CHEST: The ONLY TWO Exercises You Need For Growth!

Today I want to share with you the only two exercises you need to build a nice, thick, muscular, well-rounded chest. As I have said in previous VIDEOS, you don’t have to do a ton of different exercises in order to maximize growth for any muscle group. If anything, sticking to less exercises is going to allow you to get better at performing those exercises, and as you continue to do more sets per exercise, you’ll also get a lot stronger as well.

In picking these two exercises, I wanted to make sure they were movements that not only utilize all functions of the chest (there’s three of them, which I’ll cover soon), but they’re also exercises that will in fact allow you to overload more and more as you get stronger and build more muscle. Those two exercises are going to be the INCLINE DUMBBELL PRESS and the CHEST DIP.

Exercise #1: Incline Dumbbell Press

The reason why this is a great exercise is because, doing the incline version of a chest press means you are still working the ENTIRE chest, but this is going to place a bit more emphasis on the UPPER CHEST. You can definitely tell in the gym who does incline pressing and who doesn’t, and if you’re one of those people whose chest looks pretty good, but the upper portion is lagging, this is perfect for you.

As I mentioned earlier, there are three functions of the chest. They are:

1. Flexion Of The Humerus

2. Adduction Of The Humerus

3. Medial Rotation Of The Arm

In this exercise, you can take advantage of two of those functions, those being the flexion and the adduction, which is why you’re not going to use a barbell. When you use a barbell, your hands are in a fixed position, so you’re able to do the flexion of the humerus when you press, but because your hands are stuck in one spot, there’s no adduction and you’re not going to be able to squeeze your chest together as hard as you can at the top.

Proper form for this exercise means firstly that you are ALWAYS retracting your shoulder blades and keeping them packed. Then when you get into position, it’s imperative that you’re not benching over your shoulders. Your elbows should be slightly in front of your shoulders, which allows you to press over your chest, then come back down and not have any issues with shoulder impingement. If you are pressing over your shoulders, you might be flaring your elbows out, which won’t engage your chest as much. When you get to the top position of the movement, make sure you are flexing your chest as hard as you can, and keep in mind that the dumbbells can touch at the top of the movement, but don’t bounce them off each other.

You’re going to sit there on your incline bench and do 6 – 7 sets of 8 – 10 repetitions. If you can overload here, which means lifting as much weight as possible, that’s even better, so get a spotter to help you if you need to.

Exercise #2: Chest Dip

As soon as you finish all of your sets on the incline press, you’re then going to move over to chest dips and do another 6 – 7 sets of 8 – 10 repetitions. That gives you a total of 12 – 14 total working sets for your chest, which is plenty to see growth. For the chest dip, the form is a little different to a regular dip. When you’re hitting triceps, you want to stay as upright as possible as you go down and as you go back up, that’s how to maximize the dip to target your triceps as much as possible. When targeting the chest, what you actually want to do is lean over forward a bit. This is going to allow you to, again, target the ENTIRE chest, but also place a bit more emphasis on the LOWER CHEST. This paired with the incline dumbbell press allows you to target the entire chest while also putting more emphasis on both the upper and lower portions, which can be difficult to grow.

When I covered the three functions of the chest earlier, I mentioned medial rotation, so with the dip, you’re already in that position of turning your arms in which gives you that medial rotation. If you were to stand up right now and medially rotate your arm, you would feel your chest activate, and then you will also get flexion of the humerus as you press through the movement. However, it will take some practice to perform a chest dip properly. When you get to the top for your chest dip, you have to actually lean forward before returning to the starting position.

Now you might be thinking ‘I can’t even do regular dips correctly, how am I going to do chest dips?’ Well, I have a solution for you! The progression is going to be starting off with some boxes or benches (I’ll discuss how to do this with benches as an example), and what you’re going to do is very simple. You’re going to put two benches right next to each other, and then you’re going to get in the middle between the two benches. This is going to allow you to use your toes if needed to basically put them on the ground to self-spot. To get into position, I recommend going onto your fists, with one fist on each bench and your hands by your sides so that you are mimicking the dip starting position. From this position you’re going to lean forward, and then press back up and repeat for reps. If you get stuck, you can put your toes down before pushing through with your fists to get back to the top.

I don’t recommend putting your hands flat, as it may put too much pressure through your wrists. However, if being on your knuckles hurts or is uncomfortable or you can’t do it, you can actually grab some dumbbells and then hold onto the handles. This makes it almost like you will be in the same position as you are on the dip station holding the handles.

Conclusion

The reason why these are the only two exercises you need to build a bigger chest is because you’re activating the entire chest, you’re able to overload with both movements, and you’re able to progress with both movements. Above all else, while targeting the entire chest, you have the luxury of placing more emphasis on the top portion of your chest for one exercise, and the bottom portion for the other.