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Optimize Your Chest Workout: Ranking Exercises from Worst to Best

2025-07-05

Athlete displaying strong and defined pectoral muscles

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To build impressive and strong chest muscles, it’s not enough to just lift heavy weights; choosing the right exercises is crucial. But how do you distinguish effective movements from those that are counterproductive or even dangerous? Biomechanics and strength training experts have analyzed and ranked the most common chest exercises. Let’s discover their findings to maximize your gains and avoid injuries.

Criteria for Selecting Effective Exercises

When evaluating a chest exercise, experts consider several essential criteria:

  • Ability to produce results and muscle growth (hypertrophy): The exercise must challenge you enough to stimulate muscle growth and allow progressive overload — meaning the ability to gradually increase weight or repetitions.
  • Strength and multidimensionality: The best exercises contribute not only to muscle building but also to overall strength gains.
  • Safety and injury prevention: It is crucial to prioritize safe options that minimize injury risks, especially to the shoulder and pectoral tendon.
  • Movement stability: Good stability allows targeted muscle fibers to generate more force and better recruitment, without other muscles (like the core) taking over excessively.
  • Resistance curve and continuous tension: The exercise should provide significant tension on the muscle throughout the entire range of motion, especially when the muscle is stretched, ideally delivering a strong contraction and muscle pump sensation.
  • Ease of progression: It should be easy to add weight, reps, or other forms of progressive overload over time.

Exercises to Absolutely Avoid

Let’s start with exercises you should probably remove from your routine because they are ineffective, dangerous, or both:

  • Bench Fly (Dumbbell Chest Fly): Although popular in the past (even Arnold Schwarzenegger liked it), this exercise is considered risky for the anterior shoulder capsule and can increase the risk of pectoral tears due to the extreme arm position without support. Safer alternatives exist.
  • Standing Cable Press: It recruits more of the core than the chest, making it difficult to use heavy enough loads for optimal muscle growth. Stability is a major issue.
  • Incline Bench Press at too steep an angle (50-60 degrees and above): Beyond 50-60 degrees, effort shifts increasingly to the anterior deltoids (shoulders) at the expense of the chest, which is not the main goal. For many body types, the clavicular fibers of the chest are not ideally targeted at steep angles.
  • Squeeze Press (pressing dumbbells together): This exercise is considered ineffective. Trying to contract the chest by squeezing dumbbells together makes no biomechanical sense with free weights since the force is vertical but you try to apply horizontal force, which doesn’t properly engage the chest.
  • Cable Crossover Fly with excessive forward lean: Though often practiced by famous bodybuilders, this variant lacks stability because the weight pulls you backward, forcing other muscles to stabilize and reducing activation of the pectoralis major. The resistance curve is also poor.
  • Hex Press / Plate Press: These variations don’t provide sufficient stretch to the chest, and the triceps tend to take over. They’re awkward and offer limited overload potential.
  • Dumbbell Pullover (without specific adaptation): Although the chest can be activated, many don’t feel it in this area. It’s often more effective for the lats.
  • Guillotine Press (with barbell): Despite good chest stretch, it is considered potentially very dangerous due to the risk of dropping the bar on the neck. Marginal gains aren’t worth the risk.
  • One-Arm Dumbbell Press: Offers no advantage over the two-arm version and makes stability harder, dispersing tension away from the chest.
  • Crossbody Standing Dumbbell Fly: Provides no tension when the chest is stretched and recruits more the anterior deltoids.

