 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another raw, uncut, uncircumcised, unfiltered, unleaded review. I'm Salah Mike and we're talking about the best chest exercises for hypertrophy. You want to build them double D's. You've come to the right spot. Stay tuned. At the end of this you'll understand what is absolutely trash gimmick and what will build them tatters. There's multiple exercises here. Some pictures are a little small so we're not going to go over them all but let's start at the top. Top left it looks like we've got a nice classic pec deck. Now what I think defines the pec deck is it is a fly machine but you can also do reverse curl or reverse rear delts on it, reverse flies. Overall, the beauty of hypertrophy training or bodybuilding or training for aesthetics is that if a machine feels good and you feel it in the proper muscles it's probably doing that. If a machine doesn't feel good or an exercise doesn't feel good you could probably find a replacement really, really easy. There's a lot of different fly machines. The general pec deck because you can adjust the width or the tension plus the weight and the seat height you can find this solid positioning for yourself. I would give the fly, the pec deck, probably in a decent tier. I don't think it's going to automatically build the greatest bobeys but it's a great isolation exercise. Next it looks like we have a fly machine that's a little bit more particular and it actually leads from the elbow which is very important because you can do pec deck, flies, other things incorrectly and not really isolate your chest. Now if you're a meathead and you've been training a long time you'll figure out ways to best utilize an exercise machine to target the muscle that you intend to but there's also some machines that kind of take the brain work out of it and that's why I would put this style of fly just above the pec deck. I actually don't think with a well trained individual that one's necessarily better another that'll be based on your preference but for the masses you'll probably be able to contract your bobeys a little bit better with that one. Next we're moving on to the dip, the straight barbell dip. You can add weight to it. It is actually a great exercise. Some people might even call it calisthenics in the world of strength conditioning or in more particular power lifting. It's on a very high upward trend but I'll probably put the dip up there personally. I actually prefer it more as like a delt tricep movement. I like to get a little bit more upright with it. If you throw your feet in front of you it becomes a little bit more of a tricep right. You're just bending elbows you can get a deep stretch, deep range. If you lean a little bit more forward your feet behind you can get a little bit more chest involved. For me personally and I'm the king here, no democracy, we're running this. I actually have to load up weight because I'm very efficient at dips and in that point it starts to hurt my shoulders and stuff. So if I'm just trying to catch a little pump or warm up I think it's great. I'll put it in the decent tier for myself. For others if you feel no pain with that exercise it could definitely creep up to the excellent. Here we have what looks like maybe a decline pushup. There's a ton of pushup variations so we're just going to whip through these guys. I'm not going to explain everything. I'm sorry. A decline pushup I think is fine. A regular pushup is fine if you can't bench press a lot of weight but eventually your dumbbell press or machine eventually you're going to be able to upgrade and start stacking on weight and it's going to be much easier to overload on a bench press or a dumbbell or a machine than it will be with something like a decline pushup. So I'm going to throw it in the decent tier at the bottom. Next we've got like a deficit pushup. I'm going to throw that down there too. Instead of just making slightly more difficult pushups I'd rather just start to add load whether it's for power, for strength or for hypertrophy I think there's better option. This one's actually probably the best one of them all. We have like a greater range ring dip with load. Again like slightly functional because you've got to plank out and worry about your core but if you're just worried about building your chest we don't want to focus on that stability. As an overall movement that's something great and I know I'm whipping through these and I apologize guys but there's just so many. This looks like an ultra wide pushup. That's probably going to throw you in the A cup. Now a greater range of motion or time under good mechanical tension not just time under tension because if you're a marathon runner there's a lot of time under tension on your legs and you're not building any muscle there. We want mechanical tension and the time under that matters and range of motion. So typically yes a wider grip on something will get a greater range of motion but on something like a pushup where the ground is stopping your range it's actually just trash if you ask me. There's something I'm not a huge fan of although some people love with dumbbells and functional training. This looks like a unilateral arm by arm chest press machine. Now I like unilateral. I like when my weights are loaded per arm but I actually like to squeeze and press together a lot more than I prefer pressing one. I think there's too many ways with the chest that you can lean and kind of take away actually some of that contraction of the pecs. So I'll throw that in the mediocre. It's something you could do for sure but I'd rather kind of press both and you're forced to contract your chest. This looks like a flat basic chest press and I'll probably throw it at the top of excellent tier. You can load it up. It's very stable. You're not going to be wiggling around. You don't have to worry about anything. If we're talking about purely building muscle of your chest and moving some weight it's probably a really great option for nearly everyone from advanced IFBB pros all the way down to beginner. Same here with what looks like an incline press. I'm going to put that right there. Those could go vice versa any way you want. An incline chest press is one of my favorite moves. Right now I guess you'd call me a power balader what the internet calls it. I like to hit my squat bench deadlift first for a set or two just to keep and maintain a decent amount of strength and I handle those in this rep