Anabolics Mall
5 Best Bodyweight Exercises For Chest
By Mike Thiga
I love push ups and all the variations and I find that I can give myself an excellent chest workout without lifting weights from the comfort of my own home. I always feel an awesome adrenaline pump throughout the chest after completing a short and intense push up workout.
Yes, lifting weights is a quicker way to build bulky chest muscles than trying to build chest muscles without weights, but I find home based chest exercises without weights to be a great alternative.
5 Chest Bodyweight Exercises
Push-ups for chest muscles. The old classic bodyweight exercise that everyone thinks about when they refer to chest bodyweight workouts. Push-ups work many muscle groups at the same time including the chest, triceps, back, abs, biceps and shoulders…
It is a great all round exercise and simaltaneously works multiple muscle for a great all body workout. Keep your back straight throughout the exercise and concentrate on slowly going through the movement, working all those muscle groups. For best results do this exercise slowly and steadily increase the repetitions that you do on a weekly basis. A great way to spice up a push-up is to put weights on your back. Find a back-pack and fill it up with books to add resistance to the exercise to help stimulate exrta chest muscle growth.
Parallel Bar Dips for chest. This exercise uses just your bodyweight, but it does require a set of dip bars for it do be performed correctly. Firmly grip each bar and support your body which will hang between the bars. Slowly lower your body until your arms form a right angles and then raise yourself back to the start. This is a very challenging exercise and you are likely to find that you can only do a few reps. But as you start to progress you can make things harder by strapping a weight plate belt around your waist. Alternatively fill a backpack up with heavy objects. The parallel dip bars work both the triceps and the chest muscles. To focus on the chest muscles, lean you chest forward a bit when you do the lowering motion.
Decline Push-Ups (chest muscle, lower). To do a declined push-up place your feet on an elevated object such as a box or a chair. Your arms should be on the ground as usual. You will then lower your upper body towards the ground at a steeper angle than a normal push-up. This puts more of a focus on the lower part of the chest. It is always a good idea to mix up the widths of the push-up grips so that all areas of the chest muscles get in a decent workout.
Incline Push Ups for chest (upper muscles). Push-ups on an incline involve you raising your arms onto a platform such as a chair or a box. Your feet will be on the floor. Do the press up as usual but at this new angle. You will find that you will feel the exercise working your upper chest area with an incline push up. Upper chest muscles often get neglected so incline push ups are a great addition to your arsenal of bodyweight exercises for the chest
Wide grip push-ups for chest. With a normal push-up your arms are approximately shoulder width apart and the focus is placed on working the chest muscles and arms. However, if you adopt a wider stance with your arms more than shoulder width apart you take the focus off the arm and shoulder muscles and place it back on the chest muscles. Wide grip push-ups tend to work the outer chest muscles more and are good for shaping and toning.
So there you have it, 5 killer bodyweight exercises for chest muscle building.
Also, check out this awesome video for even more really cool push up variations…
I hope this post has given you some cool ideas of how you could construct your own push up workout to build some killer pectorial muscles using bodyweight exercises. Chest workouts are awesome fun…even if done at home without weights. I also like it better as it feel less intense that lifting heavy weights and I feel a bit better and more lively afterwards as aresult.
So put on that Rocky soundtrack and pump out those reps!
Please feel free to have a further look around my site for more on how to build muscle without weights!
Click Here for Free Anabolic Insider Magazine Subscription
Disclaimer: The information presented is intended to be used for educational purposes only. The statements made have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (U.S.). These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any condition or disease. Please consult with your own physician or health care practitioner regarding any suggestions and recommendations made.