Upper Chest Exercises Ranked (BEST TO WORST!)

If you are looking for chest exercises that help you to build a bigger upper chest, then you are going to want to watch this video. Here, I’m going to break down some of the most popular upper chest exercises that people perform to grow the clavicular head of the pecs. You may be surprised to learn

so if the name alone wasn’t enough to scare you away the guillotine presses in a good upper chest exercise and actually not even a good chest exercise and therefore it deserves the bigger x what’s up guys jeff cavaliere athletenext. com what you see behind me is a bunch of different chest exercises these focus on the upper chest that’s right we’re focusing on the upper chest exercises to complement by popular demand our chest exercises ranked video that you guys found so helpful what i’m going to do here though is like i did in the past i’m going to show these exercises and rank them from the worst to the best so that you’re left with only the ones that are capable of producing the best gains and maybe allow you to throw some of them away for good so that being said let’s start breaking them down one by one and so with all of our exercise ranking videos it’s important that we lay out some criteria on how we’re selecting and ranking them in the first place so we’re all talking about the same thing and we’re talking about the upper chest you better be able to effectively hit the upper chest and we know that if we follow the fibers as i always talk about from low and away to up and in right with some adduction component ideally we’re going to be targeting those upper clavicular fibers of the chest the best however we also want to make sure that we’re favoring those exercises that give us the opportunity to progressively overload right add more weight at every opportunity to increase both the size and the strength but when we’re talking about size there are some exercises that also do an effective job of creating muscle growth through focused tension and much lighter loads and those are going to get consideration too also guys as always on this channel we have to make sure the exercise is safe so not just being able to do it once or twice to maybe impress your friends but to do it for the rest of your life and ease of access to the equipment that’s required to do the exercises is also a consideration so that being said it’s time to demonstrate the exercises and because jesse’s the one that brought this topic up in the first place i’m gonna let him do the work this time all right so let’s kick this off the way we always do in the worst category because we’re gonna work our way up to the top you know and on a high note but here guys we have to start at the bottom of the barrel and i mean really truly at the bottom of the barrel with the instagram chest swipe workouts you know the ones i’m talking about the ones with the guys that are juiced to the gills usually over oiled and also giving out bad chest training advice you see guys no matter how flashy the exercise may be if it’s ineffective then it’s going to fail every single time and so even though these might be helping you to boost your light count on an individual post what’s happening is it’s truly revealing your lack of professional training knowledge and therefore allowing your integrity to sink in the opposite direction so with that guys while they may help you to waste some time in between sets i’m asking you to put a big red x in this whole entire group of exercises so maybe even told that the point that the bar makes contact on your chest is indicative of the portion of your chest that you’re training on a bench press decline bench press the lower portion of your chest regular bench press the middle portion of your chest incline bench press the upper portion of your chest guillotine press all the way up high in your chest meaning it’s going to do a really effective job of training the upper chest that’s where things get a little bit exaggerated here guys because this exercise is not only a bad exercise and not because it’s just performed on a flat bench i’ll actually show you an exercise later on that is performed on a flat bench that does a really good job of hitting the upper chest it’s simply the fact that this exercise completely disregards the health of the shoulders on the person performing it what i’m saying here is it’s not good when you place your elbows this far out to the side and have that high of a target point you are placing an inordinate amount of stress on your rotator cuff tendons not to mention the potential slippage of the bar at any point during this exercise is gonna allow it to not only live up to its name but rightfully put it in the spot that it belongs in with a big red x right through it and so now wrapping up the worst category for upper chest here we’ve got probably the most commonly performed upper chest exercise and that’s the incline dumbbell fly and i’m sorry but it’s still here it’s still in my worst category as it’s been now for oh let’s say 11 years i don’t like the exercise guys and i’ve talked about in depth many reasons why most of all it’s unsupported exercise you’re performing on a bench with your arms unsupported allowing those anterior shoulder capsules to undergo an inordinate amount of stress again not a factor that we’re going to overlook when we’re looking for hypertrophy because we know we have better options that being said things can actually get even worse because some people will perform this variation of it it’s called the crucifix fly and all you’re doing here is swapping out the tendon that you’re pissing off so instead of aggravating the supraspinatus tendon during the regular version of the incline dumbbell fly you’re shifting the load now to the biceps tendon with that pronated position of the arm guys the pursuit of hypertrophy with either of these exercises is not worth the trouble especially when i’m gonna show you better options ahead for that reason guys they belong in the bottom category and so with that now we get to break out our blue marker as we work our way up into the better category and i say better but not great because while good these exercises still have some limitations built in that prevent them from ranking up at the very top and we start right away with the decline push-up and this is an exercise that while effectively hitting the upper chest because it’s putting those arms in a higher end position right that common end position of all the effective upper chest exercises it still has the same problem that most push-ups do and that is the inability to produce enough overload and strength ultimately guys when you’re looking for good options here this variation of the push-up is at least a good option because it targets the upper chest more effectively but it’s not the best and therefore just deserves the blue circle in the better category and so if the very thought of pushing up overhead in any incline pressing situation is enough to keep you up at night or maybe that’s just the sound of the pops and cracks in your shoulders when you do it this next exercise is going to be a welcome exercise for you to look into it’s the landmine press done from a kneeling position and what this does is it gives you a much more natural and gentle pressing motion and arc to press in because you’re not just pushing up overhead but you’re pushing up and away from your body yes that’s going to allow the front delts to contribute a bit to the press but what it does do is it gets a nice isometric contraction of the chest involved too because your hands aren’t just holding on to the end of the bar but they’re squeezing into each other at the end of the bar and allowing you to get that adduction stress at the same time that you’re pressing up in that more natural position the kneeling landline press is one of my favorite ones particularly for those that have orthopedic issues but really it’s just a