but elevating your bench is only part of the equation.

The key to targeting a certain area of the chest, says Shallow, is “understanding where to look from an anatomical standpoint—that will indicate what pec fibers you’re training. Arm path is going to be a key factor, but sternum angle and ribcage depth are going to be anatomical variations that will drastically affect how you recruit the pecs.”

Kassem Hanson, a trainer of bodybuilders and creator of biomechanics courses for muscle building (available at N1 Education; @coach_kassem on Instagram), echoes Shallow’s comments, particularly with regard to arm path. “The pecs gain their mechanical leverage by using the ribcage as a fulcrum,” says Hanson, “allowing them to pull the arm forward when it’s behind you, and pull your arm across your body when it’s in front. When you put your elbows out wide, you move the pecs away from the ribcage, taking away that fulcrum and leaving you to rely more on your anterior deltoids. This is a common mistake people make when performing an incline press, and also one of the reasons there’s conflicting research on the impact of incline angles on chest recruitment.”

In other words, you can choose any degree of incline that you like, but if you move your arms out too wide on your incline presses, you still won’t target the upper chest effectively.

In addition to arm path, the angle of your sternum and the depth of your ribcage should be considered. Yes, we know that sounds very technical and complex, but it’s not that difficult to assess.

The degree to which you incline your bench depends on your sternum angle and ribcage. “Some people have a very straight up and down chest—a flat sternum angle,” says Hanson, “while others have a steeper angle where the lower portion of their sternum sticks out further. The more angled your sternum, the greater the incline you should use,” up to 45 degrees. “The flatter the sternum,” says Hanson, “the less of an angle—usually around 30 degrees.”

Determining your own sternum dimensions is really as simple as standing in front of a mirror, turning to one side, and taking your shirt off. Look at where your collarbone is versus the bottom of your breastbone and lower ribs. If it’s behind these bones, you’ll probably need a steeper incline than if the two are nearly in a straight line. And if your clavicle is slightly in front of the sternum and ribs, you may need only a few degrees of incline, because your chest is basically on an incline already.

But don’t just rely on bench angle. “One of the most common cheats is people arching their back and completely negating the incline on the bench,” says Hanson. So, once you’ve found the appropriate bench angle, make sure you take advantage of it by keeping your back flat against the bench (even though, alas, it will force you to go lighter and use stricter form).

Remember, too, that the orientation of the pec fibers determines the way you need to move to work the muscle. As you can see in the diagram above, the fibers of the different pec major heads don’t all run in the same direction. The fibers of the clavicular head run at an upward angle (diagonal), not side-to-side like the sternal head. So using an incline bench isn’t as important as making sure your arms are moving along the path that the upper-chest fibers go.

“The clavicular pec is unique in that it originates on the clavicle, not the sternum,” says Hanson. “This gives it more of an upward line of pull, which means you’ll use motions that go low to high. This can be done with a cable, using an incline on a bench, or adjusting your torso position in a machine. Bottom line is, you need to be pressing at an upward angle [to target the clavicular fibers].”

How To Stretch Your Upper Chest

Prepare your chest, shoulders, upper back, and elbows for your upper-chest training with this quick mobility routine from Eric Leija (@primal.swoledier). Perform each move for 2–3 sets of 10–15 reps.

Best Exercises for Building Upper-Chest Strength

Here’s another common debate when it comes to chest training: Are presses or flyes better for hitting the pecs, and, in this case, the upper (clavicular) fibers in particular? Hanson and Shallow agree that there’s no blanket approach that applies to everyone, and both movement types can be beneficial when performed with the proper setup.

“Presses tend to be better for working the lengthened portion of the range of motion,” says Hanson, which is at the bottom of the movement, when your pecs are stretched. “Flyes, [when done with a cable], tend to be better for working the short portion of the range of motion,” when the muscle is nearly fully shortened (such as when your hands come together on a cable flye). “The best option is to use both exercises. Presses tend to have more total pec recruitment, so, when programming, you may do more flye exercises than presses, because one to two good presses will cover it.”

“If I’m doing a flye, I’m going to be able to isolate [the pecs],” says Shallow. “And there’s going to be a certain advantage to being able to isolate the muscle outside of the deltoids and triceps. With the press, you’re going to be able to use more load. That load will be dispersed through the delts and triceps, but if we can set it up properly to make the pecs a prime mover based off the anatomical variants [remember: sternum angle, ribcage depth], we can really make the press a good exercise and challenge the pecs.”

Below are five moves that, if performed properly, will emphasize the clavicular head of the pec major for most individuals. They come courtesy of Hanson and Bill Shiffler, owner of Renaissance Physique, and a competitive amateur bodybuilder.

1. Low-to-High Cable or Band Flye

One of the problems with dumbbell flyes is the lack of tension at the top. As your arms come up from the outstretched position, the resistance drops off, and at the very top, your shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints are stacked, so the weight is just resting on your arms like they’re pillars. You also can’t bring the dumbbells past the midline of your body at the top, because they’ll clang together. Hanson and Shiffler both argue that full range of motion (ROM) is key to developing the clavicular and upper-sternal pec fibers, so pulling the arms across the body is especially important. With cables, you can keep tension on the pecs throughout the entire arc of a flye.

“Free weights give resistance in one direction, which eliminates the ability to get full range of motion,” Hanson says. “A low-to-high cable flye is going to be your best way to get full ROM—especially the range where the muscles are fully shortened.” 

Other than offering optimal ROM and biomechanics, the low-to-high cable flye will also provide some much-needed variety to a chest program that includes a healthy dose of pressing movements. “When doing machine and free-weight presses for your middle [sternal] pecs,” says Hanson, “you’ll get some overlapping stimulus in the upper chest, but not in the range of motion you get in a low-to-high cable flye.”

Of course, if you don’t have access to cables, bands can be used as a substitute.

How To Do the Low-to-High Cable or Band Flye

Step 1. Set the handles on both sides of a cable crossover station to the lowest pulley setting. Grasp the handles, and step forward to lift the weights off the stack so that there’s tension on the pec muscles. If you don’t have access to cable stations, use elastic resistance bands as shown, attached to a rack or other sturdy object.

Step 2. Stagger your feet for stability, and let your arms extend diagonally toward the floor, in line with the cables—but keep a slight bend in your elbows. Your palms will face forward. Keep your torso upright and stationary throughout the movement.

Step 3. Contract your pecs to lift the handles upward and in front of your body. The upward path of motion should be in line with the clavicular fibers of the upper pecs—think: diagonal.

Step 4. At the top of the rep, your hands should be touching each other in front of you at around face level, wrists in line with your forearms. Squeeze the top position for 1–2 seconds, and then lower the weight under control, back to the start position.

Sets/Reps: 3–4 sets of 8–12 or 12–15 reps, training close to failure, is Hanson’s general recommendation. (For the best results on this and all the exercises below, periodize your sets, reps, and resistance over time—see Hanson’s comments on this topic below in the Tips for Building More Muscle section.)

2. Converging Incline Machine Press

A converging pressing machine is one where the handles come together as you press the weight, rather than remain static on one path of motion. This allows you to perform a movement that’s more of a hybrid press/flye than what you’d get from most pressing machines, better mimicking the range you’d use during a cable or resistance-band flye and keeping tension on the pecs in multiple planes. When doing a barbell or Smith machine incline press, for example, your hands don’t come together as you press because they’re fixed on the bar, and, as explained earlier, a dumbbell incline press offers no tension in the start/finish position. Though not available in all commercial gyms, a converging press can be a great addition to your training arsenal if you have access to it. (PRIME Fitness USA makes an excellent converging incline press machine, as shown below.)

The upward pressing angle combined with converging handles makes this particular type of incline machine press extremely effective for targeting both the clavicular and upper sternal pec fibers, provided you also achieve an optimal arm path through proper setup.

