To build a bigger chest, concentrate on the fibers that produce strength more than the ones that produce endurance. Those “fast twitch” fibers will tend to grow larger and give your chest more size.

How do you do that? By diversifying your workout and emphasizing low-reps and heavier-weight in each of your sets. You can also do an explosive, fast movement on the concentric part of the movement. For instance, off the bottom of the pushup you can push hard and fast so that your hands come off the floor and you clap your hands together, then return to the down position slowly for a 2 or 3 count, then repeat.

I get disagreements on this one, but I know that it’s true. The Best Chest Exercise is the WEIGHTED DIP… hands down! Why? When you perform dips and pushups, you move your body through space rather than a weight .

This is a critical concept to understand, because, moving your body through space (instead of moving a weight through space) is more challenging to your central nervous system, which amplifies your brain-to-muscle connections and this causes you to recruit more muscle in every exercise.

Now, you’ll work your triceps tremendously when doing a WEIGHTED DIP as well, but you’re also working your chest at the same time. You’ll need a dip belt to do these (or a simple strap or jump rope will do the job), and you’ll have to work your way up to a decent weight, but by the time you’re doing 8 reps with a 100 lbs on the dip belt, you’ll see the improvement in your chest size and strength like no other exercise.

Push-ups are next on the agenda, and because you need to hold a plank while you’re doing them, they also work your core stability.

Also, there are so many variants of the PUSHUP that are even more explosive. One of those is the MEDICINE-BALL ARCHBISHOP PUSH-UP; a long name, but this exercise works.

What you do is put 3 to 5 medicine balls in a semicircle, then get in the push-up position and put both hands on the ball to the far right; your chest should be over the ball and your feet must stay anchored throughout this exercise.

Now, move your left hand to the ball at the left and do a push-up, then bring your right hand to that ball. You want to continue moving left, doing push ups until you get to the last ball on the left. Then work your way back across the balls. That’s one rep.

The reason why you want to use the medicine ball is, when you put your hands on a ball, the inherent instability forces your core to work 20% harder than when you do a regular push-up, so this exercise trains your abs and hips to remain stable longer.

Try doing supersets of weighted push-ups with lying cable flies. Have your training partner place a weight on your back for the push-ups. When you do the flies, try holding the peak contraction for 3 seconds, and then do a 5 second eccentric contraction or lowering phase.

As with every exercise, perfect form is more important than lots of weight, because you don’t want to cheat and use other muscles to stabilize you or help you move the weight.

Resistance bands will also work very well for both weighted push-ups and dips. They don’t require a partner, travel easily and won’t ding the floor. For pushups, just put the band behind your back. you can put it on your lower back to work your core more or up around your shoulder blades. Now put your hands into the band loop and pin it to the floor and go to town. If it’s to loose at the bottom of the stroke, just put a loose overhand knot in the center of the band and you’re set.

For dips, drape the band around the back of your neck so it comes down the front of your shoulders and then place your hands in the band and grab on to the dip bar and have a field day.

You can also use the bands to assist in these movements if you don’t have the strength to move your bodyweight yet.

We only put the bench press last on this list because it is the first you normally think of and we wanted to give you some other ideas. And it is not as functional as the others because you are not moving your body through space. Keep variety in your workouts to keep your body growing and to keep from getting board.

Keep in mind that you can do the bench either, flat, incline or decline and you can use barbells or dumbbells.

Resistance Band Exercise Book Guide

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