What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
So I'm sure you've been told to do lots of incline bench press if you want to build your
upper chest.
Of course, if you want to get that lower chest you're going to want to make sure you do lots
of decline bench presses as well, and you don’t want to forget the all-important flat
bench press to work the overall development of your chest.
And of course, don’t forget to do dips because dips are a great way to build your chest.
Now that's all great, but what if you've already done all those exercises?
You continue to do them, but you're not happy with your chest.
Today I want to show you 8, non-bench, chest building alternatives that you can start using
to get better results from your chest training.
So first, it makes sense to look at what might be wrong with the other exercises that you
have been doing, and why they're not working for you.
The fact is, you can look really easily and see that when we do, say, a dip here, look
at the position of the hands.
At no point do they get closer to each other.
They're fixed on the handles, and you're simply moving up and down.
No matter what variation of the bench-press I'm doing, whether it be incline, flat, or
decline my hands don’t really get that much closer together.
Especially if I'm using a barbell that's literally fixed on the bar.
But even when we do the dumbbell variations we're not getting them anywhere more than
to each other, or meeting each other in the middle.
They're not going across each other.
What I'm going to argue for you is, it's not always about the weight that you're pushing,
but the amount of activation that you're getting.
Simply getting more activation by getting a full chest contraction is going to provide
a much better stimulus for you to start seeing better results, and guess what?
It's going to make those even better.
By the way, I'm going to show you a way you can make your bench-press even better.
I'm going to hold that for the end of the video.
Let's start with our firs exercise.
Let's start with a simple one.
It's a bodyweight exercises that we can all start doing right now, and actually start
feeling the difference.
It's a twisting pushup.
What you'll see here is, we can get that arm more across our body.
Not by changing the position of the hand, or the fact that the arm is actually still
fixed in place on the ground, but by changing the position of our body, in relation to the
arm.
So you can see that a regular pushup here, I'm fixed in space, but with this twisting
pushup I'm actually turning into the arm.
So as I turn in, look what's happening here.
If I hold my arm out in front of me, and I turn my body into it, I've got this relative
adduction.
I've got the crossover that I'm looking for.
You can literally alternate sides, left and right, and feel the difference in the contraction,
and I promise you, if you've struggled to see your chest grow, do these – to at least
get yourself activated and have your chest start working more – and you're going to
see better results from doing them.
The next one here is called the plate squeeze.
This is actually really fun to do.
We can do it either as a chest activator right before the workout, or you could even do it
in drop set fashion after some of those big bench exercises.
Remember, we're not going to abandon them completely.
We're trying to make them work better for you.
In the plate squeeze, what I'm trying to do here is, yes, I'm only getting the plates
to be able to touch in front of me, in the middle, but I'm thinking about trying to push
them through each other.
If I can crush them right into each other that would be ideal.
What we're doing is, we're getting maximum chest activation here because we have this
very strong isometric, and again, the heavier the plates you use, the stronger you're going
to have to push because that weight is going to want to slide and drop down.
For an added challenge, you turn the plates around.
Make sure you use the smooth sides on both and that's going to make you really have to
push hard.
Again, no matter where you program it, this becomes a great option for you to get better
chest activation.
Okay, I kind of lied on the next one here because you do need a bench for this one,
but not to do a bench-press.
We're doing a dumbbell pullover.
Again, you might think "Wait! Dumbbell pullover?
A back exercise?"
No!
It can be a great upper chest exercise because look at how I'm doing it.
The key here is not to pull with your elbows.
You're not trying to lead with your elbows and let your elbows stay flared out on the
sides of your body because that becomes a great lat exercise.
But what I can do is, I can take my hands and squeeze them together.
I'm actually trying to turn them in like this, as I pull down.
So I'm squeezing my hands together, trying to adduct my hands into each other, to pull
the dumbbell forward.
And I don’t come all the way up.
I'm trying to maintain that tension on the upper chest.
That happens in that fully stretched position, and then up, only about 30, or 40 degrees.
If you've never tried this exercise with the intention of using it for your upper chest,
try it.
I promise you guys, you'll be surprised at how much you can recruit the area of the chest
that usually seems to be hard to recruit for a lot of people.
The next exercise up here is a dumbbell floor fly.
Now you're probably saying "But I've done lots of flys before."
But if you're not doing them on the floor you're losing an opportunity to create a stimulus
for more growth.
Here's the deal: when you do an unsupported chest fly on a bench your shoulder becomes
instantly jeopardized, and the health of your shoulder becomes a high risk for doing that
exercise because it's simply too much load for it to handle.
With this arm in this outstretched, unsupported position.
But when we do it on the floor we don’t just get support, and therefore a safer alternative,
but we get a better option for building a bigger chest, and better recruitment.
We know we can still take advantage of the benefit of the fly.
Meaning, the adduction component of the exercise that's lacking in the dip, and the bench-press;
but we can do this here with a heavier weight.
Because we have the floor to absorb our arms on the way down we can eccentrically overload
each, and every rep.