How to Do the Converging Incline Machine Press

Step 1. Set up for the exercise by raising your upper arms to line up with the direction the clavicular fibers of your pecs run. (This should be roughly 45 degrees out from your sides.) Draw your elbows back and retract your shoulder blades—that’s the bottom end of your range of motion. Now set up in the machine so that you can duplicate that end range position, adjusting the seat height as needed.

Set the incline according to your sternum angle—less steep for a flatter sternum, and closer to 45 degrees for an angled one. If your machine’s incline isn’t adjustable, this may require scooting your butt forward on the seat to (ironically) take away some of the incline. If your machine allows it, you can use a neutral (palms facing in) grip, which may feel better for your shoulders or allow a better angle of the arms to hit the upper pecs.

Step 2. Unrack the weight to put tension on the pecs, and then press the handles up to full elbow extension, focusing on driving up and in. Hanson cues the movement by telling clients to think about bringing their armpits up into their clavicles on each side, so you squeeze both ends of the clavicular head together.

Step 3. Lower the weight under control. Stop when your hands are just above chest level (don’t let the weight rest on the stack between reps).

Exercise Variations: To target more of the sternal fibers that make up the middle/upper portion of the pecs, the upper-arm position will be slightly different than what’s described above. Because the sternal fibers run more or less side to side, you’ll want the arms to line up with those fibers. That means your elbows will be up a bit higher and pointed out to the sides, with a path of motion going from out to in, straight across the body. (This is shown better in the first variation used in the video above.)

Hanson shows both variations of the incline converging machine press (sternal and then clavicular pec emphasis) in this video.

Sets/Reps: 3–4 sets of 6–8 or 10–12 reps, training close to failure.

3. Dumbbell Incline Press with Semi-Pronated Grip

According to Hanson, a relatively narrow grip better targets the upper chest because it allows the elbows to stay in closer to the body, and that prevents the front delts from taking over the movement (as is the case on presses done with a wide grip). If you’re pressing with a barbell, he recommends a grip just outside shoulder-width. “However,” he says, “narrower arm paths work better with a neutral grip [palms facing each other] or semi-pronated grip [palms somewhere between facing each other and facing straight forward],” whichever is more comfortable for you. This being the case, dumbbells are a better option than a barbell for targeting the upper pecs.

With dumbbells, you can easily assume a neutral or semi-pronated grip, whereas a barbell locks your hands in a fully pronated position, and, Hanson says, “encourages the elbows to flare out.”

How to Do the Dumbbell Incline Press with Semi-Pronated Grip

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench to a 30–45-degree angle, depending on your sternum angle. Grasp a pair of dumbbells and lie back on the bench, making sure your entire back is in contact with it—do not arch your back so that it causes your lower back to rise off the pad.

Step 2. Start with the dumbbells just outside your shoulders, elbows bent, and your forearms/wrists in a semi-pronated (or neutral) position. 

Step 3. Keeping your elbows pointing at about 45 degrees, press the dumbbells straight up until your arms are just shy of full lockout. Lower the dumbbells back down under control, until they’re just above and outside your shoulders.

Step 4. As you press and lower the dumbbells, establish a natural, comfortable wrist position—something between neutral and semi-pronated. The dumbbells give you the freedom to adjust mid-set.

Sets/Reps: 3–4 sets of 6–8 or 10-12 reps, training close to failure.

4. Swiss-Bar Incline Press

This exercise, also recommended by Hanson, is more or less the barbell version of the incline dumbbell press described above. A Swiss bar (aka “football bar”) is a specialized barbell with handles that offer neutral and sometimes semi-pronated grips. While not typically available at big box fitness clubs, if you can find a hardcore powerlifting or bodybuilding gym, or athlete training facility that has one of these bars, it’s worth trying out.

With the Swiss bar incline press, you get the upper-pec biases of the angled bench and neutral grip with the added bonus of greater overload placed on the muscles because you’re using a barbell (which is more stable than pressing a pair of dumbbells).

If your sternum is fairly flat, go with a 30-degree angle. If the top of the sternum is behind the lower ribs (an inverted angle), go with 45 degrees.

How to Do the Swiss-Bar Incline Press

Step 1. Rack a Swiss bar (or football bar) at an incline bench press station. Lie back on the bench and grasp the neutral or semi-pronated grips (palms facing each other or a little angled) with hands just outside shoulder-width.

Step 3. Unrack the bar, and lower it under control to your upper chest with your elbows tucked in close to your sides, about 45 degrees from your torso.

Step 4. When the bar touches your upper chest, explosively press it straight up to full arm extension, keeping your elbows tucked in as you press.

Sets/Reps: 3–4 sets of 6–8 or 10–12 reps, training close to failure.

5. Incline Dumbbell Flye

The key to targeting the upper chest with a dumbbell flye is the same as with the low-to-high cable flye: establish an arm path that moves in the same direction as the diagonal fibers of the clavicular pecs. Doing a flye with the torso at an inclined position should automatically help you.

If you were doing a flye on a flat bench, the upper arms would more or less be moving in the same direction as the sternal fibers—straight horizontal, not diagonal. (The exception here would be someone with a sternum angle where the clavicles are significantly further forward than the lower ribs, which would put you at a natural incline even on a flat bench.)

An incline bench, on the other hand, puts you at such an angle that the same flye motion has your upper arms moving diagonally upward in relation to your torso—same as the clavicular fibers. Will there still be some sternal fibers activated? Of course. But as mentioned earlier, these fibers reach into the upper chest area, so no harm there.

As for what bench angle to use, again, assess your sternum angle. If your sternum is fairly flat, go with a 30-degree angle. If the top of the sternum is behind the lower ribs, use 45 degrees. As mentioned above, a free-weight flye isn’t quite as effective as one done on a machine or with cables/bands, because the resistance is reduced at the top, but it’s a solid option for those who don’t have access to fancy equipment.

How to Do the Incline Dumbbell Flye

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench to a 30–45-degree angle, depending on your sternum shape. Grasp a relatively light pair of dumbbells, and lie back on the bench.

Step 2. Start with your arms fully extended, perpendicular with the floor, and the dumbbells directly above your upper chest, palms facing each other.

Step 3. With a slight bend in the elbows, lower the dumbbells by opening your arms. Lower the weights slowly with control until you feel a stretch in your pecs.

Step 4. Contract your pecs to lift the dumbbells back up and together, maintaining the slight elbow bend throughout. “Really focus on the stretch at the bottom of the rep, and squeeze the pecs at the top,” says Shiffler.

Exercise Variation: The incline flye can also be done with cables, placing an incline bench in the middle of a cable crossover station and using handles at the lowest pulley settings.

Sets/Reps: 3–4 sets of 8–12 or 12–15 reps, training close to failure.

Upper-Chest Exercise Alternative

If you’re training at home without the luxury of any equipment, you can resort to the classic pushup done with your feet resting on an elevated surface. “This is pretty similar to an incline press in the way it targets the upper chest,” says Shiffler, “with the added benefit of targeting some stabilizer/core muscles while you’re at it.”

Pushup with Feet Elevated

As with other variations, adjust the height of your feet based on your sternum angle—body at around 30 degrees to the floor if you have a flat sternum, and feet up a little higher if your sternum is angled.

How to Do the Pushup with Feet Elevated

Step 1. Place your hands around shoulder-width on the floor, and raise your feet behind you on a bench, box, or other stable surface. Tuck your tailbone slightly so that your pelvis is neutral, and brace your core. Your body should form a long, straight line.

Step 2. Lower your body, tucking your elbows about 45 degrees from your sides, until you feel a stretch in your pecs. Press yourself back up, allowing your shoulder blades to spread at the top. This action is another advantage of the pushup—pressing exercises done on a bench restrict your scapular movement, while the pushup allows these muscles to work naturally to stabilize your shoulders.

