When to Perform Decline Push-Ups. Decline push-ups are the best way to target your upper chest using only your bodyweight. Elevating your feet on a platform increases the tension on your upper pecs and anterior deltoid without needing any weights or a bench.
You can do reverse grip flat bench with a wide grip. You can also do incline dumbbells flys. If you have a cable machine try placing the pulleys low and doing cross overs in an upward motion.
The upper chest is typically one of the toughest areas of the upper body to develop. There are various reasons for this, and like most things, there are ways to work around it.
If we're looking at bodyweight exercises, a decline push-up position would train upper chest muscles, while incline push-ups would train lower chest. The incline bench press places the arms at the correct angle to hit the upper chest, but it has some limitations.
Single-arm Dumbbell Press
This is one of the best dumbbell chest exercises that will improve your stabilization strength. Your chest muscles are the main muscle group that is required to perform the single-arm dumbbell press. In addition, this workout targets your triceps, shoulder stabilizers, and your core.
The decline pushup (pretty much equivalent to an incline bench press is a great purely bodyweight progression on the conventional pushup. Due to the decline you're gonna be biasing more upper chest which in general is a less developed area of the chest compared to other portions.
You Don't Train Your Chest Often Enough. Just like we discussed in part 1 of this series, how often you train a muscle group will make a huge impact on how much it grows. Bigger muscles (pecs included) can be trained less frequently, smaller muscles more frequently.
Doing 100 push-ups a day can be an impactful element of your overall strength-building and -maintaining routine. And you don't need to be at a gym to do them. “It's a quick and efficient way to strengthen some upper body muscles,” Rad says. “It is a bodyweight move that can be done virtually anywhere.”
Incline Dumbbell Fly
If you've been lifting for a while, you know that incline bench exercises reign supreme when it comes to upper–chest activation. The great thing about the incline dumbbell fly is that in addition to activating the upper pectoralis major, it also works the anterior deltoid muscles and biceps.
The wide push-up is excellent for targeting your chest muscles. Be sure to avoid taking your hands out too wide, and keep your elbows pointing back to protect your shoulders. How to do it: Start with hands slightly past shoulder-width, a bit farther apart than a standard push-up position.
Yes, but you are better off doing them on the floor. The bed will sink in and not support the spine enough to safely execute the barbell bench press. From the floor your thoracic lumbar will be MUCH better supported to perform the lift.
You can target the upper chest muscles by lowering the cables and doing a Low-To-High cable crossover where the arms' starting position is below your waist and their finishing position is above the collar bones.
Pectus carinatum is a chest wall problem where the front of the chest sticks out more than it should. It happens when the ribs and breastbone (sternum) grow outward more than usual. The condition mostly affects boys and usually gets worse during adolescence, especially during growth spurts and the teen years.
Although most won't be medically dangerous, a misshaped chest, narrow clavicles or a gap between your pecs can prove to be “bad chest genetics” if you're focused on aesthetics and muscle building.