And if we have to, even cheat the dumbbells back up by pressing them to the top, and continue
to work on the eccentric portion of that rep to get better, and better results.
Guys, this one should definitely be in your routine.
Especially if you've been doing the other flys and either hurt yourself doing them,
or you haven't seen the results that you wanted to get from doing them.
The next two exercises up here are going to be in the crossover category.
As you can see, right here on the 3D crossover, we are getting that adduction we are looking
for.
We're going beyond midline, which makes this a great way to get peak contraction of your
chest.
I like this variation because I can actually load up here.
You can see that it's not just my chest that's powering this movement, but I have a lot of
core activation here too, that helps me to drive through.
My hips are rotating as well.
This gives me a chance to do an overloaded crossover.
A heavier version of a crossover.
For all those that say "But Jeff, you need the bench for the heavier weights!
You need the dips for the heavier weights!"
Guys, you can load up any exercise.
If you incorporate your body to allow you to push more weight it's going to allow you
to have the heavy exercise in your arsenal.
This is a great way to do it with a crossover, to get that adduction, and the heavy loading
at the same time.
Now, on the lighter side of things we have the X-crossover.
So we go lighter on this.
The focus here is not to try to move as much weight as possible, but to get that contraction.
Again, this is another one that can be used like the plates we used, as either an activator,
or at the end of a set as a drop set, to try to burn out.
The key here is – what we're actually targeting here – is more of the lower chest.
We can get down on lower chest.
There is such thing as the abdominal head of the pectoralis muscle.
We can get there by letting our hands start high, and then finish low.
Of course they're crossing over each other.
That's the goal to get peak contraction.
But this high, to low works more of the lower chest the same way that a dip works the lower
chest because we know the hands start high, and they wind up going down low as we finish
out the dip.
You want to recreate that here.
But the goal here is – I don’t care what weight you need to use – you need to feel
the contraction.
That is the whole key here, of what this entire video is about.
These are non-bench alternatives and sometimes that means lightening the weight.
But I promise you, the overall end result is better chest development because you've
finally activated muscles you haven't been able to with the other big exercises.
This next one, like the dumbbell upper chest pullover, is going to help us hit that upper
chest.
We know that we're not getting enough of that contraction, and squeeze from the dip, or
even from the incline bench-press.
But here, we can.
The UCV raise allows us to bring that dumbbell up, and do what I always say you should try
to do.
That is, follow the fibers.
You see, the upper chest fibers are going to start here, at our collarbone, and ride
down, in this direction.
So if we can let the dumbbell come up, and across in that direction, then we are following
the fibers.
We're getting a maximum contraction.
We also have that component of getting across our body because the dumbbell allows us to
do that.
Now, you can do this as an alternative with a cable, or a band as well, for a more consistent
resistance throughout the range of motion, but either way, I promise you this is a great
exercise, and can be done anywhere in your chest workout to improve your ability to contract
your chest, and in the long run, get better results from your chest training.
Finally, we have the one that's being called the "Cavaliere Crossover".
I started to do this years ago.
This is now going to leave the delt out of it entirely.
What you're doing here is, you're taking that dumbbell, and you're going to drive it across
your body – as you see – and we're getting that all-important adduction, but we're not
getting the elevation from the UCV raise.
So let's say you still feel that your shoulders are dominating that last movement.
Then this becomes your alternative, here.
You want to make sure, again, you do this exercise – I love doing it as a burnout
– but it doesn’t mean you have to go light here.
You can take a heavy, heavy, heavy dumbbell and drive across your body, and try to hold
it for even a split second on every, single rep to really enhance, and to enforce the
contraction that drove that dumbbell there in the first place.
If you get better at this guys, I promise you, with this, and with all the other exercises
you're going to start seeing better results, and they're going to compliment those even
bigger exercises that haven't been performing for you as well.
Like, the bench-press and the dip.
While we're on the topic of the bench-press and the dip, I promised you I would give you
a tip at the end of the video that would help you to get even more out of those exercises.
This is it.
Don’t think about your hands.
Don’t think about what your hands are holding.
Whether it be the handles on the dip, or the dumbbells in your hands during a press.
You think about your biceps.
If you can take your biceps and squeeze them together in any variation of that bench-press,
or squeeze them together while you're doing the dip; you're going to get way more activation
in your chest, and those exercises are going to become far more productive for you.
Especially as you start to combat them with these exercises.
Guys, it's all about how you do the exercises, not just the ones that you're doing.
A lot of times you might have to check your ego at the door and start going for some of
the lesser known, big exercises to help those big exercises get better, and do more for
you in the long run.
These 8 are some options I want you to start trying.
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Finally, guys, check out any of our newer videos here.
I'm going to link one here for you now to make sure you keep your education going here.
All these videos are meant to help you to learn more about how your body works so you
can get more out of every, single exercise, in every, single workout you do.
All right, guys.
I'll be back here again soon.
See you.