Tips for Building More Muscle

Here are a few more tips, courtesy of Hanson, for getting the greatest possible upper-chest growth.

Sets and Reps

“You want to train the pecs with both low and high reps—not necessarily in the same workout, but through periodization,” says Hanson. That is, plan changes in your training over time to keep the muscles responding. “A lot of people perform too wide a range of reps in the same workout, which can confuse the body in terms of the appropriate adaptation.”

Hanson generally recommends doing no fewer than 4 reps per set on presses and no fewer than 6 reps per set on flye movements, unless you’re training for a specific strength goal. “You could spend one block of training doing presses in the 6–8 rep range and flyes in the 8–12 range,” he says. “Then switch to 10–12 and 12–15 reps, respectively, in the next block.”

Tempo

When it comes to the speed with which you perform your reps (which trainers call tempo), Hanson says the biggest key is making sure you control the resistance during your sets. Don’t bounce the weights up, or let them drop as you lower down on a rep.

“Presses can be performed with a wide variety of tempos,” says Hanson. “But you shouldn’t be going super slow or throwing the weight up explosively. For flyes, you’re using your whole arm as a lever, so controlling the eccentric [negative/lowering portion of the rep] is much more important for safety and stimulus.” 

Advanced Techniques

The more experienced you get, the more creative you can get with tempo. For pressing exercises, “adding a two-second pause or an extra quarter-rep at the bottom can be a great variation in stimulus,” says Hanson. “You’ll get more sore with those techniques, and they increase volume, so consider dropping a set or two when using a more advanced tempo, and then progressing back up.”

With cable flyes, Hanson recommends a one to two-second squeeze in the end position, when your hands are close together. “Because you fatigue in the shortest part of the range of motion first, an advanced technique is to use a pause in your early sets and decrease or remove it in the later sets,” he says. This way, you can keep up your reps and not be limited by the weakest part of the movement [as you get tired].”

Sample Upper-Chest Workouts

(See 01:28 in the “Best Upper-Chest Workout for Defined Pecs” video at the top of this article)

Here are two sample workouts you can do that prioritize the upper chest. You can use either routine or both of them in the same week (space them out by four or five days). There are only two upper-chest exercises in each workout, and that’s all you need. Finish out each workout with some work for the middle and/or lower pecs, shoulders, or triceps.

Sample Upper-Chest Workout A

1. Dumbbell Incline Press with Semi-Pronated Grip

Sets: 2 Reps: 6–8

(See 01:49 in the video.)

Perform as many warmup sets as you need until you reach a weight that’s heavy enough for your first work set. Do 6–8 reps to failure, or close to failure, and then reduce the load by 20% for your second set, and aim for the same rep range.

2. Low-to-High Cable or Band Flye

Sets: 2 Reps: 10–12

(See 03:10 in the video.)

Sample Upper-Chest Workout B

1. Neutral-Grip Incline Bench Press

Sets: 2 Reps: 5–7

(See 04:54 in the video.)

Perform as many warmup sets as you need until you reach a weight that’s heavy enough for your first work set. Do 5–7 reps to failure, or close to failure, and then reduce the load by 20% for your second set, and aim for the same rep range.

2. Pushup with Feet Elevated

Sets: 2 Reps: 8–12

(See 06:04 in the video.)

Want to work on lower-chest now? See our Lower-Chest Workouts for the Gym & Home.

The post The Best Upper-Chest Workout for Getting Defined Pecs appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Don’t roll your eyes. Pushups may not be as sexy as dumbbell and barbell bench-pressing for building up your pecs, but they work even more muscle throughout your body, and they’re a lot less risky for your long-term shoulder and elbow health.

It’s easy to wave off the pushup if you only know one way to do it—i.e., the way you learned in gym class (hands shoulder-width apart, down and up). If that’s the only kind of pushup you’ve done for decades, of course you’re bored. But we can show you several much harder and more fun pushup variations that will give you a newfound respect for the world’s oldest chest exercise. They’re in the first at-home chest workout we’ll offer you below.

For those who have weights, even if it’s a single pair of rusty dumbbells you recently discovered by tripping over them in the attic, we’ll provide another chest routine, so you can keep up your presses and flys for a more isolated chest blast.

Benefits of Working Out Your Chest

Let’s start with the obvious: big pecs are cool. If you’re a guy, they make you look like you can handle business, and that’s not bro science talking. A 2017 study had 160 women look at pictures of men’s bodies, and all of them rated the ones with bigger pecs and arms to be the most physically attractive. While other research has indicated that there’s a middle ground of muscularity that makes a man sexy—not scrawny, and not bodybuilder-jacked either—this trial found that the bigger the guy was, the better he did with the ladies. Scientists theorize that the reason why lies in evolution: stronger, more capable-looking men had a better chance of protecting and providing for women in pre-civilized, primal times, and women are still hard-wired to appreciate that aesthetic today.

The main chest muscle is the pectoralis major, and it serves four functions. The pec helps raise your arm in front of your body, lower it back down to your side, move the arm across the front of your body, and rotate the arm in toward the midline of your body. Strengthening the pecs, therefore, helps you perform numerous athletic functions, from pushing and throwing to climbing and punching. Bench press variations, as well as pushups, are used in virtually all football strength and conditioning programs, as they can help a lineman shove an opposing player back down the field. In baseball, the pecs help players both throw and hit the ball far and accurately. For swimmers, the chest muscles are used constantly with movements like the breaststroke and backstroke.

How Can I Build My Chest Muscles Without Weights?

If you don’t have workout equipment, but you want to build up your chest, you’re going to have to get friendly with the pushup (and its many variants). Look at how it’s performed and you can see that it’s essentially the same movement as a bench press, only you’re not supported by a bench.

A bench press allows you to work your pec muscles with greater isolation, and with heavier loads. This is helpful for building muscle, but it has its drawbacks too. For one thing, the stronger you get on presses, the more weight you have to use, and the more strain you’ll place on your shoulder joints. Pushups can’t be loaded as easily as presses, but you can add weight via weight vests, or simply performing the movement in more challenging or unstable positions. Pushups allow your shoulder blades to move naturally—which they can’t do pinned against the bench on a bench press—and that provides extra stability, so even when you’re training pushups heavy, they’re not as risky as pressing. Most heavy bench pressers complain of shoulder pain at one time or another, but when have you ever heard of someone hurting him/herself doing a pushup?

The pushup is what’s known as a closed-chain exercise. Your hands are rooted into the floor, not pressing up into the air. That requires more overall muscle throughout your body to engage to provide stability during the movement. A bench press mainly targets your pecs, delts, and triceps, but a pushup will work all that and your core, upper back, and legs to boot. It will also work them in a way that’s more akin to how you move in daily life and in sports. You rarely, if ever, have to push something heavy off your chest from a supine position on the ground (but if you anticipate getting trapped under a log one day, bench pressing is sure to prepare you for it).

Ultimately, the research shows that the muscle-building potential of an exercise comes down more to effort than it does load. Doing pushups can be as effective for growing the chest as benching heavy, provided you take your sets to failure (or near it). A 2016 study from McMaster University in Ontario had subjects either train with light weights or heavy weights, and both groups made equal muscle gains after 12 weeks. The light-weight group used as little as 30% of their max weight—which may be analogous to the effect of doing pushups with your bodyweight vs. a heavy bench press—and still made progress. Meanwhile, a 2018 study found that subjects doing bodyweight exercises had comparable improvements in body composition to those who did resistance-training exercises with weights.

The bottom line is that your muscles don’t know whether you’re lifting a barbell, dumbbell, or your own body. Observe all the muscle-building rules by training them hard, frequently, progressively, from a variety of angles, and with different training methods, and they’ll respond.

Chest Exercise Alternatives If You’re Injured

Chest training is often hampered by shoulder pain. The simplest way to get around it and continue working your pecs is to reduce the range of motion on your exercises by a few degrees.

