To train the chest completely, we usually three main parts of the pecs – the upper, middle, and lower chest muscles. The distinction between targeting each of the parts relies on your body position when performing exercises such as the chest press. Indeed, the chest press (whether using a barbell or dumbbells) is the main exercise most often used to build a big chest. Besides all that, the coupon page at Money Off Supps can really help you with your diet plan with some amazing deals on the supplements.
But what do you do at home when you don’t have the weights but still want to train your chest and do it effectively? It’s not easy but it is possible. We’re not making any excuses to skip working out, and the lack of equipment has never stopped us, so let’s get down to it.
In order to choose the right exercises that you can do at home with your own body weight, we have to understand how targeting each part of the chest actually works. You see, it’s all about the position of your hands and the degree at which you press the weight. So if you’re doing the flat bench press, you’re targeting mainly mid-chest. If you’re doing the incline bench press, you’re targeting the upper chest, and you’re targeting the lower chest with the decline bench press.
Push-Ups
The bodyweight exercise for the chest is of course the push-up. You’re targeting the same muscles when performing this exercise as you would with the bench press. And it’s not difficult to see, there’s the same arm movement as you push your own weight off the floor as it is when pressing a barbell. If you need to make it harder, you can put a heavy backpack on your back, so this exercise can be as effective as you need it to be. You could check Steel Supplements’ article to learn more regarding the benefits of a push-up, especially for an outer chest.
Decline Push-Ups
To target more of the upper chest muscles, you will have to elevate your legs on a bench or against a wall and perform the decline push-ups. The arms movement, in this case, is the same as with the incline bench press, and you will notice that it’s much harder to perform push-ups this way, just as you can press only lighter weights on an incline bench. The more you elevate your legs, the more load goes higher up the chest, and the more shoulders are engaged (handstand push up).
Incline Push-Ups
Finally, we have an incline push-ups. You may think this exercise is way too easy (obviously, you can press the most weight on a decline bench too), and you’d be right. However, keep in mind that if you perform incline push-ups after having complete previous exercises your muscles will already be exhausted and it will be challenging enough. In addition, you can lift one leg up to destabilize your body and engage the core, or use a heavyweight backpack.
Complete Workout
So now that we have the tree exercises required to train your chest without any equipment, we can make a complete workout of them. The protocol is simple – we’ll perform all three exercises in a circuit to fail.
Start with the decline push-ups with your legs elevated on a bench or against the wall and do as many reps as you can. Then, move on to the regular push-ups till failure. Finally, finish the circuit off with incline push-ups. Repeat the circuit 3-4 times or as much as you can.