And so, even though I love Arnold, the bench fly still gets the big red X. What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com. So, what you see behind me is a bunch of different chest exercises, likely that you recognize because you're either doing them right now, or you've done them in the past.
However, today I'm going to rank them from the worst to the best so that you can be sure that you're only focusing on the ones that give you the gains that you're after. So, by the time this video is over, you're going to want to keep some of these and others that you're going to want to throw away. So, that being said, let's start ranking them one by one.
So, as we work our way from the bottom up, it's important to point out that the exercises are placed into these categories for a reason. There are some criteria that goes into selecting where an exercise will fall. For instance, we want to make sure this is an exercise that can actually deliver results.
We don't want it to be something that is insufficient in being able to challenge you and to cause growth. We also want to select exercises or favor those that are multidimensional. They are good for building muscle, but they're also capable of delivering good strength gains. We're going to favor those.
We also have some exercises that are just downright dumb. We'll get to those, too. And then we have the exercises that kind of invite injury risk. That's something we want to avoid, especially if we have better, safer options.
That's why we start at the bottom of the list, right here, with the bench fly. Now look, I understand that Arnold loved this exercise, but just because he loved the fly and I love Arnold doesn't mean that I have to love the fly. Not because I want to dislike the exercise, but more so that my physical therapy background tells me that there's reasons to dislike it. When you perform it on a bench in this unsupported way with no safety net, you increase the risk of damage to the anterior shoulder capsule. That is something that you don't want to damage ever because it's very hard to repair and restore normal mechanics after that happens.
Not to mention an increased risk of pec tear that happens because of the extreme positioning of your arms during this exercise. Again, all this negated most of all by the fact that there are better alternatives to this that I will cover for you later on down this list. The fact is, for all these reasons, guys, I have to put the Big Red X first and foremost through the BenchFly.
All right, so next up in the category of worst is one that might actually come as a surprise to you because you know how often I like to train on my feet if at all possible, but it's the standing cable press. And the issue with the standing cable press is it provides more of a challenge to your core than the muscles you're actually trying to build. And just getting into this position here with any type of heavyweight is going to make my abs work much harder to make sure that I don't fall backwards when I'm doing the movement. Even if I do this out of a split stance where I'm leaning my weight forward, it's still not optimal if I'm going to press the weight that's necessary to cause that overload and growth that we're looking for.
For all these reasons, guys, the standing cable press is just not the best press to do when you're looking for gains in your chest. So the couple of big red X's on the board behind me, we're still not out of the worst category yet. Here we have to throw in the incline bench press. Now wait, before you riot, understand that just like size matters, angle matters too.
A lot. And when it comes to the incline bench press, what angle are you setting it at? Because it really matters in terms of the gains that you see from the exercise, especially up here in the upper chest. We know that the front delt and the upper chest fibers share not only a close proximity to each other anatomically, but they share some function too. Well, we know that if we were to get completely upright, we would shift.
the majority of that function to the front delt as we would in an overhead press. And if we got completely horizontal, most of the work would be done by the chest. Well, that being said, we have to find that happy medium.
And once you cross over 50 or 55 or 60 degrees, you're actually starting to go into that realm of less work for the chest and more for the front delts, which is not why you're doing the exercise in the first place. If you want to maximize your gains on the incline bench press, we're going to choose a lower angle. We'll cover that one later.
But for now, the 60 degree incline bench press. Has to get the big red X. No, time hasn't made it any better.
It's still f****** stupid. All right, so now those gladly behind us, I get to break out my blue marker as we work our way up the rankings into the better category. I say better, not best, because there's still some limitations here that I think it's important for you to be aware of.
And we have to start right here with the king of all of the better exercise. is the pushup. And I say the basic pushup because the basic pushup is oftentimes, as I pointed out in our major criteria in the beginning of this video, not challenging enough.
It's just simply not driving enough of a stimulus to cause change in the size of your chest. because you can do too many of them. If you're ripping off 30, 40, or 50 repetitions per set, there are variations that are going to provide a better challenge and the basic pushup no longer is it.
Now, if you're a beginner who's still getting challenged by this exercise, then by all means, you continue to build your strength up with it before you move on. But that being said, guys, most of us are beyond the point now where this is where we should be focusing our efforts. So for that reason, I got to give it a better listing, but not best yet because we know there's better variations to come. So since better is all about improvement, let's- Let's go back to those flies again because I wouldn't leave you hanging. I wanted to give you an improved version of it, or a safer version of it.
