How to Build A Muscular Chest With or Without A Gym Membership
Upper body workouts using free weights, bodyweight, dumbbells and bands
A strong, muscular chest is often the calling card of fitness prowess.
Not only will big pecs fill your t-shirt, but it’ll also give you incredible pushing power and upper body strength.
Now, you might think that you must have access to a gym to achieve sculpted, armour-plated pecs, but this isn’t true. Whilst access to free weights can certainly help, it’s possible to build an incredible physique using resistance bands, dumbbells or even your body weight.
In this article, we’ll look at the best chest workouts for strength and size using free weights, bodyweight, resistance bands and dumbbells that you can do in the gym or from the comfort of your home.
Are you ready to build a bigger chest?
Good, let’s get started.
How to Warm-up
The first part of any great workout is your warm-up, so this is where we will start. Whether you’re training in the gym, at home, in the park or a hotel room you’ll want to spare 5–20 minutes to get warmed up.
Not only will these prepare your body mentally and physically for your workout, improving performance but it’ll also reduce your risk of injury.
An effective warm-up can be broken down into 3 stages:
Stage 1: Pulse Raising
The first thing you want to do is raise your heart rate and get your body warmed up. If you’re in the gym then the treadmill, rower, elliptical or bike is great.
If you’re at home then gentle do some jogging on the spot, star jumps and other full-body movements.
Start gently and slowly raises the intensity, you want to do this for 5–10 minutes and should be able to maintain a conversation throughout.
Stage 2: Dynamic Stretching
Next up is the mobility section of the warm-up.
You must avoid static stretching (stretches held in place) as this has been shown to reduce strength when done before working out.
Instead, a dynamic stretch or mobility drill will move you through a range of motion to actively prepare your body for exercise. The following mobility drills will prepare your whole body to workout and can be used before doing any bodyweight workout.
- Lunge with overhead reach: 5 reps each side
- Standing walkouts: 10 reps
- Press-ups from the knees: 10 reps
- Glute bridges: 10 reps (skip to 1:20 in the video for explanation)
- Hip rotations: 10 reps each side (you can do this one standing, you don’t have to walk like in the video)
- Forward leg swings: 10 reps each side
- Side leg swings: 10 reps each side
- Lateral squats: 10 reps
If for your pulse raiser you did something like cycling where the upper body is not engaged, then you could also add 10 reps of both shoulder shrugs and arm circles to the list above.
Go through each exercise in a controlled manner thinking about your form as you perform each movement and paying attention to your body.
Stage 3: Workout Specific Muscle Activation
Finally, you want to end your warm-up with some workout specific muscle activation which will prepare your body for the exercise you’re about to do.
This will vary depending on the workout and exercises you’ll be doing. However, the goal is to prepare your body for the movement patterns and difficulty of the exercises you’ll be doing in your workout.
If you’re doing a free weights workout you might start off lifting just the bar and slowly building up to your working weight. For example:
- Warm-up set 1 = empty bar
- Warm-up set 2 = 50% of working weight
- Warm-up set 3 = 70% of working weight
- Warm-up set 4 = 90% of working weight
Rest 1 min between each warm-up set and then 3 minutes before your first ‘work’ set.
If on the other hand, you’re doing bodyweight exercises, then you’ll want to warm up using an easier version of the bodyweight exercises you’ll be doing.
In this case, you might do the following as a warm-up:
- Press-ups with hands on the wall
- Press-ups with hands elevated
- Press up from the knees
- Full press-ups
Notice how each exercise is an easier version of what you will be doing in your workout, this is because you want to prepare your body for the movement pattern you’re going to be doing without fatiguing yourself before you start.
If you’re doing a dumbbell workout you would follow the pattern of the free weight warm-up and if you’re doing a resistance band workout then you’ll do the same as a bodyweight warm-up but will gradually increase the resistance instead of changing the exercise.
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You’ll want to try and do all 3 warm-up stages.
However, if you’re in a tight spot you can get away with just the muscle activation stage but may want to add a few extra sets so you warm-up more gradually.
The Best Chest Workouts
What follows are chest focused workouts you can do wherever you are. Each workout has been designed to hit the whole chest and will be suitable for the majority of people.
Free Weight Chest Workout
- Barbell bench press: 3 sets x 6–8 reps
- Incline dumbbell press: 3 sets x 6–8 reps
- Weighted dips: 3 sets x 8–10 reps
- Cable crossovers: 3 sets x 10–12 reps
Bodyweight Chest Workout
- Press-ups: 3 sets x 10–12 reps
- Incline press-ups (feet elevated): 3 sets x 10–12 reps
- Close grip press ups: 3 sets x 10–12 reps
- Press up slide flys: 3 sets x 12–15 reps
Resistance Band Chest Workout
- Band press-ups: 3 sets x 10–12 reps
- Band incline press: 3 sets x 10–12 reps
- Band flys: 3 sets x 12–15 reps
- Band crossovers: 3 sets x 12–15 reps
Dumbbell Chest Workout
- Flat dumbbell bench press: 3 sets x 6–8 reps
- Incline dumbbell bench press: 3 sets x 6–8 reps
- Dumbbell flys: 3 sets x 10–12 reps
Post-Workout Cool Down Routines
Post-workout it’s important to set aside some time to at least stretch the muscles used if not do a full-body stretch.
This helps to maintain or increase flexibility; reduce muscle soreness and help you cool down post-workout.
In my opinion, these follow-along stretch videos from Tom Merrick of Bodyweight Warrior are a fantastic place to get started:
Summing Up
Now you have no excuse when it comes to building a bigger, strong chest.
Whether you’re going to use the free weight, body weight, resistance band or dumbbell workout there is something for everyone.
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