Chest Exercises Rated (BEST to WORST)

So, today we're going to rate a bunch of different chest exercises, many of which you're either doing right now, or having watched another ranked video, or deciding whether or not to include them in your chest workout. We're going to do it one of two ways. If I like the exercise, we're going to rep it. If I don't like the exercise, we're going to reject it. Simple? Simple enough. All right, you throw me the exercises and let's see what we do. All right. First up, pec deck. All right, so the pec deck, if you have access to the machine at the gym, is going to give you at least access to an abduction based exercise. You know how important I think that is to complement your heavy pressing. That being said, mounting and dismounting the machine is probably my bigger concern. As long as you get that right, you're off to the right start. You basically have to do it like you're seeing here, where you reach back and grab the arm here, rather than really reaching your arm back behind you, and then trying to load up and grab the weight. The other thing is, if you can find a machine like this that has the articulating arms rather than the fixed pads, you're going to find it more comfortable and adaptable to you regardless of how long your arms are. Though it's not my favorite way to adduct and overload adduction, I will say it's a good exercise and for me, I'm going to rep it. All right, so next exercise up is flat bench press. Of course, I'm going to have to rep this exercise. Obviously, it provides the greatest amount of overload. I do prefer to do it as a dumbbell bench press, rather than a barbell bench press, mostly due to my orthopedic issues in my shoulders. So anybody out there that has discomfort will probably find that to be the case, too. I also like to have the touchpoint of that outer, lower portion of my chest that I can more easily hit with the dumbbells. There's no way around it, though, guys. If you want to get a bigger, stronger chest, the best overload exercise option for you is going to be the flat bench press, and so therefore, rep it. Next up on our list is this one. I remember that one. You remember me doing it like here? What do you think my answer is going to be? So everything I just said about good adduction-based exercises, that's the opposite. We don't want to do it like this because there's actually no resistance of adduction at all. Sometimes just the creator themselves makes the exercise a rejection. I don't have anything else to say. Reject. Next exercise up is the incline bench press. All right, good. So I see what we're doing here. We're going to split them up. Incline, flat, good. I'm obviously going to say we're going to rep it again, but to determine whether or not it's inclined or flat, maybe for you, you have to ask yourself, do you have a very developed upper chest, or not? Most of us don't. So if I had to choose one between the two, it's going to be that one. It's going to have, though, a lot more range of motion requirements. There's most range of motion required to do an incline, then second most on a flat bench, then the least amount of range of motion required on a decline bench. So if you have any type of shoulder issues, like I do, you're likely going to find the dumbbell variation is a lot more comfortable than any barbell variation is. Keep that angle at that 30 or 45 degree max, though, on the incline to get the best for the upper chest. Regardless, it's going to sit there in the rep it category. It's just a great exercise. So we have now the underhand bench press. All right. So interesting followup here because let's pretend you don't have access to the incline bench press, right? You still want to get the upper chest development. We know that if you actually just flip those hands around and take an underhand grip, and then press it like you see me doing here, you're actually getting a good upper chest stimulation. You're actually going from that sort of low to high position that's a requirement to hit those upper chest fibers. Now, if you're going to do the exercise, I recommend dumbbells here rather than a barbell because for those that haven't done it, it's going to feel a little bit awkward and it's going to be a lot safer if you ever have to get rid of the dumbbells or make an alteration. The barbell is going to be too fixed to make this feel really comfortable, especially if it's your first time out. But because of its unique ability to hit those upper chest fibers in a limited equipment environment, once again, for me, rep it. So up next we have the plate press. So just before you thought that I was going to say I love all the pressing exercises, we have an example of one that I do not, and that is simply because you can't overload this exercise. If you try to do it with two plates, which I've seen people try to do, you're literally rubbing them together and risking the chance that one will slip and fall on you, regardless of what the weight is. And again, you're never going to be able to do too, too much weight. Pretty much maxing out at maybe 25lbs, maybe 10lbs when you're squeezing them together. There's plenty of better ways to actually do a press, and regarding the isometric squeeze that you're feeling on the inside of your chest, there's a better way to do this, too. You just take two dumbbells and you hold them end-to-end. So you're getting, we call this an abduction press. You're getting a little bit of the isometric isolation of the chest, but you're still getting the ability to press heavy enough dumbbells to cause overload. But for this specific variation, the plate press, you're going to have to reject it. Sticking with the theme of bench pressing, we