Whether you’re lifting weights or doing pushup variations, the shoulder receives a greater stretch the further you bring your arm away from or behind your body. It’s also least stable when your arm is out 90 degrees from your side. So lowering all the way on presses, flys, or pushups is likely to aggravate any shoulder injuries you have. By stopping the range of motion an inch or so above your chest, you avoid any further strain to the shoulder joints.

The floor press is a great example. In this exercise, you lie on the floor as opposed to a bench, and lower the bar or dumbbells until your triceps touch down. While this limits the range of motion, and the degree to which you can activate the muscle fibers in your pecs, it can reduce the strain on your shoulders. It may also be helpful from a strength perspective. If when you press you find that you have trouble locking your elbows out, the floor press can cure the problem, as the upward movement begins right at the sticking point. When your shoulders feel better, and you return to full-range pressing, you may find that you’re stronger than ever. You can use the same tactic for flys, lowering the dumbbells until your upper arms are stopped by the floor.

Another strategy for training around injury is to do exercises that maximize muscle tension with the lightest possible weight. You’re obviously less likely to get injured using lighter weights than heavier ones, and they place less load on achy joints. An example of this would be the squeeze press, in which you drive two dumbbells against one another while you perform a normal chest press. It’s as if you’re bear-hugging the weight while you press it. The range of motion is short, and you won’t be able to handle anywhere near the weight you could on normal dumbbell presses, but the tension you create in your pecs will exhaust them thoroughly.

Interestingly, it’s not always the shoulders that you need to save when you’re working your chest. Ask any heavy bench presser how his/her lower back feels, and you may hear them groan. That’s because pressing can be stressful to the back, especially if you arch your spine in an effort to shorten the range of motion. Shoving your back into hyperextension, especially under load, can irritate the low back over time.

A safer way to press is with the hips in the air, in a bridge position. This keeps the spine straight and aligned, while the glutes and core work to stabilize your body. Not only does it take pressure off the back, it gets more muscles involved with the movement, adding to its functionality.

The workouts that follow make use of the floor press, floor fly, squeeze press, and bridge press.

How To Stretch Your Chest Before Working Out

Prepare your joints, muscles, and nervous system for your chest workout with these Durability drills.

Chest Exercises and Workouts You Can Do At Home With and Without Weights

There are two workouts that follow, both designed and demonstrated by Onnit Gym manager Larry Maloney (follow him on Instagram, @luminary_larry). One requires only your bodyweight, and the other can be done with virtually any pair of dumbbells.

Bodyweight Chest Workout Circuit

This routine combines chest work with core training in a circuit, so that your abs can be as sharp as your chest by summer. You’ll alternate direct chest exercises via pushup variations with movements that force you to brace your core to keep good body alignment—no easy feat when you’re moving your limbs rapidly. Note that there’s really no rest for the chest until the end of the circuit, so even when you’re working your abs, your pecs will be contracting to stabilize your arms and shoulders. (Come to think of it, there’s no rest for your core either, because, well, pushups. As we explained above.) We promise your pecs will be as pumped and sore as if you’d done a heavy pressing workout, but with a routine that takes less than 15 minutes to complete.

Directions: Perform the exercises as a circuit, completing one set of each in sequence without resting in between (or, if absolutely necessary, rest as little as possible). Afterward, rest 2 minutes, and repeat the circuit for 4 total rounds. Except where otherwise noted, do 10 reps for each exercise the first round. Reduce the reps by 2 each round, so you’ll do 8 reps the second round, 6 reps the third, and 4 reps the fourth.

1 Scorpion Pushup

Step 1. Get into pushup position with your hands shoulder-width apart. Tuck your pelvis slightly so that it’s perpendicular to the floor, and brace your core. Your body should form a straight line from your head to your feet.

Step 2. Lower your body until your chest is about an inch above the floor. Press your body back up, and then raise one leg off the floor. Continue to press into the floor and drive your hips back until your arms are straight overhead. Return your leg to the floor, perform another pushup, and repeat on the opposite leg. Each pushup counts as one rep.

2 Cross-Body Mountain Climber

Reps: Do 20 the first round, then 18, 16, 14

Step 1. Get into pushup position, and raise one knee toward your chest. As it’s coming up, twist your hips to bring it toward your opposite elbow. Try to touch the elbow.

Step 2. Twist back, and repeat on the opposite side. Each knee touch counts as one rep.

3 Alligator Pushup

Step 1. Get into pushup position, and lower your body toward the floor as you raise one leg out to the side with your knee bent.

Step 2. Press back up and return the leg to the floor. Repeat the pushup, and raise the opposite leg. Each leg raise is one rep.

4 Lateral Climber

Reps: Do 20 the first round, then 18, 16, 14

Step 1. Get into pushup position with one knee bent 90 degrees and under your chest. Extend the other leg straight out to your side.

Step 2. Switch your legs, bringing your right knee under your chest. Continue switching back and forth quickly, staying light on your feet. Avoid twisting your shoulders and hips by keeping your core tight. Each switch is one rep.

5 Beast Pushup

Step 1. Get into pushup position and push your hips back over your heels, extending your arms overhead (the beast position). Do not let your knees touch the floor.

Step 2. Extend your legs and pull with your arms to come back to the pushup position, and then perform a standard pushup. Press back up as you go straight back into the beast position. Each pushup is one rep.

Dumbbell Chest Workout with Light Weights

Here, we highlight one of our favorite exercises—the hip bridge. Doesn’t sound like a chest move, does it? Well, it can be if you want it to. Pressing and flying with your hips in the air trains the glutes and core along with your chest, and makes for a more functional pec workout overall. Regular presses and flys can better isolate the pecs, and that’s alright, but most of the times you use your chest muscles in life, you have to work them along with your hips and core (pushing something or someone, throwing, punching, etc.). The exercises that follow train movements that are more analogous to what you’ll do on the field, court, or mat, and they’ll still give you a chest that stretches your T-shirts.

As a bonus, working your chest in the bridge position helps relieve stress from the lower back, which is often bothered by conventional pressing exercises done with a big arch in the spine. Bridge presses and flys keep the spine neutral.

Directions: Perform the exercise pairs (marked A and B) as supersets, so you’ll do one set of A and then immediately go on to do one set of B. Rest 2–3 minutes, and then repeat the pair until all sets are completed for each exercise. If you only have access to very light weights, perform 12–15 reps for each exercise. If you have heavier weights, do 10–12 reps.

On the last set of each B exercise (right before you finish the pair), do as many reps as possible.

1A Bridge Floor Press 

Step 1. Lie on your back on the floor with a dumbbell in each hand. Place your feet near your butt, and tuck your pelvis under so it’s perpendicular to the floor. Take a deep breath into your belly, brace your core, and squeeze your glutes as you drive through your heels to raise your hips off the floor. Your body should form a straight line from your knees to your shoulders. Hold the weights over your chest.

Step 2. Maintaining the position by keeping your glutes and core tight, lower your arms while tucking your elbows 45 degrees to your sides. Continue until your triceps touch the floor. From there, press the weights straight up.

1B Renegade Row with Pushup

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand and get into pushup position on the floor with your hands shoulder-widith apart. Your body should form a straight line from your head to your feet, and your pelvis should be tucked slightly so that it’s perpendicular to the floor. Brace your core.

Step 2. Perform a pushup, and at the top, shift your weight to your left side so that your right arm feels light. Row the weight to your hip, avoiding any twisting in your hips or shoulders. Return your hand to the floor, perform another pushup, and repeat the row on the opposite side. Each pushup counts as one rep.

2A Bridge Fly

Step 1. Get into the bridge position you used in the bridge floor press, and hold the dumbbells over your chest.

