Chest exercises for the gym and home

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These are the 18 chest exercises in our library. Each one includes the correct technique, the muscles it works and alternatives if you lack the equipment. You can generate a free routine that includes them based on your level and goal.

Muscles you work when training your chest

The pectoralis major is the main chest muscle and drives horizontal shoulder flexion: it brings the arm toward the midline of the body. It works in every horizontal push (bench press, dips, flyes) and is usually split into the clavicular (upper) and sternocostal (mid-lower) heads, emphasised by changing the bench angle. To develop it, combine a heavy press with a fly-type movement that loads the muscle in a stretched position.

How to train your chest: sets, reps and frequency

For muscle growth, the meta-analysis by Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger (2017), covering 15 studies, found a dose-response relationship: more weekly sets per muscle lead to more hypertrophy, and the practical benchmark usually drawn from it is around 10 or more sets a week. Splitting them over two sessions works better than doing them in one (Schoenfeld and colleagues, 2016), and light or heavy loads give similar hypertrophy when sets end close to failure (Schoenfeld and colleagues, 2017).

Presses count as full chest work; flyes and cable crossovers add stretch with less load on the shoulder. If you already do plenty of pressing, your triceps and front delts get a lot of indirect work. If you are starting out, stay at the low end of the sets and build up gradually. We explain it in how many sets per muscle you need.

Upper chest: what an eight-week trial measured

The idea that the incline press works the upper chest has been tested. Chaves and colleagues (2020) split 47 untrained men into three groups for eight weeks: flat press only, incline press only, or both. The incline group was the only one to significantly increase the thickness of the clavicular head, the upper chest; isometric strength did not differ between groups.

They were beginners and the study compared doing one or the other, not combining them, but the practical takeaway holds: if your upper chest is your weak point, more flat pressing is not enough. Give it an incline press and put it at the start of the session.

Blog guides: Chest

• The best chest exercises for hypertrophy — Best chest exercises for hypertrophy: bench, incline press, flyes, cable crossovers and dips, what each adds to your pecs and how to combine them.
• Bench press: correct technique and the 7 big mistakes — Bench press: correct technique step by step (back setup, grip, bar path) and the 7 big mistakes that stall your bench or hurt your shoulders.
• Push-ups: technique, variations and how many to do — How to do push-ups with good technique, variations from easiest to hardest, how many sets to build muscle and how they compare with the bench press.

The 18 chest exercises

Compound exercises (10)

Isolation exercises (8)

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