Basic Chest Exercises

Welcome back! Hopefully, you saw my last blog which was about basic tricep exercises that you can do at home. In this blog, I will be going over some basic chest exercises that are great for a home workout. Let's get started!

Chest Press

The first exercise is the chest press. You may have heard of it as the bench press because it's typically done lying down on a bench. Start by holding a barbell or dumbbells with your arms extended above your head. Steadily bring your arms down and bend your elbows, keeping your forearms parallel to your body. Once the weights are slightly above your chest, extend your arms and bring the weights back above your head.

Chest Press Without a Bench

What if you don't have a bench at home? No problem: we can do a similar movement even without using a bench. You can simulate this exercise by lying down on the floor, using a barbell, dumbbells, or even resistance bands, as shown in the photos to the right.

Incline Chest Press

You can also do this chest press exercise at an incline. You can easily do this on a bench that's set at an incline, but if you don't have a bench at home, you can perform this incline press by sitting in a chair and leaning back. What makes this variation of the chest press unique is that it targets the upper portion of the chest more, whereas the chest press on a flat surface focuses more on the mid chest.

Push-Up

Another great chest exercise is the push-up, which is a pretty simple exercise that many people know about, but it's important that we do it with proper form. In the starting position, your hands should be placed approximately underneath your shoulders, so your arms are straight. When you bend your arms and bring your body down to the floor, make sure that your chest and your pelvis (the middle part of your body) are moving down together. Once your body almost touches the floor, push yourself back up to the starting position.

Rotational Push-Up

A variation of the push-up that you can do is the rotational push-up. This is similar to a regular push-up, but it involves rotating your upper body at the top of the range of motion. The benefit of this rotation is that it allows for adduction, a critical element of chest training which means bringing your arms towards the midline of your body (an imaginary, vertical line that runs down your body, dividing it into a left side and a right side). By twisting your upper body at the top, the middle of your chest is brought closer to your arms, and by shortening the distance between your arms and the midline of your body, you can achieve adduction with this exercise.

Those are some basic chest exercises that you can do at home: the chest press and the push-up, along with some variations!

Thank you for reading this blog! I hope you learned some new information about chest training and will be able to apply these exercises to your own routine. Please like this blog post and share it with others who might like to learn about these exercises. Stay tuned for upcoming blogs featuring additional exercises!

Video version of Basic Chest Exercises: https://youtu.be/PuFB-c73Mks