Exercise Scientist's Top 5 Chest Exercises

hey folks Dr Mike here for RP strength and today I want to share with you my top five favorite exercises for one of the most important muscles in the human body the anal think wrong video the chest but it's a close second let's get into it folks a big super important reminder these are five of my personal favorite chest exercises that means all of them are really good un strict by mechanical grounds and they've all seen a ton of real life Warfare in the gym and have been vetted and my pecs are okay sort of

kind of big but that doesn't mean they're the only five effective chest exercises it doesn't mean you have to like any of them and there's tons of other literally dozens of other chest exercises out there that are just better for tons of people than these exercises so I want to use these exercises in the technique use as food for thought something to try kind of an all you canate Buffet and I'm like hey I like the general sa chicken but if you see some you know what I'm saying shrimp with lobster sauce you pick that

up too so no wrong answers no right answers just good ideas I think for you guys to consider using that's the best way to take all the stuff in this isn't like a any of the exercise that didn't make the list that doesn't necessarily mean they dog tiar is that a tier anyway aren't dogs fun where was I let's go do more chest stuff all right folks the first exercise and it doesn't mean it's the best this is not a tiered list that I want you guys to consider in your chest training that's super effective

is the dumbbell fly it's simple it doesn't require a lot of equipment and it's technically not a super crazy exercise to execute I've got Max the editor boy here he is the head editor for all the exercise scientist video you guys see so that's all his jokes he actually scripts it out for me as a matter of fact that's not even my real voice as a matter of fact I'm AI generated but it's a good AI isn't it I look real let's get Max to try some dumbbell flies and see how the situation works so

you can do these on an incline I typically do them flat a couple of cues the first thing he's going to do is lie down on the bench and then I'm just going to stare at his bulge and then I'm going to remember we're making a video and I'll stop doing that and cue him for these exercises so he's a super bright kid he's a a competitive bodybuilder he already knows all this stuff so he's one step ahead what he has done is he has taken his shoulder blades and lowered them that pushes his chest

out he's also arched his lower back just a tiny little bit that lets your pecs get exposed to the tension hides your shoulder joints a little bit this will make the exercise on average a little bit more effective for chest hypertrophy and a little bit less annoying for your shoulders his elbows are going to be not locked out but just shy of lock out you can even do flies considerably shy lock out just kind of starts turning into a press at that point so I'd say you know 15° on each arm from lockout is really

good it'll be nice and comfy and then what he's going to do is keeping the same exact elbow angle he is going to push his chest up as he sinks the dumbbell slowly and gently to as deep of a stretch that he is comfortable with that he still feels strong in his pecs if you don't go super low and get a deep stretch right here through the chest you can go lower he's going to pause here comedically we could just have him do this for the next half hour but in real life a one or

two second pause and then all the way back up so he's going to come down a little bit slow maybe a little faster than that and then he's going to pause for 1 or two seconds and you're going to come back up you're not exploding out of that movement that's a lot of tension in a very exposed position so you're going to come down kind of like at this rate one or two seconds of deep stretch and then come back up that's how you do the exercise give us a couple more Reps for demo very

good big chest sink and then up and then one more big chest sink and then up perfect you can go ahead and rack a couple of uh kind of questions here that we get every now and again is where should my arm angle be am I flying back here or am I flying down here the answer is kind of whatever feels best for your pecs you feel the most tension and burn in them and doesn't feel weird on your shoulders or elbows for most people it's going to be a little a little bit below that

parallel position right here some people like to go nice and high some people feel better down here no wrong answers all right folks our second exercise for chest and my top five list is the camber bar bench press the camper bar is a rare bar it's actually really cheap you can get online for like 250 bucks there's a cool website called Google where you can find out where that's going to happen every now and again folks ask me where I got it and I'm like I Googled it I just don't even remember I Google it

again Google shows me the bar again a few Outlets push this out it's like 250 bucks that's kind of a lot of money but if you have a gym owner friend and you train at the gym you can say hey can we get one of these he goes why first of all you can use this bar for squats for good mornings nice easy hand position leverages you forward all awesome things you can use it for bent row to get that extra super crazy Crunch at the top range of motion wonderful you can use it for

lunges it's better at balancing than a straight bar the whole nine yards but for pressing be it flat or incline the camard bar press allows you to get a humongous stretch that's impossible with a regular barbell because you descend to below hand position to below your chest we know from lots of studies now and lots of real world experience that a deep stretch under high tension is probably one of the best ways to grow muscle the cambered bar bench press does exactly that but you have to respect the exercise it is not the safest position

in the world it's not dangerous but you have to be careful so when we're doing this exercise we're going to be lowering the weight under control and then slowing down the lowering process towards the bottom you're going to go as deep as you possibly can until things just aren't moving anymore and then when you come up you're going to come up not with an explosion but you're going to come up nice and slow just like I tell the girls I'm with you're not going to feel an explosion but I've been called slow by lots of

