The best chest exercises are an incline press, a flat press and a fly, set up so the humerus travels across the pec fibers you are training. Incline for chest bias falls somewhere between 30 to 45 degrees for most people, and past 45 degrees the front delt starts taking the work. Choose a machine that converges rather than one that presses straight out, and add a fly to load the pec in the shortened position that presses never reach.
Chest holds a special place for Luke and me, because we have both always struggled to bring ours up. If you ask someone how to bring up a body part, find the guy who had the weak body part and really brought it up. So you are in luck today.
The pec major originates all along the sternum and across the clavicle, and it inserts onto the humerus. Its basic function is horizontal adduction and internal rotation of the humerus. It is a fan shaped muscle, so the fibers run at different angles from that single insertion point. Some fan downward, some run straight across horizontally.
Knowing that function gives us the alignment we need for every exercise. Pec function is about the humerus traveling as close across the pec as we can get it. Every setup decision below exists to make the arm path cross the fibers you are actually trying to train.
One honest caveat before the exercise list. You can bias parts of the pec, but this is a muscle that comes down to one insertion point, so whether it is a flat press or an incline press, the whole pec works to some degree. You could pick one really solid press and it will work the whole muscle.
| Movement | What it is for | Where it loads the pec |
|---|---|---|
| Incline press | Upper clavicular fibers | Lengthened into mid range |
| Flat press | Sternal fibers, overall mass | Lengthened into mid range |
| Fly | The range presses never reach | Mid range into shortened |
Incline pressing catches the upper clavicular fibers, which fan from the humerus all the way up to the clavicle line. To reach them the arm has to come up higher across the chest rather than lower where the sternal fibers sit. How much higher depends on you.
Two structural things decide it: humerus length and rib cage structure. The bigger rib cage individual, or the longer humerus individual, needs slightly more incline to hit those clavicular fibers. On the other end, someone with a smaller rib cage or shorter than average humerus does not need as much incline to get that arm path across the same fibers.
For most people that lands incline pressing for chest bias somewhere between 30 to 45 degrees. As you start getting into angles above 45, you see a lot of front delt alignment to that path, because the arm is coming up further and the front delt is shortening. You are still training, you are just training the front delt. Program it as carryover volume for the front delt rather than as chest work.
Is incline pressing worth having at all? From a bodybuilding standpoint I rarely see anyone whose upper chest is way too developed. It is usually the shallow point. And for the female divisions, where you are primarily judged on upper pec development, these patterns fit especially well.
People treat the flat bench like a fixed movement. It is not. What you are looking for on flat press work is simple: where do you get your best pec contraction.
Take someone who is really flat chested. To keep the dumbbells in a good path they would almost need a decline position. We do not want the chest dropping down, so we cue a big breath of air, the chest drops back, but the rib cage raises up some, and the arms come back into a position where they can get good pec work on a flat bench.
Now take someone big and barrel chested with a big arch. That position shifts up, and it starts becoming more front delt. So we might incline the bench a little. Some people find that a 15 degree bench is where they get their best pec contraction. That is all we are doing when we set up a flat press.
With dumbbells the force only goes straight up and down, so we want the dumbbell even in the hand and the wrist stacked above the elbow, and we want that force vector following the wrist to the elbow directly.
This is the single most useful thing to know when you walk up to a chest press machine. Because the pec pulls the humerus across the body, the best machines converge: the handle path moves in slightly toward the chest as you press.
On a converging press you can watch the bicep finish close to the side of the pec, and you can see how much the pec shortens because of how little distance is left between the bicep and the chest. A machine that presses straight out is less ideal for training a pec. Some machines actually diverge, so the handles travel away from each other, and those are worse still.
The converging path also changes your grip. On a dumbbell the wrist stacks over the elbow because the force is vertical. On a converging machine the force vector runs along that converging line, straight through the wrist to the elbow, so it is fine to let the hand come inside the elbow. The machine changed the direction of the force, so the setup changes with it.
The cue that ties it together is to drive the bicep toward the pec on the contraction, with grip pressure through the inner portion of the hand, which is what actually gets you the converging aspect of the machine.
Set grip width from the bottom position. You want the wrist stacked directly above the elbow, not so far in or so far out that you are adding unnecessary strain and losing force capacity out of the bottom of the hole.
