Want a hulking chest that bursts out of that vest but not sure which is the best chest workout to help you achieve it?
This article will give you all the information you need to achieve a chest that rivals the Hulk!
We’ll tell you about the best chest workout for mass, chest workouts you can do at home, and reveal all we found in our research about chest workouts for men.
If you want chest muscles that are ripping out of that vest so all the girls will notice you, then keep reading!
How Do I Get a Bigger Chest?
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If you want to get your chest looking like that of a Greek God, you have to be prepared to put in some hard work to get it.
There are lots of exercises out there, but you need to put together a good chest workout plan if you’re looking for a big chest.
So how do we do it?
If you want to improve the look of a certain part of your body, you have to target those specific muscles through your training.
Meaning:
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You need to give that specific muscle group priority; but you should only do this for a limited time, so you don’t risk soreness and fatigue due to overtraining.
Your workout should last about 45-60 minutes and you should only do it twice a week.
So what exercises should you do?
There are many to choose from; exercises using weights, chest exercises without weights and chest workouts at home.
Let’s look at some of the most effective exercises to give you the best chest workout:
Barbell Bench Press
The standard barbell bench allows you to move more weight and generate more power. With this, you get easier lift control than you do with dumbbells.
It’s best to do this exercise at the start of your workout, so you can use heavy weights at lower reps. You can also vary the width of your hand grip to give you more complete chest development.
Push-ups
Look to do 100 reps of this in as few sets as possible. Do as many as you can and rest only briefly before continuing to complete the full reps.
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Make sure you’re in a good position, with your hands positioned slightly wider than shoulder width. Your body needs to be straight, meaning your butt is not sticking up and your back is not arched. The feet should be close together but if you feel unstable, widen the width. Keep your head looking ahead, not down, and when you reach the top of your push-up, make sure your arms are straight.
Incline Dumbbell Press
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The angle of this exercise has the ability to emphasize the upper chest and carve out that rounded look of the pecs that you’re after. Complete 2 sets using a weight that challenges you. In your first set, do 10-12 reps with a 60 second rest, for the second set keep the same weight but continue reps to failure.
Don’t let your elbows drop past the shoulders as you complete each rep, and make sure you keep squeezing the pecs throughout.
Bar Dip
This is an exercise which is often forgotten but is one of the most effective for the chest.
To get the best from this exercise, you need to:
- Hold yourself at arm’s length above the bars
- While breathing in, lower yourself with the torso leaning forward
- Elbows should be slightly flared out and you should feel some stretch in the chest
- When you start to feel the slight stretch, use your chest to bring your body back to the starting point
- When you reach the top of the movement, squeeze the chest for a second
Complete 3 sets to failure with 30-60 second rests, you don’t need to add any weight, just concentrate on form – and remember to keep your body as forward as possible.
Flat Dumbbell Fly
You will be helping recruit greater amounts of muscle fibres across the chest with this exercise.
Lie flat on the bench, dumbbell in each hand, with hands resting on your thighs. Lift them, one at a time, holding them in front at shoulder width, palms facing each other. Raise as if pressing but before locking out, stop and hold for your starting position. Keep a slight bend on the elbows and lower arms out at each side in a wide arc until you feel the slight stretch on your chest. Then return to starting position and squeeze the chest muscles. Make sure to keep your arms stationary; remember, the only movement should be from the joint of the shoulder.
You need to do 2 sets, the first set of 15 reps with a 30-60 second break and the second set to failure.
These are just a few of the more popular chest exercises to help you get that bigger chest.
To get the best chest workout, there are a few things to think about before putting your chest workout plan together.
Are you going to be doing this workout at the gym or at home?
What equipment and machinery is available to you?
Even if you don’t go to the gym, you can achieve some amazing results at home using chest exercises for dumbbells, or even without the use of weights at all.
No matter what your situation, there is most definitely a best chest workout routine for you!
We know we need to exercise to get a bigger chest and we have looked at some exercises to help us achieve this, but what about mass?
Check this out!