teachers and friends I made the friends part up the camer to our bench press Max is going to be arching his back a little bit pinching his shoulder blades together lifting his chest as he moves down in this exercise he's going to let his elbows travel free if it feels better for them to come up no worries if it feels better for them to be tight in the body also no worries everything in between is good as well as he comes down he's going to lift his chest up to meet the bar touch in around

the nipple line he's going to pause for a second this is a big deal and he's going to come back up Max rack the ship for just a second let me wrap a little bit about the pause you technically do not have to pause in the cab of our bench press but we're going to like you to pause ideally for two reasons one is if you quick reverse at the bottom in an ultra stretch super heavy load position you might have a good time you might have a bad time injury-wise it's really unlikely to get

hurt but the magnitude of effect for injury is so nasty and large you might just want to not do that so you want to pause maybe for a little bit of injury prevention potentially the other good reason to pause now that we have one reason we layer another one on top and that reason is muscles when they are Contracting at a lengthened stretched position trigger more muscle growth for themselves than if they're Contracting really hard at a more shortened position when we're down there we can hold the bar at chest level not sinking it in

so you're still Contracting fully isometrically at the bottom for an extra second that's one more second of that contraction in a deeply stretch position that's just more free growth so if we're getting more growth and we're getting less injury probability man that's like uh one of my garage sales you never know what you're going to get but it's probably all covered in I'll cut that one out myself all right uh couple more reps here good controlled motion nice touch and then up very good big chest lift your chest as you come down for that extra

stretch come back up and if he was less flexible maybe stop right there he could only get to there no problem there's not some kind of Magical Mystery thing that happens all the way down Max can you do a thing where you come down almost all the way and then uh just tilt your shoulders forward some people will do that just to get to the bottom first of all it's not so kind to the shoulders second of all your chest isn't even pre-stretched anymore you're just doing the exercise for Vibes it doesn't matter if you

go all the way down or not what matters is you challenge your muscles so that crazy deep psychotic stretch if that means you go all the way down great if it doesn't no big deal go ahead and rack [Music] beautiful all right that was fun on to the [Music] next all right exercise number three my favorites is the incline barbell press I've done this with a close grip I've done it with a medium grip I've done it with a wide grip all are super awesome the wide grip will hit a bit more chest the medium

grip kind of hits everything the close grip hits a little bit more triceps no wrong answers the incline barbell press also can be done in a variety of inclines if you have the setup in a commercial gym where it's just one incline that's good enough if you have a bench and a rack like we have you could do low incline medium Incline High incline no wrong answers the technique here is pretty straightforward you're going to bring the barbell out and then as you come down with the barbell you're going to T try to touch right

around your clavicles you can touch a little bit higher on your chest if the clavicle touching is a little bit discomforting for your shoulders no wrong answers there just touch where it's comfy I wouldn't say touch below the nipple line in most cases sometimes that makes it easier sometimes it makes it more awkward but it misses an opportunity to really stretch the chest out by touching a little bit higher so it's say touch as high as you're comfortable with gentle touch pause for a second then come back up on almost every single repetition as far

as elbow position goes whatever feels natural is a really really good idea let's uh take a look at Max guide him through some the training here and see if we can get some more pointers going you guys will notice that Max is doing something we do on all chest exercises his chest is up his back is Arch his shoulder blades are pinched backward to elevate that chest he's going to come down under control normal speed like you would do and training Max very good gentle paw at the top and all the way up and again

gentle paw at the top and all the way up your own body proportions will dictate if you're a a person that presses straight up or if you're a person that presses up and back give us an up and back look really quick Max so up and back just like that some people will feel super stable and really good in that up and back position some straight on no right answers here whatever feels good for you give them that a [Music] shot all right exercise number four for my personal favorites list is the deficit push-up there

are many sorts of blocks and positions and setups you can use in the gym to create a deficit and any deficit is better than none so if you only have 25 lb plates and it's an inch and a half no big deal I've lived for years with something that's an inch and a half and well I still have a wife though my lawyer says that's technically not true through anyway the deeper the deficit to the point that you get an incredibly Ultra challenging stretch the better there is a Temptation here with deficit push-ups to let

the hips sag down and if they sag down and your genitals touch the ground before your chest does it's giving your genitals a good workout but what about your chest plus you probably give yourself several genital workouts a week or a day or an hour if you're probably most of you seeing this every hour keep the hips up it looks like your butt is pushed up and it's exactly the thing and you'll have people tell you who you never asked for their advice you know you need to keep your back straight and push-ups and I

got a real fun thing to ask them back if you want to try it it's why they don't have any answers well that's just how I learned it back for my 1976 gym class instructor who was great when he was instructed gym class and even better the locker room deal with that memory in your spare time we're staying stable the butt is staying elevated the chest is the first thing to touch the ground we're going to stop with a gentle pause and come back up and if you want to make this exercise extra challenging and