have the decline bench press. So we're back to the ones that I actually like. Now the decline bench press, like I said before, is going to be the lowest demand on you in terms of range of motion of the shoulders. So whoever does have problems orthopedically with their shoulders, and they're looking for an on-ramp to be able to start pressing again, start decline. It also happens to be the variation of the bench press that allows the people who don't have a really good time feeling their chest to start to feel it. If I were to ask you to flex your chest right now, what are you doing? That. Right. Now notice where you're doing it from. Down here. You don't really ever see someone flex their arms out here because you feel it more when you do a high to low crossover of the chest. That's because it's a more natural motion for you. If you're going to do a natural base bench press, the one that you're looking to feel and increase that feel in the exercise, start with a decline bench press. But because, again, it's a good press that you can overload, it's going to be another rep it for me. Next up, we are going bodyweight with pushups. Okay, so this is good. So rep, but not too much. What I mean by that is, I feel like the pushup has become such a staple exercise, but a lot of times it's a crutch exercise for those that want it to be their main chest exercise. It's never going to serve as your main chest exercise. You need to have a better way to load the exercise, and that's where I think you need to opt for a more difficult version of the exercise. So as a blanket statement, I always say, if you can do more than, say, 30 reps of a pushup, then opt for a more difficult version of the pushup. Or if you want to get great benefits from the pushup, use it as an immediate drop set to a regular flat bench press, or an incline bench press. So you do your repetitions with the heavy weight, you drop down, you do the pushup immediately after that to take yourself to failure. Now you're going to get maybe 10, 12, 15 reps in that fatigued state, but it shouldn't really serve as your main driver of hypertrophy if you can do more than 30 repetitions. So rep it, just not too much, and we're cool. Ready for the next one? Let's do it. Guillotine press. Okay, so the guillotine press, if you're not familiar with it, is when you actually bring that bar all the way up towards your neck, hence the name. Jesse, you remember this one. Oh, I do. And here, again, it's not just an issue of whether it should be done with dumbbells, or barbells. However, I will say right off the bat, I wouldn't do it with a barbell. If you're going to do the exercise, do it with dumbbells, and it's not necessarily about the flared elbow position that some will refer to. For me, it's about the touchpoint. You can have a higher touchpoint, but still have the elbows angled downwards a little bit, rather than having them flared. Because when you go this high as a touchpoint, and you also have them flared, you're getting into that internal rotation position. Again, that same position that we test impingement from, that can be quite uncomfortable for those that certainly have impingement already, or are in the process of developing it. So, I don't like this exercise, especially when I know that there's other options, like the incline bench-press we already covered, that's going to give you adequate upper chest development without the gimmicks of this exercise. So, for me, it's going to be a reject. So we're going with different equipment here, with the cable crossover. Okay, so, I'm a little biased here, I'm going to say this, because this exercise saved my chest development for a period of time when my shoulder was complete trash. Why do I love this adduction-based exercise? Again, for me, we can get on our feet when we do the exercise, but most importantly, it is versatile as all hell. You have the opportunity to change the angle, even just with one quick adjustment on the stack. If you go from the low to high, you're working those upper chest fibers most effectively. If you go straight across the chest, you're hitting more of the sternal area of the chest, and if you go from that high to low, you're hitting more of the lower chest fibers. You can work on your weak point, whichever part that might be. When you do have a bad shoulder, like I do, it can be a savior because you don't feel all that pain that you do on pressing with this exercise, and you still get really good chest stimulation. So for me, versatility, everything all baked in, it's definitely a rep it for me. Next up, we have static press. So we're on this kind of roll with the exercise that I have a bias towards, that I like. So Casey Mitchell showed me this exercise when my shoulder was really bothering me. It actually allowed me to bench press, again, doing dumbbell bench presses, despite the discomfort I had. It takes advantage of the fact that you can bench press a lot more slowly, and in control. So when you do have pain in your shoulder, does it come from something structural, or does it come from maybe the stability, or the lack of stability? A lot of times, for me, it's a lack of stability. So when I'm forced to go slow, or hold the dumbbell in this position, then I have the opportunity to be more in control of it, and all that pain that I was feeling goes away. The other thing is, by holding the dumbbell down in the bottom position, I'm getting more time in the stretch position. So I'm prolonging the time under tension in that stretch range where we know we have the most capacity for growth. This is just another good bench press variation that has some unique demands put onto it that makes it feel really, really good. Definitely