The rib cage is the one that quietly ruins incline work. A big rib cage expansion creates a large arch, and that arch drops the humeral path onto the lower fibers instead of the upper clavicular fibers you set the incline for in the first place. You bought the angle and then gave it away.
So the cue on an incline is to get that back down onto the bench and close the rib cage down, so the press travels across the clavicular fibers. Slight retraction, but not pulled all the way back.
Breathing matters more than people expect. Take the breath in on the way down, catch it at the bottom, hold it briefly as you transition from eccentric to concentric, press, then expel on the way out. Taking one big breath at the top and holding it the entire time does give you intra abdominal pressure, but it can also decrease your output.
Presses load the pec lengthened and through the mid range. They never really get it short. That is where the fly earns its place, and it also lets you put more direct volume on the muscle.
A cable is the ideal setup. You can adjust it to the person's torso length, the seat height they are already at, their arm length, and the path their fibers actually need. If you do not have a dual cable, a pec deck fly does the job.
Placement is a real decision, not a default. At the end of a session, set the fly to load mid range into the shortened position. But if someone has a really hard time feeling their pecs in any pressing, you can put the fly first and load it really short so they get that mind muscle connection, then go press. That is not ideal from an output standpoint, so use it as a fix rather than a habit.
You cannot see your own arm path while you are under the bar, so film it. Different views tell you different things, and pressing needs more than one.
For a press lying on a bench, the front view is the one to start with. At the bottom you can confirm the hand is over the elbow, which tells you the grip width is right. You can also catch extraneous torso movement: lifting the pelvis, expanding the rib cage until you elevate off the bench, or using the hips to create momentum out of the hole.
The front view has one blind spot. It cannot show you where the humerus crosses the rib cage, which is the whole point. For a seated machine press a head on view answers that, and it also tells you how good the machine is, because you can see whether it converges as you press. For a press lying down, a 45 degree view is the next best thing.
What to look for: where is the upper arm relative to the torso at every portion of the movement, are you elevating and internally rotating at the bottom, and does the arm cross the rib cage at the place that addresses the fibers you are training. Then modify the movement based on how it fits you.
Chest is a priority body part for a lot of people, and when it is, it earns training twice a week at a volume near the top of what you can recover from.
Order it accordingly. On a push session where chest is the priority, chest goes first, not delt work. If delts are the priority instead, the delt work moves up and chest follows. Priority sets the order.
For the total number, how many sets per muscle group per week covers how to set it and how to move it. When you want more chest, raise the volume deliberately, run the block, and reassess at the end rather than jumping.
For most people incline pressing for chest bias falls between 30 to 45 degrees. A bigger rib cage or a longer humerus needs slightly more incline, a smaller rib cage or shorter humerus needs less. Above 45 degrees the front delt takes over the path, so those sets count as front delt volume.
Not strictly. The pec comes down to one insertion point, so whether it is a flat press or an incline press the whole pec works to some degree, and one really solid press will train the whole muscle. Incline earns its place because upper chest is usually the shallow point rather than the overdeveloped one.
Usually the arm path is crossing too high. Either the incline is above 45 degrees for your structure, or a big rib cage arch has shifted your position so the humerus travels high across the clavicle. Lower the angle, get the back down on the bench and close the rib cage down.
A cable is the ideal setup because you can adjust it to torso length, seat height, arm length and the path the person needs. A pec deck fly is a perfectly good option when you do not have a dual cable available.
One that converges, meaning the handle path moves in toward the chest as you press, so the humerus comes across the body the way the pec actually functions. A straight out press is less ideal, and a machine that diverges is worse.
Applied Hypertrophy Optimization is where we detail how pressing angles interact with your structure, muscle by muscle, along with the setup and execution standards this page is drawn from.
Explore Applied Hypertrophy Optimization
John Jewett is an IFBB Professional bodybuilder and physique coach, and the founder of J3 University. He has spent his career competing at the professional level while coaching competitors and everyday lifters through the same training, nutrition, and recovery principles he uses himself.
J3 University exists to make that process teachable. Every course is built on the reasoning behind the method, not just the method, so you can make better decisions about your own physique long after the program ends. The article above is drawn directly from the J3U course curriculum.
