The 8 Best Chest Exercises (NO BENCH OR DIPS!)

The best chest exercises are not determined by the ones you can lift the most weight on but rather the ones that work best for you. In this video, I’m going to show you the 8 best chest exercises to help you build a bigger chest despite using bench press and dips for years. Many people think that

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com. So I’m sure you’ve been told to do lots of incline bench press if you want to build your upper chest. Of course, if you want to get that lower chest you’re going to want to make sure you do lots of decline bench presses as well, and you don’t want to forget the all-important flat bench press to work the overall development of your chest.

And of course, don’t forget to do dips because dips are a great way to build your chest. Now that’s all great, but what if you’ve already done all those exercises? You continue to do them, but you’re not happy with your chest. Today I want to show you 8, non-bench, chest building alternatives that you can start using to get better results from your chest training. So first, it makes sense to look at what might be wrong with the other exercises that you have been doing, and why they’re not working for you.

The fact is, you can look really easily and see that when we do, say, a dip here, look at the position of the hands. At no point do they get closer to each other. They’re fixed on the handles, and you’re simply moving up and down. No matter what variation of the bench-press I’m doing, whether it be incline, flat, or decline my hands don’t really get that much closer together. Especially if I’m using a barbell that’s literally fixed on the bar.

But even when we do the dumbbell variations we’re not getting them anywhere more than to each other, or meeting each other in the middle. They’re not going across each other. What I’m going to argue for you is, it’s not always about the weight that you’re pushing, but the amount of activation that you’re getting. Simply getting more activation by getting a full chest contraction is going to provide a much better stimulus for you to start seeing better results, and guess what? It’s going to make those even better.

By the way, I’m going to show you a way you can make your bench-press even better. I’m going to hold that for the end of the video. Let’s start with our firs exercise. Let’s start with a simple one. It’s a bodyweight exercises that we can all start doing right now, and actually start feeling the difference.

It’s a twisting pushup. What you’ll see here is, we can get that arm more across our body. Not by changing the position of the hand, or the fact that the arm is actually still fixed in place on the ground, but by changing the position of our body, in relation to the arm. So you can see that a regular pushup here, I’m fixed in space, but with this twisting pushup I’m actually turning into the arm. So as I turn in, look what’s happening here.

If I hold my arm out in front of me, and I turn my body into it, I’ve got this relative adduction. I’ve got the crossover that I’m looking for. You can literally alternate sides, left and right, and feel the difference in the contraction, and I promise you, if you’ve struggled to see your chest grow, do these – to at least get yourself activated and have your chest start working more – and you’re going to see better results from doing them. The next one here is called the plate squeeze. This is actually really fun to do.

We can do it either as a chest activator right before the workout, or you could even do it in drop set fashion after some of those big bench exercises. Remember, we’re not going to abandon them completely. We’re trying to make them work better for you. In the plate squeeze, what I’m trying to do here is, yes, I’m only getting the plates to be able to touch in front of me, in the middle, but I’m thinking about trying to push them through each other. If I can crush them right into each other that would be ideal.

What we’re doing is, we’re getting maximum chest activation here because we have this very strong isometric, and again, the heavier the plates you use, the stronger you’re going to have to push because that weight is going to want to slide and drop down. For an added challenge, you turn the plates around. Make sure you use the smooth sides on both and that’s going to make you really have to push hard. Again, no matter where you program it, this becomes a great option for you to get better chest activation. Okay, I kind of lied on the next one here because you do need a bench for this one, but not to do a bench-press.

We’re doing a dumbbell pullover. Again, you might think “Wait! Dumbbell pullover? A back exercise? ” No!

It can be a great upper chest exercise because look at how I’m doing it. The key here is not to pull with your elbows. You’re not trying to lead with your elbows and let your elbows stay flared out on the sides of your body because that becomes a great lat exercise. But what I can do is, I can take my hands and squeeze them together. I’m actually trying to turn them in like this, as I pull down.

So I’m squeezing my hands together, trying to adduct my hands into each other, to pull the dumbbell forward. And I don’t come all the way up. I’m trying to maintain that tension on the upper chest. That happens in that fully stretched position, and then up, only about 30, or 40 degrees. If you’ve never tried this exercise with the intention of using it for your upper chest, try it.

I promise you guys, you’ll be surprised at how much you can recruit the area of the chest that usually seems to be hard to recruit for a lot of people. The next exercise up here is a dumbbell floor fly. Now you’re probably saying “But I’ve done lots of flys before. ” But if you’re not doing them on the floor you’re losing an opportunity to create a stimulus for more growth. Here’s the deal: when you do an unsupported chest fly on a bench your shoulder becomes instantly jeopardized, and the health of your shoulder becomes a high risk for doing that exercise because it’s simply too much load for it to handle.

With this arm in this outstretched, unsupported position. But when we do it on the floor we don’t just get support, and therefore a safer alternative, but we get a better option for building a bigger chest, and better recruitment. We know we can still take advantage of the benefit of the fly. Meaning, the adduction component of the exercise that’s lacking in the dip, and the bench-press; but we can do this here with a heavier weight. Because we have the floor to absorb our arms on the way down we can eccentrically overload each, and every rep.

And if we have to, even cheat the dumbbells back up by pressing them to the top, and continue to work on the eccentric portion of that rep to get better, and better results. Guys, this one should definitely be in your routine. Especially if you’ve been doing the other flys and either hurt yourself doing them, or you haven’t seen the results that you wanted to get from doing them. The next two exercises up here are going to be in the crossover category. As you can see, right here on the 3D crossover, we are getting that adduction we are looking for.

We’re going beyond midline, which makes this a great way to get peak contraction of your chest. I like this variation because I can actually load up here. You can see that it’s not just my chest that’s powering this movement, but I have a lot of core activation here too, that helps me to drive through. My hips are rotating as well. This gives me a chance to do an overloaded crossover.

A heavier version of a crossover. For all those that say “But Jeff, you need the bench for the heavier weights! You need the dips for the heavier weights! ” Guys, you can load up any exercise. If you incorporate your body to allow you to push more weight it’s going to allow you to have the heavy exercise in your arsenal.

This is a great way to d