a rep. So next up, we have the ever-controversial bench fly. It's not a controversy for me. Don't ever do it, ever again. Stop. Never. Reject. That comes from the fact that I think there are better alternatives, many of which we covered already. The main focus of the bench fly is going to be the stretch, and also the adduction exercise. There's better adduction exercises. You can still get a good stretch, even with a standing cable fly, like we talked about before, and you don't run the risk of the unsupported position at the bottom of a fly. So no, you don't have to use heavy dumbbells here, but if you have anything and you start to become fatigued in that bottom position where you're aching to get more stretch, you might leave yourself a little vulnerable to that anterior shoulder capsule, and again, with no safety net there to catch you, unlike you do with a floor fly, like I've talked about, just don't think it's really got a great reward for the risk that you're putting yourself at. So for me, because there's better exercises out there, and I've already said so many things about the exercise and talked trash, I'm going to have to say, reject it again. Next up on our list, the upper chest pullover. Okay, so people may not be familiar with this. They hear the word pullover, and they think – Lats. Yeah, back and lats. This can be tweaked to be able to get the upper chest, depending upon how you do it. You want to make sure, as you're watching me do here, that you're squeezing your arms together. So you're trying to almost touch your biceps as you pull that dumbbell forward, and you don't want to bring the dumbbell so far forward on this. You want to keep it up at this angle that you see here. You'll definitely feel this recruiting the upper chest fibers and feeling it in the chest if you do this properly. I think this is a good exercise if you have the mobility – this is the one where I'll kind of waffle just a little bit. If you have the mobility to go overhead like this, and you have the experience level to be able to shift that focus from the lats to the upper chest – because it does take quite a bit of experience and muscle activation skill to be able to switch the exercise around and shift it around – then I'd say it's definitely a rep it. If you don't have that, there's probably better options here to engage it. So in that case, I'd say reject it. So I'm going to kind of finish in the middle here, but for me personally, I'm going to say rep it. Speaking of crossovers, like we did before, and coming back, 3D crossover. So I'm glad that you included this one here because this is different. So the 3D crossover, to me, is when you perform this one arm at a time. But more importantly here, you can see there's a little bit more body English going into this. I'm okay with that. The idea is that I can load the exercise up much more heavily so that I can get a better eccentric overload, I can get that loaded stretch at the bottom, but because I can move my torso in space and rotate through space, I can almost give with it. So if I ever start to feel like it's too much strain on my shoulder, I can just rotate my whole torso with it to take some of that stress off of the shoulder. But I can manage that on a rep by rep basis, even as I fatigue and get more and more fatigued from rep to rep. This exercise gives me that chance to get all the adduction benefits that we talked about, but again, in a way that I can actually load it up probably a lot more safely and heavily than I ever could on one of those lying down bench flies. So for me, I love the exercise. It's going to take a little bit more time because you have to split them up arm to arm, but for me, it's definitely a rep it every single time. Next up, we have weighted dips. Okay, so another good, high capacity overload type exercise, but it does come with a couple of warnings. The warnings are, you better have first a baseline level of strength to be able to do a weighted version of the exercise. So for me, you've got to be able to do around 15 or so, maybe up to 20, somewhere in that range of a bodyweight dip, good repetitions, good form before you should start worrying about even adding additional weight. Beyond that, you have to have good shoulder strength and stability because what you don't want is to start to try to get into lower ranges and have the shoulder start moving on you. If it starts to move towards the front of your body here, you're going to put a lot of stress on the anterior shoulder capsule again, and the exercise goes from a good stretch exercise to just a bad exercise. If, however, you're able to do what I say, this master tip where you keep your shoulders pinned down, unshrug your shoulders, keep them down, keep the shoulders back and the chest out and have good control, you can go lower than most and also, at the bottom there, you might want to hang out. I also sometimes recommend one and a half repetitions so you get the benefit of that stretch position and you increase the tension in time in that position. Overall, keep piling on weight if you're capable of doing it and it becomes a massive chest builder. So, for me, the weighted dip is an awesome exercise. You've just got to be ready for it, but I'm going to say, rep it. I actually made a whole video ranking the chest exercises head to head to see which ones are best when you have to make those important, tough decisions. You can find that video here. If you're looking for more of those videos, guys, I have a whole series you can find. Make sure you subscribe and turn on your notifications so you don't miss a video when we put out complete programs and meal plans and supplements available over at ATHLEANX.com. See ya!