you're particularly strong don't go all the way to lock out every single time go 2third of the way to lock out and then come back down down slow up fast every single time all right right so max you're going to want to look forward because otherwise you're going to get to make out with the ground and I noticed that looking forward also postures the chest up putting it a little bit of a better position notice his butt is up hey man you're supposed to do that with a flat back don't you know that in any

case go ahead and start doing these push-ups for us nice slow descent touching the chest to the ground and coming all the way up and a nice slow descent looking forward the entire time this is excellent pause for a second I got something to talk about a a question you might get is where am I like lowering myself down to try a lower down when you go real far forward and try one when you go real far back give give that a shot so Max could could use this kind of creativity to interpret the exercises

see how much farther he's coming his hands are way behind his shoulders okay come back up and then the other one is you basically the opposite where you come in uh and your hands are a little bit forward of your shoulders very good and then do the normal method that you've been doing this entire time perfect and all the way up and rack very good guys the correct answer to this is they're all three correct just slightly different variations and as far as the hand positioning is concerned you can go closer you can go wider

you can flare your elbows out you can tuck your elbows in and everything in between as long as you're getting a good stretch as long as you're getting a lot of tension a nice burn a an awesome pump after each set and your joints feel great there are like 16 different mini variations in here that you can use and then you can do one of these different variations every few months in your training get really strong at one switch out get really strong switch out and at the end of the day you're still not going

to have anyone to call a friend but you'll have a big chest so the friends are incoming real soon training for muscle growth is never going to be the [Music] same all right folks number five the final list for me of my favorite chest exercises is the machine chest press one of my absolute personal favorites is by the Atlantis corporation which is headquartered out of an abandoned Grecian city that was over by waves and has advanced technology I don't understand how the international shipping works on that but it sure got here in prim and proper

condition you don't have to have an Atlantis press ideally you should you can do this a lot on other chess press machines let's figure out how to use the chess press machine to your best absolute Advantage all right folks the first thing about a chess machine setup is choosing where to put that uh bottom part of that seat for you you don't want to come up so high that you have to reach super low at the bottom of the press you don't have want to go so low that you're kind of doing some kind of

guillotine skull crusher situation so for most people going kind of right into their armpit height for that bar path is probably pretty good so if the handles are anywhere kind of close to armpit level you're winning and you're good to go and you're going to know what feels best just by trying it with a couple of different settings figuring out what is really really good some chest machines start at the top a lot of them most of them start at the bottom so you're going to crawl into the machine if you can't if you're thicky

thicky like me and you can't get in there the atlanti has a push plate so go ahead and push that it actually pushes up this whole apparatus for you let go of your hands really quick it's magic so you can push up then grab and go a lot of machines don't have this so you'll have to do a little bit of tucking in uh which I've tucked in a few times if you know what I mean go ahead and put your hands there as for all of these excises so far hand grip is dealer's Choice

it can be closer it can be wider at lantis is baller cuz they have up grips and lower grips it really doesn't matter what body type you are the Atlantis chest press is going to do you a really rock solid so go ahead and unrack that situation there on the plate perfect he's going to come all the way down and he's going to wait 1 to two seconds at the very bottom tensing his chest the entire time he's not unloading it he's there and he's going to slowly come back up converge come back down under

control one or two seconds of rest and as you notice go ahead and uh again very good the Atlantis design is cool because the handles come back and it stretches your packs out even more at the bottom if your chest press machine does this you're going to have big pecs in no time same identical cues as for every other chest exercise we've done today big chest Arch lower back shoulder blades chest up controlled on the way down pause and then nice and quick on the way up this is the path to Mega gains through machines

you guys thought Terminator was going to come kill us all in the future instead we get exercise machines so we can have more sex with people at the club is that where people meet to have sex with each other we wouldn't know all right folks that's our top five list remember these are five of my favorite my favorite chest exercis and that doesn't mean they're magical or super effective that means they're pretty damn good there's tons of other great options try these try a bunch of different exercises tons of other awesome Fitness influencers God to

can't believe I'm saying that phrase out loud in YouTube giving great advice Milo Wolf Dr pack Mano henselman Jeff Nipper the list is very long give those channels a view see what they're doing for chest and ask is my chest bigger than theirs I'm kidding uh but on a serious note if the exercise doesn't mess with your joints much if you get awesome pumps from it if you can feel deep tension if you can get a burn from higher reps it's the right answer slowly progress in loads and reps over weeks and weeks and when

one of these exercises or if you're using two of them at a time get a little bit stale for you just trade in some other ones from this list or any other list see how they feel get a little stronger for reps when they feel stale trade those out and over years and years you can make steady consistent awesome gains in chest size and eventually when your chest gets big enough um I don't really know what happens but probably something great see you guys next time [Music]