The Best Bodyweight Chest Exercises

Don’t think you can build a big chest doing bodyweight exercises? Think again. There many great exercises that you can do with just your bodyweight and some of our equipment. Here are our best exercises to build up your chest using just your own bodyweight.

1) Press Ups and Variations

There is no other exercise we could have started with than the humble press up. It is easily modified to be made easier or harder. By changing your body’s angle, you can place more or less emphasis on your upper body. Placing your feet higher, in our Power Straps, places more of your bodyweight on your arms, increasing difficulty.

Press ups can be done with your hands on the floor, or on our Parallettes.

There are variations like Archer Press Ups, which place more emphasis on one side. This increases the difficulty.

2) Power Strap Chest Press and Fly Variations

The chest press is similar to press ups but using Power Straps or Rings. The additional of the Straps increases muscle activation as you must stabilise your body. Again there are variations like the Archer Press or Close Grip Press that can increase the difficulty.

To make the Chest Press even more difficult, you can place your feet on a box or bench so your feet are higher than your hands. This form of bodyweight chest exercise will place a lot of stress on the chest and triceps.

3) Dips on Rings/Parallettes

Ring Dips are one of the best advanced chest exercises, here’s an in-depth look on why. In brief, having to stabilise your body and squeeze your arms in to your body increases muscle activation. Dips in general can be a great way to work the lower chest, make sure you lean your body forward slightly to increase chest activation.

4) Dynamic Band Flys

Our Dynamic Bands are sheathed resistance bands. They apply an increasing amount of force as they extend. This means at the point of maximum muscle contraction the resistance is also maximum – increasing your gains. By utilising resistance bands into your training regime you can quickly add size and strength to muscle bodies.

Flys are one of the best chest exercises, as they work the full range of motion of the pecs. The stretch and squeeze movement is key for muscle building, which is why the fly is so good.