Step 2. Lower your arms in an arcing motion (maintain a slight bend in your elbows) until your triceps touch the floor. Now bring your arms back over your chest in a hugging motion as you squeeze your pecs. 

2B Bridge Pullover

Step 1. Get into the bridge position and hold one dumbbell over your chest. Grip the sides of it tightly, contracting your pecs as if you were trying to crush the dumbbell between your hands.

Step 2. Keeping your arms straight, reach back over your head until the dumbbell touches the floor (but don’t rest it there). Pull the weight back over your chest.

3A Bridge Squeeze Press

Step 1. Get into the bridge position and hold two dumbbells together over your chest. Press them against each other so that you feel your pecs contract.

Step 2. Maintain that tension as you lower the weights to your chest, and then press them back up.

3B Triceps Skull Crusher

Step 1. Lie flat on the floor and hold the dumbbells over your chest.

Step 2. Bend your elbows, lowering the weights to the sides of your face, and then press them back up.

4A Bridge Underhand Fly

Step 1. Get into the bridge position with the dumbbells over your chest. Turn your palms to face your chin.

Step 2. Lower your arms outward as you did in the previous fly exercise, but keep them closer to your sides. When your triceps touch the floor, bring the weights back up in a hugging motion.

4B Bridge Floor Press with Underhand Grip

Step 1. From the bridge position with your palms facing your chin, lower the weights until your triceps touch the floor, arms 45 degrees from your torso.

Step 2. Press the weights back up.

The post A Pro’s Guide To At-Home Chest Exercises and Workouts appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Rumor has it, however, that such development is genetic—you have the potential for it or you don’t. Some trainers say that an impressive inner chest is a product of steroid use, and that “natty” lifters just can’t isolate their pecs well enough to etch that kind of definition into their muscles.

But the truth is that—with dedicated, consistent effort—anyone CAN carve out a deeper inner-pec groove. Getting there primarily comes down to mastering three inner pec-focused exercises, and adding one chest workout per week to your routine.

Why Work Out Your Inner Chest?

It’s easy to joke about “guy cleavage,” but most men can’t deny that they would like to have the lines and edges you see on the inner pecs of bodybuilders and physique competitors. Called striations, they make the chest look more imposing and complete, sending the message that you’re a serious lifter who’s put his/her time in at the gym—you’re not just another “bro” or poseur.

But trying to target a specific portion of any muscle is a touchy subject in the strength and conditioning community. “Once a muscle fiber is contracted, there’s an all-or-nothing phenomenon,” says John Rusin, D.P.T., C.S.C.S., creator of Functional Hypertrophy Training. “If you recruit some portion of the pec, you’re going to recruit it all.” In the case of the chest, the same nerves that control the inner part of the pecs activate all the other regions—the upper, lower, and outer pecs. “So, the science will tell you, no, you can’t truly isolate one part of a muscle. But there are ways to target the inner pec fibers to help build that area.”

Rusin says that by focusing your mind on contracting a specific area of muscle (what bodybuilders call the mind-muscle connection, see below), and using exercises that stress contractions in the places you want to target, it is possible to emphasize very specific portions of that muscle for potentially greater development.

Anatomy of the Inner Chest

When it comes to working the inner chest, we’re technically only talking about one pair of muscles: the pectoralis majors. These are the big chest muscles that attach to the sternum. There’s a second pec muscle on each side—the pectoralis minor—but it’s smaller, and doesn’t reach the sternum, so it doesn’t need to be targeted when trying to bring up the inner chest.

The space between where the two pec majors attach at the sternum forms a vertical column. For a well-defined inner chest, these attachment points need to be as built-up as possible, so that each individual pec major is clearly separated from the other one and looks like it’s been carved out of granite. (You’ll have to be pretty lean as well for striations to show.)

There are four anatomical motions that the pec major performs:

• Flexion of the humerus (raising the arm in front of your body). This is accomplished by the clavicular head of the pec muscle—the pec fibers that attach to the collarbone.

• Extension of the humerus (lowering the arm down to your side). This is done by the sternocostal head—the fibers that attach to the sternum.

• Horizontal adduction of the humerus (moving the arm across the front of the body). Both the clavicular and steroncostal heads work together to move the arms in a hugging motion.

• Internal rotation of the humerus (rotating the arm in toward the midline of the body). Again, both muscle heads work together here.

In the gym, you can train all of these movements by using two types of exercises: presses and flyes. Pressing exercises, typically done with a barbell or dumbbells, are considered primary movements for the chest, because they give you the most bang for your training buck. As compound exercises, presses let you lift a lot of weight and activate a lot of muscle. But it’s the lifts that emphasize horizontal adduction (i.e. flye variations) that Rusin says are the most effective for targeting the inner pecs. “If you want to hit those inner fibers, you can’t just be doing bench press, dumbbell bench press, and standard pushups,” he says. “Horizontal adduction is the key to hitting the inner pecs, and it’s one action that most people never truly train optimally.”

Creating A Mind-Muscle Connection for Better Inner-Chest Gains

Bodybuilders speak of the mind-muscle connection as mentally zeroing in on the muscles you’re training to improve their activation. As former pro bodybuilder Ben Pakulski (mi40nation.com) explains in The Men’s Health Encyclopedia of Muscle, written by Onnit Editor-in-Chief Sean Hyson, C.S.C.S., to use the mind-muscle connection properly, you have to picture the two ends of the muscle coming together with each contraction.

In the case of the pecs, the muscles originate at the collarbone and sternum and insert on the humeral bones. When you do a press or flye movement, the insertion points pull closer to the origins. “When I train,” says Pakulski, “I’ll picture what my insertion looks like, and how I’ll bring that closer to the origin.” So, to get the most out of your inner-chest training, visualize the pec muscles’ connection at the top of your arms pulling toward the parts of the muscle that attach at your sternum. Imagine the inner portion of the pec fibers tensing and jumping out from your skin. It may sound woo-woo, but the mind undoubtedly has an effect on the body.

In 2016, a study in the European Journal of Applied Physiology had subjects use the mind-muscle connection during bench-press workouts. When the lifters visualized their muscles working, there was greater activation in the pecs and triceps. Also in 2016, a review in Strength and Conditioning Journal concluded that use of the mind-muscle connection could increase the effect of all factors that contribute to muscle growth, including muscular tension and overall muscle damage.

What Are the Best Inner-Chest Exercises?

Below are Rusin’s three favorite exercises for targeting the inner pecs.

1) Hybrid Flye-Press Combo

As the name implies, this exercise is a cross between a flye motion and a press. You maintain a neutral grip (palms facing each other) and perform an arcing motion with the arms, as in a flye, but you also bend your elbows quite a bit in the down position, like you do in a press.

“The hybrid flye-press combo really targets horizontal adduction at the top of the movement,” says Rusin. “This exercise goes against the belief that you have to do these really long moment-arm flyes,” that is, flyes where your elbows are almost fully extended. While some lifters think it helps them get a better stretch on the pecs in the bottom of the movement, that technique is dangerous for the elbows, and Rusin says it’s not necessary.

You can perform this hybrid move with dumbbells or cables, but Rusin prefers you use cables, because of the constant tension they provide. “With dumbbells, when the arms are in a vertical position, we lose our line of pull,” he says. That is, when your elbow and shoulder joints are stacked at the top of the movement, there’s no tension on the pecs—the weight is just resting on the joints. But when you use cables, the pulley system makes the weight continue to resist your muscles at every point in the range of motion, “and that keeps tension on the tissues through that portion of the movement.”

Note: The hybrid flye-press combo is NOT a standing cable crossover. Rusin wants it performed lying on either a flat bench or with a slight incline (the incline will emphasize those clavicular head fibers more, and therefore give you a better inner, upper-chest hit). “With standing flyes, people tend to compensate too much,” he says. “They increase upper back involvement, and they use the hips, when they should be concentrating on contracting the pecs to get the most out of them.”