For that we have to look at the floor fly. I'm a much bigger fan of this exercise because it gives us a chance to have resisted adduction, but we get a chance to do it in a safer setting with the floor acting as the safety net protecting that anterior shoulder because we don't have those extreme ranges of motion at the bottom. Some would argue you don't get the same amount of stretch, but I don't even know if that's the real benefit of the fly anyway. Beyond that we do... do get to increase the weight that we use on a floor fly versus the weight that we can handle to ensure that safety on a bench fly.
And for that, we can create more overload with this in an eccentric manner, which is going to give us an opportunity for more growth. For all these reasons, the better version of the fly is definitely the floor fly. And wrapping up our better category here is an often overlooked exercise that I believe deserves a second look. And it's the underhand dumbbell bench press.
And the best thing about this exercise is it provides those that don't have access to an incline bench to still work. their upper chest, especially better than that 60 degree incline dumbbell bench press. EMG studies have actually shown superior activation of those chest fibers during the underhand version rather than too high of an incline press.
That being said, it doesn't come without its limitations, namely the fact that you're not going to be able to load this exercise as much. And that's mostly due to the fact that there's a lack of stability at the bottom for some. You have to have enough shoulder external rotation to be able to get your body in the right position with your elbows tucked at your sides and your hands, elbows, and wrists in line to support the dumbbells to be able to drive them up in that low to high dumbbell path to get that good upper chest activation.
And if you don't have that, or you're simply looking to load the exercise as heavy as possible, then this one might not be the one for you, but it still deserves its better recognition. And that's why we're going to put it right here at the end of the better category. And now we continue our way up the chart from the worst to the best chest exercises. And we land here squarely in the even better still category.
Meaning better than we just did, but not quite in the almost best yet. But I have to say, start here with that variation of the pushup that I promised you before. This is called the twisting pushup.
And the main thing we're getting here is this additional relative adduction, that small, but incredibly important addition to the basic pushup that will take whatever repetition count you can do of the basic pushup and bring it dramatically downwards. But at the same time, increase the effectiveness of it. And that's really all that matters.
No matter what count you can do of your regular pushup right now, I promise you less pushups here, but more from it. For that reason, we give the twisting pushup up the first in the better still category. And speaking of adduction, our next exercise in our even better still category is one that focuses on that adduction function of the chest better than the things we've showed you already, including even the floor fly.
It's the cable crossover. See, the thing about the cable crossover is it not only gives us a chance to get more adduction because you're going to get our hands slightly across midline, but it also gives us the chance to have peak tension where we tend to lose it in either version of the dumbbell fly, floor, or bench. But the limitation here comes in the same.
thing that we dealt with with the standing cable press. I believe the cable crossover is an exercise that we can load up much heavier than we traditionally do. But as we do, we can see we have the same stability demands and the demands placed on the core to keep us in this upright position that might limit the amount of weight that we can use. If we limit the amount of weight, we limit the amount of overload. And by limiting the amount of overload, we limit the amount of growth.
For that reason, guys, the cable crossover is my adduction exercise of choice, at least for now. We're talking about the better still exercises. More on that to come.
Next up in the Better Still category is another variation of a bench press. It's actually one of my favorites when your goal is mostly hypertrophy and a little bit less of a focus on strength. And it's the Lining Cable Bench Press. And what this does is it provides you with a better strength curve with more resistance throughout the entire strength curve of the bench press because of the use of the cables. If I set the cables out wide, the line of resistance is the cable itself.
So, you can see that it maintains its perpendicularity throughout a greater range of motion than let's say on a typical bench press. So, at the top of the exercise, when I've reached my peak contraction, my chest, I actually still have a lot of tension here that I wouldn't have with a typical barbell or dumbbell. That being said, the difficulty still lies in the fact that I have to get this into position to do a heavyweight. But again, when it comes to placing tension on the chest, this is one of the best. I'm going to place it here in this category for that reason.
And concluding our Better Still category is one of those chest exercises that people sometimes don't even realize works the chest, and it's the Dumbbell Upper Chest Pullover. And I'm careful to add the designation of upper chest to make sure people understand that there's a way to perform this to favor the upper chest rather than the lats. We know the typical Dumbbell Pullover works the lats because we're driving it with our elbows in this flared position.
However, if you do the opposite of that and you bring your elbows as tight together as possible, you can quickly shift the focus to the upper chest because it's got all the components. have a great upper chest contraction. Our arms are elevated up over our head, remembering that we go from this low to high position to get those upper chest fibers activated.
