This At-Home Chest Workout Will Help You Build Push-Up Strength

If you’re looking to build serious pushing strength, an at-home chest workout might be just what you need to add to your exercise routine.

Chest workouts target your pectoral muscles—both your pectoralis major (a large, fan-shaped muscle that spans your chest) and your pectoralis minor (the smaller muscle that sits underneath it). Your pec muscles help you perform pressing movements like push-ups and bench presses, and they also play a role in efficient breathing, as SELF previously reported.

Working your pec muscles is important for anyone trying to get stronger, but you don’t need to go overboard by cranking out tons of exercises and reps to make that happen, ACE-certified personal trainer Sivan Fagan, owner of Strong with Sivan in Baltimore, tells SELF. In fact, this at-home chest workout she created will challenge your pec muscles and your triceps—the muscles in the back of your upper arms, which aid in pushing movements—with just three exercises.

“This workout is short, but it hits everything you want to hit if you’re looking to target your chest,” she says.

The following at-home chest workout targets your pushing muscles in different ways, Fagan says. First, you’ll start with a dead-stop push-up, a challenging push-up variation that takes momentum out of the equation, which forces your pushing muscles to really fire in order to get the job done. Then you’ll go into the chest fly, a pec-specific exercise that doesn’t call on your triceps for extra help. By the time you get to the last exercise, the alternating chest press, your pec muscles will be wiped, so even lighter dumbbells on this classic move will start to feel super challenging.

The goal of this workout is to help you build strength and muscle, so you’ll be working with a lower rep range than you may be used to. While super-low reps (think one to five) are effective at building strength, moving up slightly on the rep range (think 8 to 12), can help you get stronger while adding muscle, says Fagan. (Higher rep ranges, like 15 and above, are helpful in building muscular endurance.)

The average exerciser looking to get stronger should aim to work their chest muscles twice a week, Fagan says. Since this is a chest-specific workout, you can do this on one of those days and pair it with a full-body or upper-body workout that includes a bit of chest work for the other day.

Before you get started with this routine, it’s a good idea to warm up your muscles first. Dynamic moves like the dead-bug and the T-spine rotation—which get your core firing and mobilize your upper thoracic spine—can be useful in a pre-workout warm-up. You should also make a point to stretch your pecs after the routine, as with the doorway pec stretch.

The Workout

What you’ll need: An exercise mat for comfort, and a pair or two of dumbbells. You may need to use a lighter pair for the chest fly than the chest press.

The Exercises

Dead-stop push-up
Chest fly
Alternating chest press

Directions

You’ll do this workout in straight sets, meaning you will perform all your sets of one exercise for the prescribed number of reps before moving on to the next exercise. Do the moves in the following order.
Dead-stop push-up: Complete as many reps as possible. Rest 1 to 2 minutes. Do 3 sets total.
Chest fly: Complete 8 to 12 reps. Rest 1 to 2 minutes. Do 3 sets total.
Alternating chest press: Complete 8 to 10 reps on each side. Rest 1 to 2 minutes. Do 3 sets total.

Demoing the moves below are Erica Gibbons (GIF 1), a California-based personal trainer and graduate student becoming licensed as a marriage and family therapist; Nathalie Huerta (GIF 2), a coach at The Queer Gym in Oakland, California; and Harlan Kellaway (GIF 3), a trans bodybuilder based in Queens, New York City.

Kelsey McClellan

1

Dead-Stop Push-Up

Start in a high plank with your palms flat, hands shoulder-width apart, shoulders stacked directly above your wrists, legs extended behind you, and your core and glutes engaged.

Bend your elbows and lower your chest to the floor.

When your chest hits the floor, raise your hands up so your chest is resting on the floor. Place your hands back down, and push through the palms of your hands to straighten your arms. This is 1 rep.

Perform as many reps as possible while maintaining proper form.

By picking up your hands, you’re breaking the momentum at the bottom that can make a push-up easier. “It forces you to generate a lot of tension all over your body to maintain that proper form, then you use all of your muscles to come back up,” says Fagan. If dead-stop push-ups are too difficult, you can perform regular push-ups or modified push-ups, where you place your hands on an elevated step or box.
Kelsey McClellan

2

Chest Fly

Lie faceup on an exercise mat, with your feet flat on the floor and knees bent. Hold a dumbbell in both hands directly above your chest, palms facing in. This is starting position.

Slowly lower the weights down to floor, holding your arms in an arc (as if you were hugging a tree), until the backs of your upper arms hit the floor.

Maintaining that arc, return your arms back to starting position. This is 1 rep.

Complete 8 to 12 reps.

The chest fly really homes in on your pectoral muscles, since it doesn’t recruit your triceps—which fire during pushing-based movements—for help, says Fagan.
Katie Thompson

Alternating Chest Press

Lie faceup with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Hold a weight in each hand with your palms facing your legs and your elbows on the floor bent at 90 degrees so that the weights are in the air.

Press one weight toward the ceiling, straightening your elbow completely and keeping your palm facing your legs.

Slowly bend your elbow and lower it back down to the floor.

Now, do the same thing with your other arm. This is 1 rep.

Complete 8 to 10 reps.

Because you’re working one arm at a time in this exercise, it helps to improve the strength imbalances that many people have, says Fagan.

Source: https://www.self.com/gallery/at-home-chest-workout