Top Exercises For Chest Muscle Building
For many men, chest muscle building is an endeavor worth pursuing. The problem lies in whether you will pursue it the right way or in whatever manner you can find. Unfortunately, building pectoral muscles is not very easy. These are some of the largest individual muscles in your body, and will take a lot of work to get them massive and toned. You can start off on the right foot by reading up on these top chest muscle building exercises.
Bench Press
This is probably the golden standard among bodybuilders. It gets a whole lot of work out of the pectoral muscles, as well as from the arms and shoulders. It is also easily scalable, which makes it a great exercise from the very start of your chest building program all the way to the competition level.
Of course, the main downside is that you need the right equipment. A decent bench and set of weights for the barbell can cost more than a pretty penny, if you catch the drift.
Incline/Decline Bench Press
An exercise that is strongly similar to the bench press, from which it was derived. What makes this different is the fact that the bench is inclined a little bit up or down towards the head. This causes the optimal lifting alignment to shift with respect to the body. In effect, the incline bench press causes the lift to move up the body, while the decline bench press causes the lift to move down. These changes stress different muscle groups.
The incline bench press, which puts the head higher than the abdomen, causes the lift point to shift up, stressing upper chest muscle function.
The decline bench press puts the head below the line of the abdomen, which makes it great for building lower chest muscle mass as the lift point shifts downward.
Pec Deck Flye
This is one chest muscle building exercise that requires a rather large piece of equipment. It is unlikely that you will be building chest muscles at home with Pec Deck flyes, unless you have a fair amount of space and cash. On the other hand, it does work great and puts the effort squarely across the entire pectoral muscle complex. There is also a lower likelihood that you might injure yourself by trying to lift something that exceeds your capabilties.
Dumbbell Flye
Building chest muscles dumbbells is less about the weight and more about leverage. Dumbbells tend to be lighter and also cheaper, which makes this exercise great for home workouts. Basically, you lie flat on your back, holding a dumbbell out to your side, palm up. Then, you lift it up in a quarter-circle, from the side up to above your chest, keeping your arm almost straight the whole way. We say “almost straight”, because it is recommended that you flex your elbow a bit, to lower strain on the joint. Do it with one dumbbell, or use two for time efficiency.
Push-Up
Lastly, we have a chest muscle building exercise that requires no special equipment. The push-up requires little explanation, and has quite a few variations of its own. This is great for anywhere, anytime workouts.