How To Do the Hybrid Flye-Press Combo

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench at a slight incline (15–30 degrees), equidistant between two cable columns. Attach single-grip/stirrup handles to the pulleys at the lowest positions.

Step 2. Grasp both handles and lie back on the bench. Your elbows should be bent about 90 degrees. The pulleys should be in line with your shoulders so that the cables run more or less perpendicular to the weight stacks; if this isn’t the case, scoot the bench either forward or backward. If you like, rest your feet on the bench, which will add an element of instability to the exercise.

Step 3. Press the handles up while drawing your hands together so that they nearly touch at the top and your arms are fully extended over your upper chest. Squeeze the contraction hard, visualizing your inner pecs doing the work, and then slowly lower your arms to the start position.

2) Hammer Squeeze Press

Like the flye-press combo exercise, this move combines a pressing movement with an added focus on horizontal adduction, courtesy of squeezing a light medicine ball between your hands.

“This exercise is fricking amazing,” says Rusin. “It will instantaneously activate that portion of the pecs we’re talking about. It’s something that will get you sore in the right kind of way, especially in that inner-pec area. This will blow you up.”

How To Do the Hammer Squeeze Press

Step 1. Set a bench to a 15 to 45-degree incline and hold a pair of moderate-weight dumbbells with a light medicine ball secured between them. The purpose of the medicine ball is simply to have something to squeeze, not to provide additional resistance, so find the lightest ball possible—preferably a leather or Kevlar one that will stay in place and not slip out. (Have a partner place the ball between your hands and squeeze your hands together, or bear hug the ball with the dumbbells and then get into position.)

Step 2. Set up on the bench with your arms extended straight upward and palms facing each other. Press in on the ball by contracting the inner pecs and hold it isometrically. Think about your inner-pec fibers firing hard throughout the whole exercise.

Step 3. Maintaining the squeeze, bend your elbows to lower the dumbbells and ball down to your chest.

Step 4. When the ball touches your upper chest, press back up under control to the arms-extended position, squeezing the ball hard throughout.

3) Diamond Pushup

All pushups are underrated chest-builders. A simple way to target the inner pecs with a pushup is to narrow your hand spacing into what’s commonly known as the “diamond” position: the tips of your index fingers and thumbs touch each other, or close to it, forming a diamond shape between your hands. This will also activate more triceps muscle as well.

“The hardest muscle to build is the one you can’t feel,” says Rusin. “That’s why I like using the diamond pushup. You can feel that inner-pec area working, so you’re more likely to be able to build that area.”

How To Do the Diamond Pushup

Step 1. Assume a standard pushup position with your hands and toes on the floor and your body in a rigid, straight line from heels to head.

Step 2. Move your hands together so that the ends of your index fingers and thumbs are nearly touching each other (the exact distance between them should be whatever feels comfortable to you and won’t aggravate your elbows). The space between your hands will resemble a diamond shape.

Step 3. Bend your elbows to slowly lower yourself toward the floor. When your chest touches your hands, press back up explosively to full elbow extension. As you press up, try to draw your hands even closer together but without actually moving them—just tense the muscles and focus your mind on contracting the inside of your chest.

How Can I Stretch My Pecs?

Rusin doesn’t recommend stretching the pecs before or after workouts. “The shoulder is the most mobile joint in the body,” he says, “so rarely do we need more mobility there.”

He does, however, recommend one stretching technique during a chest workout to increase overall muscle activation, including the inner-pec fibers. He calls it “loaded stretching,” and it’s best utilized on the hybrid flye-press combo exercise.

Here’s how to do it: On your last set of flye-presses, after reaching muscle failure, lower your last rep down as slowly as possible. When you reach the bottom of the range of motion, hold that position for as long as you can (aim for 30 seconds). “This will light up every aspect of your pecs,” says Rusin.

Stretching a muscle under load creates even more tension in it, stimulating a growth response. Loaded stretching is another concept that is explained in The Men’s Health Encyclopedia of Muscle.

Beginner Inner-Chest Workout

The following workout, designed by Rusin, can be done once a week in place of your existing chest workout. You can also train other muscles (i.e. triceps, back, or shoulders) after your chest work in the same session. For the best gains in chest size, you should work your pecs one other day in your training week, either with the same exercises or other chest moves of your choice.

“You’re not training for power and strength with the inner pecs,” says Rusin. “This workout is about hypertrophy [muscle gain], so we’re going to implement higher reps on the inner-chest exercises and more total volume to deliver a good pump. You’ll definitely feel the inner chest working.”

1. Hammer Squeeze Press

Sets: 3  Reps: 12–15

See directions above.

2. Barbell Bench Press

Sets: 3  Reps: 3–8

Step 1. Set up in a power rack if you’re training alone, so you can set the spotter bars to just below your chest to catch the barbell if you can’t press it up. Draw your shoulder blades down and together to arch your back. Place your hands about shoulder-width apart on the bar.

Step 2. Pull the bar out of the rack without losing your arch and shoulder position. Lower the bar to your chest, right at the nipple line, tucking your elbows 45-degrees on the descent.

Step 3. Press the bar to lockout.

3. Cable Hybrid Flye-Press Combo

Sets: 3  Reps: 10–15

See directions above.

4. Diamond Pushup

Sets: 2  Reps: To failure

See directions above.

Advanced Inner-Chest Workout

Also designed by Rusin, this chest routine can be done once per week. The extra volume (and a more advanced diamond pushup variation) makes it slightly more challenging than the beginner’s routine above, but it’s still based on the same exercises that offer the best inner-pec hit.

1. Hammer Squeeze Press

Sets: 4  Reps: 12–15

2. Barbell Bench Press

Sets: 4  Reps: 3–8

Step 1. Set up in a power rack if you’re training alone, so you can set the spotter bars to just below your chest to catch the barbell if you can’t press it up. Draw your shoulder blades down and together to arch your back. Place your hands about shoulder-width apart on the bar.

Step 2. Pull the bar out of the rack without losing your arch and shoulder position. Lower the bar to your chest, right at the nipple line, tucking your elbows 45-degrees on the descent.

Step 3. Press the bar to lockout.

3. Cable Hybrid Fly-Press Combo

Sets: 3  Reps: 10–15

4. Feet-Elevated Diamond Push-Up

Sets: 3  Reps: To failure

Perform the diamond pushup as described above, but rest your fee on a bench or other elevated surface so that your torso is angled down toward the floor.

The post The Best Inner-Chest Workouts for Getting Sculpted appeared first on Onnit Academy.

The Best Chest and Triceps Workouts for Building Muscle

But if you’re following an old-school bodybuilding split rife with supersets for these two muscle groups, well, you’re doing it wrong. You won’t just hinder your progress, you’ll open yourself up to injury. And, as you may have suspected, it’s hard to get big with your arms in a sling. With a properly structured chest and triceps workout, however, you can reap big benefits in strength and size. Here’s how to do it right.

Why Work Out Chest and Triceps Together?

The triceps work hard during all press variations, so it makes perfect sense from an efficiency standpoint to hit them in the same workout, maximize the pump, and keep your triceps progressing at the same rate as your pecs.

However, John Rusin, D.P.T., C.S.C.S. (creator of the Functional Power Training system), says you can’t pair these two muscle groups haphazardly. Specifically, lifters must be careful about using supersets—working two exercises back to back without rest—because fatiguing your triceps too early in the workout will only limit your pressing power.

“The golden rule of supersets is that they should make both movements better,” says Rusin, “not work to the detriment of both moves.” The problem is that a lot of guys will superset a lift like the dumbbell bench press with a triceps pressdown, which fatigues both the pecs and tri’s to the point where neither muscle group gets worked optimally. “In a pairing of five supersets like that,” says Rusin (which is typical in a bro split), “they’re shot after two. So they end up doing garbage volume”—sets that have no real training effect. “They have to use less weight, and their form goes bad.”