Best Chest Workout Routine for Mass
So you want to build that mass to achieve the hulking chest of a bodybuilder.
Let’s take a look at a popular chest workout bodybuilding guys are using:
Dumbbell Bench Press
2 sets of 6-8 reps, 1 set 8-10 reps, last set 10-12 reps with 60-90 seconds rest
Incline Barbell Bench Press
3 sets of each: 6-8 reps, 8-10 reps, 10-12 reps, with resting time of 60-90 seconds
Incline Dumbbell Fly
3 sets: 10 reps, 10 reps and 12 reps, with rests of 60-90 seconds
Pec-Dec Machine:
3 sets of 12 reps (if you start to reach failure on the last set, do partial reps), with rests of 60-90 seconds
You need to add your own warm-up to this workout as it doesn’t include one.
Don’t ever skip over the warm-up!
When training for mass, you need to remember to start your workout with some heavy multi-joint movements.Make sure the workout hits the muscles from different angles and put in a high volume of reps and sets.
This is one of the best chest workouts guys at the gym are using to build those awesome massive chests.
But what other stuff do we need to know to find the best chest workout and build that ripped chest?
10 Chest Building Tips
We looked around to find out all the best tips to help you achieve that awesome, defined and ripped chest you’re after.
Here are our top 10:
1 – To make your chest bigger, you need to put more focus on the big pressing exercises and dips.
2 – Boost the time you put your muscles under tension. When doing an exercise, each one has a range of motion. When you reach the top of the range, your muscles stop working or the tension is significantly reduced. If you pause just before reaching the top of the motion, this will give you the constant tension you need to help you build those bigger pecs.
3 – Keep your shoulders back! This will help your chest do most of the work.
If you allow the shoulders to move forward, your deltoids will take over. This will deactivate the chest so it won’t get the full benefit of the workout.
4 – Take some extra time to focus on your triceps. Training your triceps will give you the strength you need to push your chest exercises to the max. Triceps are the secondary muscles you use when training your chest; they play a major role when it comes to increasing weights or building strength during your chest training.
5 – You don’t want to overwork and damage your chest muscles, so targeted training on your chest should only be done twice a week.
When doing your other workouts, your chest muscles are involved so they will still be getting a workout, just not a targeted one.
6 – If you alternate your weights from heavy to light when doing a chest routine, this will improve your workouts and help you get that massively pumped look you’re after. Start with a heavy weight and then switch to lighter ones as you go through your sets.
7 – When doing barbell presses, use slow movements to increase tension in the chest muscles and help strengthen them. Bring the bar as low as possible, so that it forces you to push harder to bring it back to the starting position. This will make your chest arms and shoulders put in more effort.
8 – Push-ups are a great chest exercise and are easy to do anywhere: at home, at work or in the gym. To get the most out of this exercise, you need to keep your hands shoulder-width apart and your legs either crossed or very close together.
9 – Your post-workout meal should include proteins. This is important because, when you work out, glycogen stores in your muscle become altered and fibres become damaged. Replenishing the glycogen is the key to growing leaner, stronger muscles and helping you to achieve more definition.
10 – This easy tip will give you very efficient results. Widen your grip on the bar when doing a bench press. This will put extra pressure on the chest muscles and force them to stay contracted for longer. The more you keep your muscles tensed, the more defined and toned they’re going to become.
There you have it – our top 10 tips to help you get the most from the best chest workout.
So, whether you’re planning on hitting the gym to do your routine or you’re doing your chest workouts at home, don’t forget these tips to help you get the results you want!
We’ve talked about how to get a bigger chest, the best chest workout for mass and I’ve given you some awesome tips to help you achieve that ripped chest.
But:
What are the most popular exercises guys are using to turn them into Greek God lookalike?
Top 5 Chest Exercises for Men
We’ve already looked at some chest exercises, but what are the best exercises and how do we put them into the best chest workout routine?
The top 5 chest exercises which seem to be most popular are:
- Barbell bench press
- Dumbbell fly
- Barbell incline or Smith machine press
- Leverage decline press
- Push-ups
We’ve already covered the best workout used to achieve mass; now we need to know how to get that ripped look.