range from two to eight and then everything else is more hypertrophy based. I'm worried about building that muscle, focusing it on, catching a nice pump and really get a mechanical tension with as much stimulus as I can. So an incline hammer strength is the machine of my choice that I use for the primary hypertrophy movement that I do on chest days which I actually just finished. Next I think we got the bench press and this may piss some of the bros off but we're going to get into it. So all the bros say like stability this, stability that and I understand the argument that with a chest press machine you will be able to be more solid in the rest of your body. The rigidity is there so you can hypothetically just focus on the stimulus of the chest but I do think gaining some strength from a bench press which is the exercise we can load the heaviest over time will allow us to move more weight and handle more volume on our hypertrophy sets on the back end. It's always people saying no bench, do the chest press but why not both? We could do both. You can handle both exercises, you'll be absolutely fine and over time once you get a better muscle endurance and general fitness you'll be able to handle both to their maximum. They won't take away from each other. Next it looks like a dumbbell incline and I would say the same thing. You know all these can kind of be interchangeable. Yes, dumbbell incline is a little bit more difficult to maneuver because of the stability of each arm because of the free weight nature of it versus an incline machine but instead of just saying yes to one and the other sucks we can do both. This is an OG move and I can't speak too heavily on it because I haven't actually done a ton of it. It's the reverse bench press. Now some people say it feels better on their shoulders but I don't think that's actually from supinating your hands. I think it's just from forcing yourselves to tuck your elbows more which obviously leverages your triceps a bit more too. I think purely for bench press hypertrophy or sorry chest hypertrophy it's probably in the A cup tier. There's just kind of no reason. You're going to be better off doing a regular bench. It's probably safer. You're more likely to slip the bar out of your hand that way. And two if your shoulders are in the bench press we could probably fix it with a technique situation. Here's some more OG shit. I don't even know what this thing is called. It's called like the bendy 9000. I don't really know but it's basically like a bend deal and you do one of these and I don't really even know what you're doing. You're kind of working your titties just because your elbows are coming together and you're kind of working your lats because your shit's coming together. That would be below A cup tier. Chances are the mechanical tension isn't enough. The resistance isn't enough. Once you do that for three days even if you're a beginner. The next two I literally don't even know what they are. So we're probably going to skip them. One looks like a rowing movement. Next we have the football bar or neutral grip bench press. So that's a specialty bar often made to protect the shoulders again. Some people I think do have issues benching and a little nagging shoulder pain but I think all that can be fixed with technique. I think overall actually a neutral grip is fine. There's nothing inherently good or bad about it. But again yeah if you want to focus on some strength stuff with that movement then work on a more hypertrophy or allow that strength to carry over to more mechanical tension on something like a machine or fly. That's a great idea. But personally through experience I'm not a huge fan of the neutral grip. It feels fine but I've never caught any kind of Benny from it. Both of these look like the same ones just standing on one seated. The plate press where you'll take two plates and you'll squish them together. So you're doing like an isometric fly and then you're pressing it. I think that's fine. You'll probably, it's kind of like some schoolyard old G stuff. But the tension when you're doing a fly needs to be coming from the outside. I'm not a physicist or engineer or nothing but the gravity is going downward. So if I'm holding the plate this way I'm working my front delts a little bit. I'm kind of working an isometric of a fly and then if I'm pressing this way I'm still just working delts and a little bit of triceps if I'm horizontal. I actually think it's probably a large waste of time. That's one of the few movements. I think it's probably just trash. Moving on to a couple others. We've got the dumbbell flat bench. It's going up into the excellent tier. Great movement. Again, the only negative would be probably once you get too strong. You know, handling 130, 150, 180, 200 pound dumbbells is just not very applicable. It's kind of more annoying to get them into place. Although plenty of bodybuilders, Ronnie Coleman, et cetera, et cetera have made that look just easy and fine. So they obviously work. It's a great pressing movement. You can get a deeper range than a barbell. You can overload them decently if you have five pound increments. If you get too strong, I understand why you might go towards a machine or even a barbell with a lift off. This is a power lifting movement. We call it the Larson Press, named after Adrian Larson. Feet up bench. The idea back in the day is that you would take some of the load off of the stability off of your legs and put it more onto your chest. We're actually probably backwards where more stability will allow you to press more weight, which will put more mechanical tension on the chest. As a strength movement, great, great variation. Talking purely hypertrophy, you're going to be better off with a very stable base and allowing yourself to press the maximum weight you can week to week. Moving again with kind of a unilateral. So dumbbells are obviously already unilaterally loaded. I'm not a fan of pressing them one at a time. I just don't really see a lot of application. I understand the mental note of it. Maybe it's easier. If you're in a class setting, it's something new and exciting. So it has some applications, a little bit of rotational stuff there and stability for sure. But we're not necessarily looking at that when we're trying to build pure strength or pure muscle. So for that reason, A-cup tier. The reverse grip dumbbell that's going bottom of A-cup two. If we're not going to do it with a barbell, I don't see a