How To Build Up Your Chest & Make Them Stronger

Ladies, leave your man at home. The gym is full of women and their pockets full grown. Full grown with what you may ask? Tips on how to build up your chest muscles. It’s 2026 and there are still women out here scared to train upper body to its fullest potential. Trust me, the image that you have in your mind is not what you are going to get. Most women don’t train their chest muscles that hard and frequently to reach that image in their mind. If you don’t train chest regularly, you are doing a disservice to yourself and your overall performance in the gym.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone has their own desired look for their bodies. It’s good that you do. To lift heavier for your lower body, you need the upper body strength. Training back alone will not give you that strength.

The fitness space has grown so much in the last ten years. It is so beautiful to see people training, taking their health and wellness seriously. However, it has also come up with its trends and patterns as we become more influenced. Your training is individualised, personal and an intimate investment. Make sure that you are choosing activities that align with your goals and your evolving interests. Remember your Why and your true motive to do anything fitness related. I believe that this is going to become more important as the years go on.

Training Chest

When I first got into training thirteen years ago, chest day was not my favourite at all. I felt bored whenever I did it because I had limited knowledge on how to train it. What type of exercises I could do and I didn’t see the results fast enough. Patience is not my strongest character trait. It is something that I had to learn early and fast in this journey. Once I got into powerlifting, training chest had a different meaning to me. I got to appreciate the bench press more. This exercise and training the muscle group was a lot more technical than I had realised. Fast forward to today, the bench press is my favourite powerlift due to the journey I had embarked on to get this lift to where it is.

I feel that there is still a long way to go to get more women under the barbell and training chest. Powerlifters, strength athletes and some in calisthenics are the ones that tend to train this muscle group more often. However, I hope that through this blog post I can encourage at least one of you to make that change. Maybe you will fall a little bit in love with this muscle group.

Check Out Pinterest Upper Body Exercises

The Anatomy of the Chest Muscles

To understand how to train the chest muscles effectively, you need to know what muscles are there and how they function. Your chest muscles are made up of two major muscles: the upper chest (pectoralis major) and the lower chest (pectoralis minor). The former helps with adducting and flexing your upper arm. While the latter pulls your scapular forward and assists with shoulder and upper arm stability.

There are two smaller muscles that act as stabilisers and produce assistive force. The serratus anterior connects your shoulder blades to your ribs. It acts as an auxiliary muscle to help your shoulders protract freely. You will notice this more while doing push ups and chest flyes. The second is the anterior deltoid (the front delt) connects your clavicle to your shoulders. This helps you raise your arm in front of your torso.

Importance of the Chest Muscles

Your chest muscles are responsible for everyday pushing movements, overall upper body strength, shoulder stability and good posture. Ever since I started powerlifting, I’ve prioritised training chest whether that is through the push/pull/legs split or increasing the frequency for progressive overload. Not necessarily for aesthetics as that is a by-product, but mainly for strength and performance. However, I have noticed that the training these muscles have definitely helped with keeping the girls lifted. In addition, I consciously try to keep my shoulders down and sit up straight when working at a desk to maintain and improve my posture.

Two Types of Chest Movements

There are two types of movements that any workout and training programme must have to target the chest muscles. These movements are one of the most effective ways to build upper body strength. They can be transferred over to your daily life. These are known as the horizontal push for pressing movements (compounds) and flyes movements (isolation).

The horizontal push movements strengthen your ability to push weight away from you. As a result, this targets the development of your chest and tricep muscles. By training the horizontal push, your chest and triceps become more stable and powerful. What is great about this particular type of pushing is that you can change your hand placement to target different muscles or emphasise one muscle group over the other.

The Horizontal Fly movements strengthen your ability to bring your arms together across the center of your body. As a result, this targets the development of the upper chest muscles, a deep stretch and contraction in that area. By adding flyes to your programme, it will help isolate the muscles to build more hypertrophy and definition.

In sum, for most women, this is not the goal to have a more defined chest. You can actually skip fly movements and focus purely on the horizontal push movements for strength and muscle growth. I rarely train this movement unless it is a rear delt fly for my shoulders. When I trained for aesthetics at the beginning of my fitness journey, chest flyes were a staple in my programme.

Chest Exercises To Add To Your Routine

The Horizontal Push

All these exercises in this section are compound exercises, which means that they train multiple muscles and groups of muscles at the same time.

Push Ups

This exercise doesn’t need any introduction at all! It is one of the first exercises that a majority of people do at the beginning of their journey to build upper body strength. Although it is deemed as a beginner’s exercise, it is so much more than that. It is a bodyweight compound exercise that is a staple in calisthenics to build muscle in your chest, shoulders and arms. In addition, it is a fantastic exercise to build up to other push up variations and adding more calisthenics skills into your training.

Free Weight Exercises for Chest

Barbell (or Dumbbell) Bench Press

Next we have the barbell bench press, which is the most recognised and performed exercise in all spheres of fitness. It is one of the most versatile exercises that you do to build upper body strength and build more muscle. Although this exercise is performed by everyone, certain athletes such as powerlifters take a different approach. By changing your grip, you will target different muscles in the chest and triceps. For me, being able to bench a couple of reps is a flex.

Incline Bench Press (Dumbbell or Barbell)

Incline Bench Press is a compound exercise that I have started to include in my push days last year and it targets more of the upper chest fibres and shoulders. As a powerlifter or anyone in a strength sport, adding this variation of the bench press will help build those weaknesses that you have in the pushing movements into a strength. You’ll be surprised how changing the angle of the bench by 45 degrees makes this exercise a little more challenging regardless if you are using a barbell or a dumbbell.

The Horizontal Fly Movements

All the exercises in this section are isolation exercises, which means that they train or isolate one muscle at a time. If you want to build a chest workout using only dumbbells – it is very doable.

Dumbbell Chest Fly

This exercise targets the major chest muscles to build chest width and definition. It can be performed on a flat bench or on an incline. You want to start with two dumbbells above your chest with a soft bend in your elbows. On the descent, lower your arms to your sides in a wide arc until you feel a deep stretch. Pause. Then squeeze your chest as you return to the starting position with control. You can watch this exercise as part of my Dumbbell series on Pinterest.

Machine Isolation Exercises for Chest

Machine Pec Fly (or Pec Deck)

Most gyms have this machine specifically for the Pec Fly or they may have the machine that combines it with the rear delt fly. Either way, machines are fantastic when you want to isolate a muscle group and have a place in any programme. You can use it to train both arms at the same time or single arm if you want to bring up your weaker arm. Dana Linn Bailey has a great tutorial video about this.

Cable Crossovers

Lastly, we have cable crossovers. I am sure you have seen multiple people, mostly men, do this exercise in the gym. They take over two pulleys to perform this exercise and it is not an exercise that you can go heavy on. All you need is a weight that this challenging but something you can do for 15 to 20 reps. What I like about this exercise is its versatility. You can target for the upper, middle and lower chest depending on your grip placement and the height of the pulley.

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Do you have chest training in your current workout programme? If you don’t, let me know why in the comments. Make sure to hit that subscribe button to join the community and never miss out on a post. Find me on Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok for more powerlifting and wellness content.

Until next time,

Folakemi