Stick to stable exercises with lots of ROM, that are limited by the target muscle group and that you can load properly. Cambered bar bench press, dips, push-ups, cable crossovers, barbell bench pressing and dumbbell bench pressing are good options, in descending order of effectiveness. If your goal is chest growth, you’re likely best off skipping the low to high cable fly. Read on to find out why!

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Flat/Incline Cambered Bar Bench Press

For the chest specifically, I’m not sure I can think of many better exercises than the cambered bar bench press. Certainly, you could argue that a full ROM cable crossover could be better, but as far as compound exercises are concerned, the cambered bar bench press stands in a class of its own.

The cambered bar bench press has one feature that makes it incredibly useful for chest training. Specifically, the middle of the bar has a camber. This means two things. First, you have to grab the bar wide. This makes the movement much more likely to be limited by chest strength than triceps strength. For chest development, this is a good thing, since we want the chest to be the limiting factor. So far, so good, but why bother with the cambered bar if we could just do wide grip bench instead? Well, the cambered bar offers you a LOT of extra ROM at the chest. In fact, I’ve never met anyone besides myself (admittedly, that’s not too many people) who could comfortably touch the bar to their chest with a cambered bar. That is to say – most people get a FULL chest stretch when using the cambered bar for benching AND because of the wide grip, the movement is likely to be limited by chest strength.

In case you couldn’t tell, I think the Cambered Bar Bench Press is a great chest exercise. That being said, it does have two limitations. First, you don’t get the same chest ROM at the top as you would with a close grip bench press. Secondly, because of the wide grip (which means the chest is likely the limiting factor), the cambered bar bench press is likely only about as good or slightly worse for the triceps than a close grip bench press.

Push-Ups/Dips

In a very similar vein to the cambered bar, I think deep push-ups & dips are a phenomenal chest exercise. Many of the same points apply as for the cambered bar, though they have one advantage over the cambered bar, and one disadvantage in comparison. The advantage is that they can be used with a narrow grip, making them a great all-around pushing exercise (for your triceps AND chest), provided you don’t have a clear weak link.

However, the significant disadvantage push-ups suffer from is that they are a pain to load heavily. Thankfully, if you’re truly doing a full ROM, they can be quite hard, but, for very strong lifters, doing sets of less than 30 reps is almost certainly going to require additional weight. There are a few options for loading them, but most of them require a training partner or additional equipment.

Cable Crossover

As far as chest isolation exercises go, the cable crossover reigns supreme. There are a few reasons for this. First, the cable crossover allows for a FULL ROM. When doing bench presses, you’ll rarely get a true, full chest ROM, provided you’re healthy enough to get more ROM. This is because when you lockout, your chest is still quite far from being fully shortened, and, depending on how wide you grip, the bar you use, your arms’ length and how much you arch, you could still be far from reaching a full chest stretch at the bottom of a bench press. Long story short – a bench press rarely gives you a full chest ROM.

Enter the cable crossover. The cable crossover can be done for a full ROM through tension (unlike pec decks and dumbbell flies) and has a reasonably good resistance curve throughout the whole ROM (unlike dumbbell flies, whose partial ROM is made worse by the fact that a good chunk of it has minimal force production requirements).

Barbell/Smith Close Grip Bench Presses & Dumbbell Presses

As a slight downgrade from Cambered Bar Benching/Deep Push-Ups, I think that Barbell/Smith Close Grip Benching and DB Presses are all reasonably good options. Unfortunately, some of these options (this will be individual dependent) usually don’t allow for quite as much of a stretch as the above options. For example, for myself, a close grip bench press doesn’t allow for nearly as much of a chest stretch as a cambered bar bench press. However, dips allow me to get as deep of a stretch as is conceivable. Thus, how much ROM these exercises allow for is much more hit-or-miss depending on your anatomy.

Shoulder width benching and dips have a few advantages over wider grip presses. They allow for more ROM for your front delts, triceps and chest than wide grip would. While this confers these exercises a potentially greater overall hypertrophic effect, the closer grip does come at a disadvantage. Indeed, taking a shoulder width grip makes the press a little bit easier on your chest, but harder on your triceps and front delts. As such, it becomes more likely that the triceps and front delts could be a limiting factor before the chest becomes one, which is problematic if your goal is maximising chest growth.

Barbell/Smith Wide Grip Presses

The last (in terms of effectiveness) group of exercises I would consider including in a chest growth program is wider grip pressing and dips. I’ve alluded to my issues with these exercises several times, but the wider grip does restrict ROM to a somewhat great extent, depending on other factors such as arm length etc.. While it does come at the benefit of making the chest the unequivocal limiting factor, I think there are enough other chest exercises that offer a more complete ROM that are also limited by chest strength that resorting to wider grip benching for maximum chest growth is rarely my first thought.

What exercises are no good?

Low to High Cable Flies

I’m not a huge fan of this exercise. When you deconstruct what you actually get out of it, you’ll realize how mediocre it is. The two primary functions you use during this exercise are shoulder flexion (raising your upper arm in front of you) and shoulder horizontal adduction (bringing your arms together in front of you like in a chest fly). So far, so good. What makes the exercise bad? The ROM you get for both of those functions is poor. For shoulder flexion, the most ROM most people get is perhaps ½ of full ROM. For horizontal adduction, it’s even worse than that. Another issue I take with the exercise is the fact that shoulder flexion is in no small part done by your front delts. Thus, it is not uncommon for your front delts to give out before your chest, making the exercise less effective for your chest.

That wraps up the chest. More muscle group exercise selection articles on the way!

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