At-Home Chest Workout
In our next installment of the at-home workout series, we are going to do a chest workout. You always hear muscle heads talking about how much they can bench press because this is one way to gauge upper body strength. Having a strong chest greatly increases your functional strength such as picking yourself up or getting out of bed. Check out this chest workout with simple exercises that can be done with either dumbbells or resistance bands.
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Your go-to chest workout
Band Pushups
Band pushups are a great way to utilize your resistance bands to make your pushups harder – so they are a great way to kick your at-home chest workout up a notch. After graduating from the normal pushup (even the modified before that) this is a way to make your pushups harder.
Place the resistance band over your neck or ideally across your shoulder blades if you can get it to stay there and then perform your pushups. If you need more resistance, have less of the tube over your neck or shoulder blades.
Diamond Pushups
This is simply another way to take the effectiveness of your pushups up a notch. Diamond pushups not only work the chest but also work the triceps (I know benchpress and normal pushups do as well but this really hits the triceps), really making your workout more effective by hitting multiple groups of muscle at the same time! To start, make your thumbs and index fingers form a diamond/triangle underneath your chest and perform the pushup. It will burn like hell, trust me – so add them to your chest workout!
Ball Pushups
Normal pushups are a great way to work the chest and even a modified version with your knees on the ground is a great way to build upper body strength. Pushups with your feet on a balance ball make you really tighten up the core and work the smaller muscles of your chest and shoulders! This is a way to take your pushups to the next level. Have someone help you get stabilized at first so you don’t break your face!
Ball Dumbbell Benchpress
Now, we get to utilize our dumbbells and balance ball. With your feet flat on the ground and the knees at a 90-degree angle place your back with the main weight point being between the shoulder blades on your balance ball. Next, perform the normal benchpress being sure to fully extend and bring the weights together at the top of the extension and really squeeze the chest together. Side note: I dominate 5-pound dumbbells!
Ball Dumbbell Butterflies
From the same position as the bench press bring the weights down outside of your body in a wide arc with your elbows slightly bent to decrease the pressure on the bicep tendon until you feel a stretching of the chest. Bring the weight up and together over your chest, for this example, I turned the weight inward and brought the inside of my hands together to really squeeze and work the chest!
Resistance Band Press
Place your bands with the door accessory high on your door. Lean forward with your feet to where your weight is spread out evenly in order to keep your balance. Perform the exercise like a normal benchpress by pushing the weight out in front of you and meeting in the middle with slightly bent arms. This can also be done with one hand to really concentrate on that side.
Resistance Band Butterflies
Get in the same stance as the band press described above. This time, like in the ball butterflies start with the bands outside of your body in a wide arc with your elbows slightly bent to decrease the pressure on the bicep tendon until you feel a stretching of the chest. Bring the weight forward to where your hands meet in front of you slightly lower than the chest. Make sure to squeeze the chest to really work the muscle!
For a total chest workout, perform each of these exercises 3 times for 12-15 repetitions. Always remember that if your bands are too light for you, perform more reps and concentrate on the muscle group to still get a great workout.
Wrap-Up
Now you can mix and match some of our other at-home workouts with this chest workout to give yourself a really good upper body workout.
For instance, train your chest and your triceps on the same day or incorporate these exercises into the 5×3 Daily Blast! For our next installment, we will continue to work down the upper body by showing your back/lat exercises!
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