Best Chest Exercise for
Building a Strong & Muscular Chest

The best chest exercise for building muscle mass and strength in the pectorals is the flat barbell bench press. Find out why.

There are many exercises that hit the chest, both directly and indirectly. It's usually a smart idea to include more than one chest exercise in a routine if you're past the beginner stage. But, if you had to choose one to focus on it should be the barbell bench press...

...But why?

Well the this classic weight lifting exercise enables you to progressively overload the chest muscles with more weight than any other movement.

The only other chest-focused exercise that lets you lift near this amount of weight is the incline bench press. But even that exercise doesn't let you press as much weight as the flat bench...

...In addition, the incline bench hits the anterior deltoids significantly more; thus, taking much of the focus off of the chest muscles.

Since you are able to lift the heaviest load with the flat barbell bench press, it makes sense that it is the best chest exercise for efficiently gaining strength, and by extension, adding chest muscle mass.

Isolation chest exercises, such as chest flyes, don't even come close. Isolation movements may directly target the chest. However, isolation is the most inefficient way to gain strength. (That is not to say that they serve no purpose, but isolation chest movements certainly can't be among the best exercises.)

To conclude, the flat barbell bench press is the number one chest training exercise. And I'll give credit to chest/tricep dips as being a relatively close second.

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