In short, if you’re going to train the chest and triceps together, the path to victory lies through straight sets of both chest and triceps exercises. That is, do all your chest work, and then your triceps exercises. Still, limited use of supersets—particularly late in the workout—does have a place for advanced lifters, which you’ll see in the workouts below.

Training the triceps ahead of chest is also out of the question.

“Every workout should be built around a KPI, or Key Performance Indicator,” Rusin says. “That’s true whether you’re training for the Olympics or general fitness.” In the case of a chest and triceps workout, the KPI would be a bench press or a pushup—a lift that you really need to get stronger on over time in order to see progress. Working triceps first would only limit your ability to do those lifts with your best effort and focus, and with maximum weight. (Side note here: you might be more concerned with getting bigger muscles than with the amount of load you can lift, but do remember that gaining muscle is based on progressive overload—you need to get stronger over time to drive muscle gains.) Choosing to start the workout with an exercise like heavy skull-crushers, for example, would not only be limiting to your chest training, but could also aggravate your shoulders and elbows.

Moreover, getting your pressing done first allows the triceps to ease into the workout, getting warmed up as an assistance muscle in your chest training and then ramping up to a finale where you hit the triceps with higher reps and leave the gym with a monster arm pump.

“From a sequencing standpoint, triceps training is very well tolerated late in a chest and triceps workout,” Rusin says. “The triceps have gotten maximal blood flow by that point,” and even though they’re a bit fatigued from locking out your elbows on pressing exercises, “you can use less weight to get the training effect.” According to Rusin, the main stimulus for growth in the triceps in a chest and tris session is the pump you get, not the mechanical stress of lifting heavy weights.

In short: By the time you’re done pressing, it won’t take much to push your triceps to the max, and that’s good news for your shoulders and elbows.

Chest and Triceps Anatomy

Here’s what’s under your skin in these two muscle areas.

Chest

– Pectoralis major. The largest muscle of the chest, pecs provide most of your pressing strength by drawing the arms forward and across your chest. The pec major has three portions that are sometimes thought of as being separate regions—the upper, middle, and lower pec—but they’re all one muscle. That said, certain exercises will stress one area over another to influence the pecs’ development.

– Pectoralis minor. Though it doesn’t have the visual impact of the pec major because it lies beneath the bigger pec muscle, it serves a stabilizing function and assists in scapular movement. It is best trained with dip variations.

– Serratus anterior. Located just below the pec major, these stabilizing muscles get their name from the fact that—on a lean, well-developed physique—they look like the edge of serrated knife.

Triceps

– Triceps brachii. As the name would imply, the triceps brachii is composed of three parts (but all are part of the same muscle): the long head, lateral head, and medial head. The long head and medial heads lie on the side of the arm that’s closest to the body, while the lateral head is on the outer side of the arm. All three heads work synergistically to extend the elbow and stabilize the shoulder joints, but the long head also helps to draw the upper arm down toward the body. As with chest, some exercises are better suited to work one head over the other, so you need variety in your triceps training.

The Best Chest and Triceps Exercises

Below are Rusin’s picks for the most effective movements for each muscle group (all of which he demonstrates in the workouts further down).

Best Chest Exercises

1. Pushup

“One thing that gets forgotten about, especially in old-school bodybuilding circles, is the pushup,” Rusin says. It may be unglamorous and old-fashioned, but Rusin says it’s “unbelievable for not only chest strength, but full-body functional strength.”

Unlike the barbell bench press, the pushup allows the shoulder blades to move freely, since they’re not pinned down by a bench. This adds a component of dynamic stability to the posterior (back) side of the body—something that can’t be done through pure isolation moves like flyes and cable crossovers, and helps build a more functional chest and upper back. Most guys treat pushups as a finisher, doing them for high reps at the end of a workout to burn out their chests, but Rusin prefers to make them a priority. You’ll get more out of the pushup, he says, if you load it with chains, sandbags, or a weight plate, and do sets of 5–15.

2. Dumbbell Bench Press

This go-to favorite for lifters of all stripes allows a full range of motion at the shoulders for a maximum stretch of the pecs. This is great for building muscle, but the fact that dumbbell pressing also allows natural rotation at the wrist is key for long-term growth and staving off injuries. Unlike pressing with a barbell, your joints can move through a path that’s right for them, rather than the one pre-determined by the bar your hands are fixed to. “They’re also great for making the mind-muscle connection,” says Rusin. That is, your ability to concentrate on the muscles you’re working to best activate them.

You can reap these benefits whether you’re pressing on a flat bench, at a slight decline of 10–20 degrees (tuck one or two plates under the foot of the bench), or at an incline of up to 45 degrees.

3. Barbell Bench Press

It’s a cliché, but Rusin says this time-honored measuring stick of upper-body strength should be a mainstay of any advanced lifter’s program, assuming you make a couple of tweaks (and can perform it without shoulder pain).

“The mistake that people make is that they bench with the same grip on the same bar on the same flat bench every time,” Rusin says. You need some variety with your barbell benching to keep your chest growing and avoid overuse injuries. Modest incline and decline angles work wonders to accentuate stress on the upper and lower sections of the pecs.

Change your grip every so often. “Most people will do well with a slightly narrow grip,” says Rusin. “Think of where your grip is strongest, and move it in an inch on each hand.” For most guys, this would be with your index fingers on the spot where the knurling (the jagged, criss-cross pattern on the bar) meets the smooth part of the bar.

Rusin says beginners should change up the way they bench every month. Advanced lifters can change it up as often as every week.

Best Triceps Exercises

1. Rope Pressdown

It’s the most popular triceps exercise, and also highly effective. However, too many people lean over the weight and rock into it as they’re extending their elbows. This uses the mass of the upper body to force the handle down and lift the weight up, which reduces activation of the triceps. This is why Rusin suggests doing pressdowns from a kneeling position. “There’s no hip involvement and no momentum,” he says. “Kneeling pressdowns isolate the triceps much more effectively.” Another tip: don’t just push down. “Drive your fists apart to get a little bit of shoulder extension,” says Rusin, “which targets the long head of the triceps.”

2. Overhead Triceps Extension

This move, done from a cable pulley set to head height, or with a band tethered to a power rack, places a maximum stretch on the long head of the triceps, which crosses both the shoulder and elbow, making it a key stabilizer for both joints.

3. Bench Dips

When done on a typical dip station with the body hanging between two bars and only supported by the arms, it’s natural to lean forward, placing most of the emphasis on the pecs and front deltoids. Dipping on a single bench is also a poor choice because of the stress placed on the shoulders. Instead, Rusin recommends setting up two flat benches parallel to each other—just far enough apart to fit your butt between them—and performing dips with a hand on each bench, feet on the floor, and your spine perfectly vertical (see the advanced workout below).

“Other dip variations can really piss off your shoulders,” Rusin says, “and it’s very hard to control spinal position between dip bars because there is no ground contact. But good things happen when the hands and feet are in constant contact.” Meaning: all the tension stays directly on the triceps. If you need external load to increase the difficulty, it’s easy enough to set a weight plate right on your lap.

How Many Chest and Triceps Exercises Should I Do?

It takes volume to grow, but total volume should be more of a function of frequency, or how many times you train in a week, than how many exercises, sets, and reps you can cram into a single training session.

“This is where bodybuilding splits fail,” says Rusin. “Because if you’re only hitting chest and tri’s once a week, I can almost guarantee you that you’re never going to optimally grow. Training once a week does little more than maintain.”

Training chest and triceps twice per week is a standard to which both beginners and advanced lifters should adhere. So if you train chest and triceps on a Monday, plan on hitting them again on Thursday or Friday. You can use the same exact routine, or employ some variables in grip, angle, and exercise selection each session.