Below are a few routines you can do using the top 5 exercises, to give you the best chest workout.
If you’re going to be building your chest at the gym where you have all the equipment available to you, then this is one of the most popular workouts being used to achieve the perfect ripped chest you’re after.
We have to boost the calories we burn during exercise and EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen), so that we keep burning those calories during our recovery time too.1
To do this, we should use a routine that combines multi-joint exercises, reduced rest periods, high volume and supersets, to reveal the lean.
Here’s what you need to do:
Superset 1
- Barbell bench press – 3 sets of 8 with no rest period
- Dumbell fly – 3 sets of 10-12 reps; only rest if needed
Superset 2
- Barbell incline press or Smith machine incline (if available) – 3 sets of 10 reps with no rest period
- Incline dumbbell fly – 3 sets of 10-12 reps; only take a rest if needed
Superset 3
- Leverage decline chest press – 3 sets of 10 reps with no rest period
- Push-ups – 3 sets and do each one till failure; only take a rest period if needed
Additional Workout Tips
Make sure to choose a weight that will let you reach muscle failure by your target rep
Use heavier weights in the first exercise of each set; this maintains muscle tissue and keeps metabolism high
Keep your rest periods short and your heart rate high, so it’s as much a cardio workout as it is muscle building.
But:
If, for whatever reason, you can’t hit the gym, or you prefer to work out in the comfort of your own home, I’ve also picked out the top 5 exercises for best chest workouts at home.
So no excuses!
Rotational Push-ups
- Start in normal push-up position, lower to one side and twist your body as you go down, to push most of your body weight onto one shoulder.
- Push up and switch sides, doing 10 push-ups on each side (20 reps).
Shuffle Push-ups
- Start in normal push-up position, but with one hand in front of your shoulder and the other hand behind
- Lower to the floor and then push up
- When you get to the top of the move either walk or jump your hands to the opposite position
- Continue doing reps and alternating position of hands; complete 20 reps.
Diamond Push-ups
- Position hands together under chest, making your index fingers and thumbs form a diamond shape
- Lower till your chest touches hands
- Push back up then continue to complete 10 reps
Gorilla Push-ups
- Start in normal push-up position, lower to the floor
- Push up quickly and launch yourself off the floor
- Slap your chest as you leave the floor and quickly put your hands back to the floor; return to starting position to continue; complete 10 reps
Single Leg Push-ups
- Start in normal push-up position; raise one leg, keeping those glutes nice and tight
- Lower to the floor and push back up
- Switch legs and repeat
- Keep alternating legs until 10 reps are complete
Summary
There you have it!
All the information is right here, helping you to achieve that perfect, t-shirt bulking, ripped chest.
We’ve told you all you need to know about the best chest workout exercises and thrown in a couple of workouts as a bonus, to help you get started.
We researched top tips to help you discover the best chest workout exercises and routines, and left you with our top 10.
You now know the best chest workout exercises for getting a bigger chest, gaining mass and getting ripped.
You’ve got guides and tips on how to get the best from workouts, with the recommended number of reps and rest periods.
Hell, we’ve even told you how to achieve it without entering a gym!
What more could you want?
FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions About the Best Chest Workout
“How Many Push-Ups a Day to Get Ripped?”
There isn’t a magic number for this as it will depend upon your age, sex and fitness level. You will need to push yourself further than the average person of your age and fitness, and throw in some variations to make your body work harder. 2
“What Is the Best Workout for Your Upper Chest?”
The best upper chest workout exercises are: incline barbell bench press, incline dumbbell bench press and the reverse grip bench press.
“What Foods to Eat to Get a Bigger Chest?”
You need to be eating lean protein, e.g., chicken, fish, egg whites and lean beef. Your carbs needs to be complex and come from foods such as: brown rice, oatmeal and sweet potatoes. You should also include good fats, which can be found in flax seeds, nut butter, nuts, fish oil and avocado, for example. Of course, you still need to eat those fruit and vegetables!