And we have the squeeze and the adduction of the elbows as close together that really lights us up. Throw a dumbbell in our hand, we get the overload we're looking for. And that's the reason why I don't want you to overlook this exercise any longer. And so with some top contenders left on the board, we move into our almost best category and I get to break out my green marker.
And we start right here with the dip. And for me, the dip is the best version of a pushup. If you think about it, the dip is essentially a suspended pushup, especially if you angle your body more forward to favor the chest rather than staying upright and favoring your triceps. That being said, the opportunity here to load this exercise is going to be much easier than we have in a pushup. I could strap a weight around my waist and do a weighted dip and continue to provide the progressive overload we need to drive both the strength and the size gains that this exercise provides.
Not to mention, I could do a couple other unique things like adding a small twist, which would be similar to the twisting pushup to get just that little bit of extra adduction, which will bring that rep count down, but bring the effectiveness of the exercise up. For all these reasons, the dip is going to get my first and the almost best category and it belongs there. All right, so if you haven't caught up by now, you know that I like adduction and we want to try to get into the chest exercises we perform if we want to see the best gains from it. And that's why I got to go back to it once again with my best option here.
This is the heavy one arm crossover. And how is this different from the crossover? Well, in a very important way.
Number one, much more stability. Instead of having to move both arms at one time, which let's say you have 80lbs in each hand, you're not going to be able to stabilize the total 160 as well as you can the 80 one arm at a time, which is going to eliminate those balance limitations and allow your core to take a back seat to the muscle you're actually trying to build. And what I like to do here, as I mentioned, is go heavy because you have the opportunity to do that. Stop doing this exercise as a 30 rep burnout at the end of your chest workout. Instead, prioritize it as one of those great ways to get adduction.
Not just adduction, but full adduction across midline. Better than in any other exercise we've performed so far. This is going to be my adduction exercise of choice for those reasons, and it's going to belong firmly up here at the top in my Almost Best category. And concluding now our Almost Best category and giving those that are still hyperventilating after looking at the thumbnail a reason to breathe easy. We have the incline bench press up here at the top.
The reason, though, is we're putting it at that 30 to 45 degree angle, not the steeper angle that we talked about before. Because as I said, the angle matters. It's been found that the perfect angle to engage the upper chest without over activating the front delts is going to be this 30 to 45 degree angle.
Now whether or not your bench goes to this specific degree doesn't really matter. Just try to go on the shallower side versus steeper once the upper chest fibers that you're looking to really engage. It's the chest that you're trying to grow rather than your shoulders.
This is my choice right here firmly at the top. And so, with any list ranking the best chest exercises from worst to first, there can only be one first. There can only be one best. It's the one that's been staring at you the whole time right here, dead smack in the middle, the barbell or the dumbbell bench press.
And I'm giving you the option. Why? Because I just want to make sure that you're doing one of them. And the reason why we put this at the top of this list is because it gives us the best opportunity to do the one thing that we know.
can continue to drive both strength and hypertrophy, and that is overload this movement. The barbell or the dumbbell bench is something you can easily continue to up the weight on, which is going to continue to progressively keep those gains coming. Now look, the choice between the two exercises is going to be up to you.
Some may find the dumbbells are going to give you, A, a little bit more adduction at the top because you can move your hands closer towards each other, and others are going to find that it's a little bit easier on the shoulders to do the dumbbells versus the barbells. Others who are looking to just prioritize strength are likely going to choose the barbell variation because it gives you that extra 20% bump in your total. The fact is, this gets the top spot when we're looking at the best chest exercises for strength, size, and growth of your chest.
Or wait, maybe not. And so since the goal of this video is to give you the best possible information I could, you're going to have to allow me to bend the rules just a little bit. You see, because the best chest exercise is actually not a chest exercise at all.
It's a combination of exercises from the bench press down into... that heavy one arm crossover, realizing that you're going to get that all important adduction, the only missing element from the barbell or dumbbell bench press to create the perfect compliment and take the best exercise and make it the greatest of all time. And so with that, guys, hopefully you now know which of the chest exercises you should be doing and which of the chest exercises maybe you want to ditch.
The key is understanding why we pick what we pick because the science of the selection matters. As always, we put the science into all we do here. All of our programs available over at ATHLEANX.com.
If you found the video helpful, make sure you leave your comments and thumbs up below. Tell me what other things you want me to cover in the rank series and I'll do that for you in the future videos. And speaking of future videos, if you haven't already done so, make sure you click subscribe and turn on your notifications so you never miss one when I put one out.
All right, guys, I'll see you soon.