Conversely, training chest and triceps more than twice per week—as some guys do to get ready for “beach season”—is just begging for a joint injury. You don’t need to do 20 different exercises for a muscle or hit it from every possible angle. Rather, says Rusin, “You need to get stronger at the KPI lift and you need to build in intelligent accessory volume.”

To that end, beginners should plan on doing four total chest and triceps exercises per session. Advanced lifters can aim for six to seven. Due to the triceps being active on pressing lifts (and the fact that they’re smaller muscle groups), you should generally do more chest work than triceps exercises.

How Many Sets and Reps Should I Do?

For just about every exercise of chest or triceps, Rusin likes 3–4 work sets (the real work you do, not warmup sets). But rep ranges fluctuate. You can go as low as 5 reps on heavy presses, and up to 15–30 reps for accessory work and isolation exercises—and possibly as high as 50 reps if you’re on your last set of the day.

As you approach your working sets on heavier lifts, Rusin prefers that ramp-up sets be in the same low-rep range you’ll use during the work set. He urges guys to resist the temptation to do more just because the weight is light. For instance, if you plan on using 90- or 100-pound dumbbells for work sets of 5 reps on the incline dumbbell bench press, you should warm up to it by doing a set using a pair of 30s for 5, and then a set with 65s for 5 (do two warm-up sets, bare minimum). The goal isn’t to engorge the muscle with blood before a heavy lift; it’s to train the movement pattern and prime your muscle fibers so that you can perform that pattern perfectly when exposed to a challenging weight. Strength coaches will typically refer to this as a “groove”—and you want to find the best one you can. Conversely, high-rep warmup sets will fatigue you and can reduce the amount of weight or reps you can handle on your main set of the day.

How To Stretch Your Chest and Pecs

Every workout should begin with a thorough mobility warmup that prepares your joints, tissues, and nervous system for the kind of training you’re about to do. Onnit Durability Coach Cristian Plascencia (@cristian_thedurableathlete) offers the following movements for prepping the chest and triceps.

How To Stretch Your Triceps

Beginner Chest and Triceps Workout Routine

Rusin likes to begin any chest session with an exercise that warms up the shoulders and upper back. The face pull will help set your shoulders for strong, safe pressing, so don’t skip it. After that, you’ll train the chest with low and high reps to recruit the widest range of muscle fibers, and finish off with a grueling triceps hit.

1. High-Angle Face Pull

Sets: 4  Reps: 15  Rest: 60 sec.

Step 1. Set a cable pulley to head height or tether a resistance band to a power rack at the same height. If using a cable, attach the rope handle to the pulley.

Step 2. Stand straight and, holding the rope attachment or band with both hands, pull toward your face. Squeeze for a second in the fully contracted position, and then return to the starting position.

2. Dumbbell Bench Press

Sets: 3  Reps: 5–8  Rest: 60 sec.

Step 1. Lie on a flat bench holding a pair of dumbbells at your shoulders. Your palms can face toward your feet, or in toward your sides, if that feels better for your shoulders.

Step 2. Press up to a full extension of your elbows, squeezing your pecs as you lift. Make sure that, when you lower the weight to the bottom position, you feel a stretch on your pecs at the bottom.

3. Loaded Pushup

Sets: 3–4  Reps: 10–15  Rest: 30–45 sec.

Step 1. Get into pushup position with your hands shoulder-width apart and legs extended straight behind you at hip-width. Tuck your pelvis slightly so it’s perpendicular to the floor and brace your glutes and abs. Have a partner place a weight plate, chain, or sandbag on your back for added resistance.

Step 2. Lower your body toward the floor, tucking your elbows close to your sides as you descend.

Step 3. When your chest is an inch above the floor, press back up, spreading your shoulder blades apart at the top.

4. Kneeling Rope Pressdown

Sets: 3–4  Reps: 15–30  Rest: 20–30 sec.

Step 1. Attach a rope handle to the pulley of a cable station. Grasp the ends of the rope and kneel on the floor facing the station.

Step 2. Keeping your elbows close to your sides, extend your elbows and drive your fists apart at the bottom of the rep as you squeeze your triceps hard. Hold for a moment, and then lower the weight. Allow your elbows to drift forward a bit at the top of the movement to put a stretch on your triceps.

Advanced Chest and Triceps Workout Routine

More experienced lifters need to warm up even more thoroughly than beginners, so Rusin prescribes a three-exercise shoulder blast first thing in the session to prep your pressing muscles. Then it’s on to some heavy benching and triceps supersets to flood the back-arms with blood.

1. Rusin Banded Shoulder Tri-set

Sets: 3  Reps: 10, 10, 10  Rest: 30–45 sec. (after the third exercise)

A tri-set is a series of three exercises. Do one set of 10 reps for each in sequence before resting.

A) Band-Over-And-Back

Step 1. Hold the ends of a resistance band in each hand. Move your hands away from each other so there is no slack in the band.

Step 2. Keeping your elbows extended, lift your arms overhead and behind your body so that the band touches your lower back. Then bring the band back in front of you. That’s one rep.

B) Face Pull

See the beginner’s workout above.

C) Band Pull-Apart

Step 1. Hold a resistance band straight out in front of you with your hands shoulder-width apart.

Step 2. Keeping your elbows straight, stretch the band by moving your fists out 90 degrees to the sides of your body; the band should stretch across your chest. 

2. Incline Barbell Bench Press

Sets: 3–4  Reps: 5  Rest: 60–75 sec.

Step 1. Set an adjustable bench to a 30- to 45-degree angle and lie back on it. (Set up in a power rack if you’re training alone, so you can set the spotter bars to just below your chest to catch the barbell if you can’t press it up.) Place your hands about shoulder-width apart on the bar.

Step 2. Lower the bar to the upper half of your chest, tucking your elbows 45-degrees on the descent.

Step 3. Press the bar to lockout.

3. Decline Dumbbell Bench Press

Sets: 3–4  Reps: 12–15  Rest: 45–60 sec.

Step 1. Create a slight decline by resting the foot of the bench on one or two weight plates. Lie back on the bench holding dumbbells at your shoulders.

Step 2. Press the weights to full extension of your elbows. Lower them back down until you feel a stretch in your pecs. Though the video above doesn’t depict it, Rusin suggests putting your feet on the bench to avoid an extreme arch in your spine. This can be dangerous if you’re a taller individual and place your feet on the floor.

4. Superset

Perform a set of the overhead triceps extension and then the loaded pushup before resting 45 seconds. Repeat for four total supersets.

A) Overhead Triceps Extension

Reps: 15–20  Rest: 0 sec.

Step 1. Attach a rope handle to a cable pulley set to head height, or use a resistance band set to the same height. Hold the rope or band with both hands and face away from the anchor point.  Step one foot forward and bend your hips slightly, angling your torso forward and allowing your arms to raise over your head with your elbows pointing forward.

Step 2. Without moving your upper arms, extend your elbows to full lockout. Lower the weight, getting a stretch on your triceps in the bottom position.

B) Loaded Pushup

Reps: 15­–20  Rest: 45 sec.

See the beginner’s workout above.

5. Dip Between Benches

Sets: 3–4  Reps: 15–20  Rest: 45 sec.

Step 1. Set two flat benches just far enough apart so that your butt can fit between them. Sit between the benches so that your hands can hold the edge of each bench without reaching backward, which would cause undue stress on your shoulders. Bend your knees and plant your feet flat on the floor.

Step 2. Lower your body between the benches until you feel a stretch on your triceps. Press up to a full lockout. For a greater challenge, you can load the exercise with a weight plate, sand bag, or chains on your lap.

See the companion piece to this article, “5 Killer Back and Biceps Workouts for Building Muscle,” for complete upper-body muscle gains.

The post The Best Chest and Triceps Workouts for Building Muscle appeared first on Onnit Academy.