The Best Chest Exercises
Whenever we begin an undertaking, such as fitness for example, we categorically want to know what the best exercises are. What are the best exercises for a toned butt is one I hear a lot from the ladies. The men seem to be much more interested in arms and chest development, so I tend to field the question of what are the best chest exercises rather frequently from them.
I can’t answer in a sweeping fashion what are the best chest exercises for you personally, as I can’t see how you are built, what imbalances you may or may not have, and so on. One thing we can do in an impersonal fashion, however, is to discuss several of the more generally effective ones and steer you away from the ones that are less likely to benefit you as much. With that said, let’s begin with the Granddaddy of all gym exercises. The bench press. When you bench press, you can do so on a flat bench, or on an inclined bench. The difference is on the flat bench, you will tend to work more of the pectorals themselves, while on the incline bench, you will work pectorals, but there will be more of an accentuation on the pectoral minor muscles, which are the upper chest muscles. Either variation of the bench press employs triceps, deltoids, etc, etc.
Ideally, if you are a candidate for the bench press, you should be doing both of these exercises, but these aren’t the only things you should be doing for full pectoral development. If you are wondering what are the best chest exercises, you would also weigh in the stabilized presses as well. While they are often scoffed at by gym rats, they absolutely have their place. For example, if you have plate loaded press machine, or a smith machine, for example, and can press more weight and more reps on it than you could on it’s traditional counterpart, you are developing the pectorals in a different fashion as far fewer stabilizing muscles are required on these machines. That means you can usually power a lot more weight on them and recruit the fibers of the pectoral muscles efficiently. They also have safety mechanisms in place so if the weight comes down or gets stuck on you, your ego takes a hit as opposed to you sternum.
If you were to ask me what are the best chest exercises, I would have to include dumbbell presses. They are in a way, the polar opposite of the machine presses, as they require the trainee to supply all of the stabilization instead of a machine doing it for you. As mentioned, there are benefits of having something stabilized for you, but there are conversely, great benefits to be had when you are forced to do it yourself. On the dumbbell presses, you too can perform them on a flat or an incline bench, depending upon which part of the pectorals you are wanting to accentuate. You can also perform dumbbell flys in either of these positions, but with substantially less weight, or you run an enormous risk of shoulder injury.
If I’m to truthfully answer the question of what are the best chest exercises, I couldn’t leave out the good old pushup. If done properly, which means no shrugged shoulders, no tailbone way up in the air, or sagging either, you have a genuinely good chest exercise that can be performed virtually anywhere. There is no singularly one best chest exercise, generally speaking, but these aforementioned ones are fantastic ways for most people to work on developing their pectorals. If you throw in some secondary exercises such as the pec deck, for example, or cable crossovers, you have a full chest workout ahead of you.
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Andy
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