Exercises to Consider for Progress

These exercises are solid and can be valuable additions to your routine:

  • Push-ups: Excellent for beginners and improving chest stability. However, for more advanced trainees, they become less challenging as high rep numbers are needed to reach muscle failure, and chest stretch is limited on the floor.
  • Floor Fly: A safer alternative to traditional flies because the floor acts as a safety stop, limiting extreme range of motion and allowing heavier loads for effective eccentric overload.
  • Underhand Dumbbell Bench Press: A great option to target the upper chest, especially if you don’t have access to an incline bench. EMG studies show superior activation of upper chest fibers. Its limitation is difficulty loading heavily due to some stability challenges.
  • Twisting Push-ups: An advanced push-up variation that adds relative adduction, increasing exercise effectiveness and chest tension.
  • Cable Crossover: Excellent for adduction and maintaining peak tension, which is often missing in dumbbell flies. However, the standing version can be unstable with heavy loads.
  • Lying Cable Bench Press: Offers a better force curve and constant resistance throughout the movement thanks to cables, placing significant tension on the chest even at peak contraction.
  • Dumbbell Upper Chest Pullover: If performed with elbows tucked and arms above the head, this exercise can effectively target the upper chest, unlike the classic pullover which targets the lats.
  • Barbell or Dumbbell Bench Press: The reference exercise for progressive overload, strength, and hypertrophy of the chest. The choice between barbell and dumbbells depends on preference: dumbbells allow more adduction and can be easier on the shoulders, while barbells allow heavier loads for pure strength.
  • Incline Bench Press at 30-45 degrees: The ideal angle to target the upper chest without over-recruiting anterior deltoids. A lower angle is preferable to a steeper one.
  • Guillotine Press (with dumbbells): A safer version of the barbell guillotine press, allowing better chest stretch with flared elbows, but still requires shoulder tolerance.
  • Smith Machine Press: Often underrated, the Smith machine is effective for muscle building. It offers a stable movement, allows pushing to failure safely, and is a great alternative to free weights.
  • Pec Deck Machine (Butterfly machine): Although the machine locks you in a fixed movement path, it provides good stability and deep chest stretch with high tension. Nassim Sahili considers it good if well adjusted and providing good sensation, though he prefers cables for their flexibility.

Top Choices for Maximum Growth

These exercises are at the top of the list for chest growth and strength, according to experts:

  • Dips: Often considered the best version of push-ups, dips allow enormous chest stretch and easy progressive overload (with added weight). By leaning forward, they better target the chest than the triceps. They can activate virtually all fibers of the pectoralis major, including clavicular fibers. While some may feel shoulder or sternum discomfort, mastering this movement is key for massive chest gains.
  • Heavy One-Arm Cable Crossover: This cable crossover variant offers much better stability than the two-arm version, allowing heavier loads and targeting full chest adduction even beyond the midline. It’s recommended to prioritize this as a key exercise for full adduction.
  • Slightly Declined Press (Dumbbell or Barbell Decline Press): A slightly declined position puts the chest in the best anatomical position for activation, potentially engaging all fibers. Some consider it one of the best isolated chest movements.
  • Machine Chest Press: A good seated press machine provides deep stretch, high tension, and is very easy to progressively overload. It also allows pushing to failure safely. Some experts consider it the best overall exercise for chest muscle building if the machine is well designed. Convergent machines are particularly appreciated for continuous tension and optimized resistance curve, reducing involvement of other muscles like the anterior deltoid.
  • Seated Cable Pec Flies: This seated variant of cable flies eliminates balance and stability issues, ensuring all tension is applied directly to the chest. It’s the preferred isolation movement for some.

Conclusion: The Winning Combination

Ultimately, the best chest exercise is often not a single movement, but a strategic combination. For example, pairing a foundational press like bench press (dumbbell or barbell) with an adduction exercise like heavy one-arm cable crossover or seated cable flies allows you to target the muscle from different angles and functions.

Remember that consistency, progressive overload, and listening to your body are just as important as exercise choice. Adapt these recommendations to your body type, sensations, and equipment access. And for precise tracking of your workouts and progress, tools like the GymLog app can be valuable, offering a comprehensive dashboard and even an AI assistant for personalized advice to stay motivated and reach your goals faster.

Prioritize science and efficiency for lasting gains. Have a great workout!