Mine has been cable cross overs, it's been giving me serious activation and fatigue in my chest so I've been using that a lot.

Runner up has been Incline dumbbells with elevated push ups immediately after. What about you?

Up there for me cable cross overs...just added barbell bench press on chest days too. Getting some good gains now!!!!

Love chest days hehehe!!!

For me, I get the best workouts and muscle activation from doing dumbell chest work. Cross overs and flyes are good as well. Barbell bench hits chest and shoulders more than dumbells for me. I occassionally throw it in to change things up as I have been doing dumbell chest work for over 25 years but I have been happy with the results it provides for me.

John

I do barbell bench press, incline dumbell , and decline fly cable on chest day!

One of my favorite exercises for chest are the incline dumbbell presses! it's best really contract the chest when doing this and it gives me a good pump

Well, to be quite honest, its not about feeling the activation and the fatigue unless you are on steroids or you are just maintaining. If you are trying to build muscle and therefore strength, the bench press and the incline press are the best exercises, either with barbell or dumbells. I lean towards the barbells because its easier to progress. Dumbells are fine and you do feel your chest working more, but as I said its not about the feeling. Its about making progress. If you bench press 225 today and 315 in a year, your chest shoulders and triceps will be bigger. Its not possible to not activate the chest when you are lifting heavy. The pecs HAVE to work to get that weight up no matter what. Feeling a muscle and making sure its activated only matters if you are messing with light weights so you are maintaining.

With that said, cable cross overs or dumbell flys are not easy to progress with, because they are light isolation exercises. To be even more honest, you are never going to see any chest development by just doing flys. You will see a lot of development if you only do bench press. And if you do both, your development will come 98% of the bench press and 2% from the flys. If I were to do any type of fly, I would do bodyweight flys.

Kostas

Good ole chest presses and incline presses with db and bb alternating on my routine switch upsI prefer the db for inclines since you can set the bench to 30 degrees as all the bb incline benches I seem to see are set to 45 degrees and non adjustable on the angle. Inclines are my favorite.

Barbell flat bench, barbell incline bench, and wide push-ups do it for me

Thoroughly enjoying the bench press for the first time in my life as I've never really taken it seriously before, but now it's the primary movement for my chest and tris. I really enjoy the fact that I can modify the emphasis on the movement to hit triceps (close grip) or use pause reps to really grind out weak points.

For me I start off with the BB Bench Press, 6 - 8 reps 4 sets with 3 mins rest. I will then proceed alternating between these various pec stimulations:

• Upper chest x2 exercises
• Chest stretch exercises x2
• Inner Range focus chest exercises x1

For me I always proceed with strength followed by activation. Activation and intention IMO are superior to strength when building muscle. I have seen this with not only my own body but also people I have trained. When I train chest I never aim to reproduce the same force curve or movement pattern within the routine. I have to attack the chest in different ways to ensure maximum growth.

Totally agree here. Besides doing DB bench and incline, I like to throw in plate presses, pull-overs, flyes, and decline work so as to hit the chest from all sides and with different movements. Usually I will super-set these to get an extra pump-and-burn.

John

My favorite chest routine that I have been doing here lately is as follows:

Flat barbell bench press: 4 sets of 8-10 reps.

Incline barbell press: 4 sets of 8-10 reps.

Incline dumbbell fly's superset with cable crossovers: 4 supersets of 10-15 reps for each.

I have many chest routines in my arsenal though, this is just one of my favorite ones as of late because the superset of the flys at the end really gives the chest an insane pump!

Here's another favorite of mine:

Incline dumbbell press: 4 sets of 10-12 reps.

Flat dumbbell press: 4 sets of 10-12 reps.

Decline barbell press: 4 sets of 10-12 reps.

Pec deck: 4 sets of 10-15 reps.

Incline hammer strength press: 4 sets of 10-15 reps.

So, let me be clear on this, if I feel a deep burn and a muscle being utlizited, that means the lift isn't doing any good?

No I didnt say that. I said that if you feel a deep burn it doesnt necessarily mean you are stimulating growth on that particular muscle. I get an amazing burn when I carry groceries in the supermarket. My biceps and forearms are pumped up. That doesnt mean they are going to grow. Only way to induce growth is progressive overload. Cable flys are amazing if you can progress with them. But how much can you progress with an isolation exercise? Not much and not fast enough.

I would consider throwing in a chest isolation exercise only if the chest is lagging in relation to other body parts and doesnt look aesthetic. There must always be a reason when you choose to do an isolation movement and it cant be that it "activates" the chest. What you feel is just fatigue which is not always coupled with growth. Key word here is "always".

On fire lately.

The pump and severe muscle soreness (DOMS) aren't necessarily bad (except excessive DOMS is well, excessive), but they also aren't a surefire or only method of determining a good workout or effective stimulation. It's a tricky thing because people will start to train for pain as opposed to training to stimulate growth and performance.

My favourite routine is to super set incline dumbells or bench with incline flys and flat dumbells or bench with flat flys, keeping in a 8-10 rep range with good form will ensure you acheive hypertrophy which is key to building muscle! Here is my chest workout: