To build a bigger chest, concentrate on the fibers that produce power more than the ones that produce endurance. Those “fast twitch” fibers will tend to hypertrophy and give your chest more size.

You do that by exercising for strength and explosive power. Use heavier weights and low reps and try to explode on the lifting phase of the movement . Ever notice how big the power lifters and strong men get? They don’t get that way by concentrating on light weight and high reps.

I get disagreements on this one, but it works for me. The Best Chest Exercise is the WEIGHTED DIP… hands down! Why? It’s very simple, doing dips (and pushups) is the only chest exercise in which you move your body through space, instead of moving the weight through space. .

Moving your body through space uses more brain to muscle connections than just moving a weight through space because it challenges your central nervous system more. The result, more muscle recruitment.

Dips work a lot of triceps and shoulders along with the chest. To hang a weight on you you’ll need a dipping belt or a strap or jump rope and you’ll need to be able to perform bodyweight dips. Start out light and do full range movements, keep them smooth and controlled. You can pick up your knees and lean your body forward to emphasize the chest even more.

Push-ups are next on the agenda, and because you need to hold a plank while you’re doing them, they also work your core stability.

Also, there are so many variants of the PUSHUP that are even more explosive. One of those is the MEDICINE-BALL ARCHBISHOP PUSH-UP; a long name, but this exercise works.

What you do is put 3 to 5 medicine balls in a semicircle, then get in the push-up position and put both hands on the ball to the far right; your chest should be over the ball and your feet must stay anchored throughout this exercise.

Now, move your left hand to the ball at the left and do a push-up, then bring your right hand to that ball. You want to continue moving left, doing push ups until you get to the last ball on the left. Then work your way back across the balls. That’s one rep.

Because of the inherent instability of the medicine balls, your hips and core will have to work much harder to neutralize that unstable surface, so you turn your chest workout into an ab workout also.

You’ll also want to do WEIGHTED PUSH-UPS, in which your workout partner puts a weight on your back, between your shoulder blades and then do a superset with LYING CABLE FLIES… and be sure to hold the contraction at the top of the exercise for three seconds, and then take 5-seconds to lower your arms back to the starting position.

As with every exercise, perfect form is more important than lots of weight, because you don’t want to cheat and use other muscles to stabilize you or help you move the weight.

You can also use resistance bands to do weighted pushups or dips. They don’t require a partner, travel easily and won’t ding the floor. For pushups, just put the band behind your back. you can put it on your lower back to work your core more or up around your shoulder blades. Now put your hands into the band loop and pin it to the floor and go to town. If it’s to loose at the bottom of the stroke, just put a loose overhand knot in the center of the band and you’re set.

For dips, drape the band around the back of your neck so it comes down the front of your shoulders and then place your hands in the band and grab on to the dip bar and have a field day.

The band can also be used to assist both of these exercises should you not have the strength, initially , to do them.

We only put the bench press last on this list because it is the first you normally think of and we wanted to give you some other ideas. And it is not as functional as the others because you are not moving your body through space. Keep variety in your workouts to keep your body growing and to keep from getting board.

However, you can forge a chiseled chest by doing the INCLINE BENCH PRESS with dumbbells as well, instead of the traditional flat bench.

Technorati Tags: best chest exercises, great chest exercises, push-ups, resistance bands, weighted dips, weighted push-ups