reason. Incline reverse grip dumbbell. Again, I don't know why we're doing that. I see almost nearly no reason because of whatever you do in a supinated position. Elbows and shoulders are unrelated. I can come way in here and press like this. I can press like this. And I can do that in both ways. It's a little bit more uncomfortable, so it naturally keeps those shoulders down. But not something I'm looking for. What's Arnie doing? I think there's just a sexy picture of Arnold. It looks like he's outside. That's going to go into gorilla tier. I mean, he's got a gorilla chest. He's known for just being the greatest, but he does have a great chest. Next, it looks like maybe a very high incline dumbbell. I'm going to throw it in the A cup because I'm not sure what's going on. Now we're going to calisthenics. We've got three of them. Again, as a beginner, as an athlete, as someone who enjoys moving their body through space, I think calisthenics can be great. Talking about overall athleticism, overall strength, or hypertrophy, building muscle, it's probably not where we're going. A voodoo push-up, I think you kind of do the worm and do a push-up or something. A cup, no reason. There's not going to be enough tension on the chest. We're moving that throughout. Again, if you like to move your body, great. Reverse grip push-up, that's below A cup tier. Absolute trash. There's just no reason if we're trying to build overall strength and performance to do it. One arm push-up, same idea. Maybe slightly better than those others because sure, you're bringing more of your body weight onto one side, but then you're leaning your body and so you're getting more on your tricep and shoulder. For building a big boobies, those are out. Now this might be slightly controversial. I think the next three are kind of the same. I'm not a fan of a dumbbell fly. Obviously for 30 plus percent of the motion because of leverages and gravity, we're not getting maximal tension. I prefer doing flies on machines or cables where you get tension throughout the range and again, mechanical tension, volume and progressive overload over time are the key factors to building muscle. Mechanical tension, progressive overload and volume over time, those are what we're looking for and so why not replace? I mean, if all you have is dumbbells, sure. But if you have a machine or you have a cable, I'm doing those flies first. So I think those are literally three in a row. A regular dumbbell fly, it looks like kind of a seated dumbbell fly and then there's a floor press dumbbell flies. Two are the same. We got a medicine floor press and a barbell floor press for strength conditioning, for power lifting, for force output. There's many applications that we may use something like a floor press. It does cut your range of motion, but adds a little bit of stability. It can kind of cut up and change the reflex between the concentric, eccentric portion of the lift. Something like a box squat where you can rest your triceps on the ground, take away some of that elasticity response and then fully focus on pushing from a dead stop. There are some applications. If we're talking about muscle, again, mechanical tension and range of motion are so important. Both of these are probably going in the A cup. I would not do them if my only goal is to build big tatters. And that's going to a bunch of these, man. We're gonna do some weird stuff. We got a medicine Masubal 360 Hamel Camel pushup. That guy's out. He's in the D list and I'm not talking double Ds. The clapping pushup. I saw pro bodybuilders doing this on Instagram and I fucking cringed. I don't even like the word cringe, but what are we doing? We all know you didn't build your boobies that way. It's a lot of androgenic serums and it's not fucking clapped pushups to some motivational music. Next it looks like we got a landmine single arm press. Something like that is good. If you want to build kind of more of your shoulders, delts in general stability, I guess I'll throw in a mediocre. It's not necessarily targeting the chest. It is more of a delt movement, but it's solid. A more horizontal looking chest press. It looks super solid. Obviously, each chest press machine is built slightly different. So that's where bodybuilding is fun. You can find ones or styles of ones or settings of ones that feel best for you to really focus on your chest. This guy's probably going up there, maybe in the gorilla tier. If I had to choose one movement and you just say I want to build chest, but I can only do one movement, it's probably a very stable, solid chest press. You don't have to worry about anything else going on. It's on fixed arms and all you have to do is press and focus on your chest. So many movements. A regular push-up. Sure, we'll throw it in the mediocre. I don't want to bash all push-ups. They got some, you know, they got some applications for sure in hypertrophy. It's just not as high. This guy's just standing in his underwear in dumbbells holding them. Oh yeah, I think he's doing a shrug. I don't know. He's just half naked. He's going to the eight cup. This guy, this next guy, I think he's just touching his boobs. It looks like he's, it looks like, you know, coaches touch your boobs. He's doing it to himself. So I don't know if he's just wanting, wishing, dreaming to have a bigger chest, but that's not going to work either. This one, in powerlifting movement, I call it like ultra wide grip. In the bodybuilding world, I believe they call it a guillotine press. So you're going insanely wide grip bench press and you're flaring your elbows out insanely to feel a stretch. The issue here I think is that, in like logic or talking through it, it makes sense because you'll get a wider stretch, a bigger stretch of the chest when you start to flare those elbows and really get your chest up. The issue is you'll put more on your delts as you start to flare way out there. Now flaring a little bit isn't a huge deal, but you're almost flaring above the 45 of your shoulder. Plus, benching like in that manner will force you to use such little weight. The mechanical tension would be better off again with a chest press machine or just benching normally. So in that, I would say it's very mediocre. It's probably got some application, but it's pretty mediocre. Here's one that's kind of from the strength world that has a lot of good ties. We call this a camber bar or a small camber bar or a Duffalo bar or a Buffalo bar or whatever it is where you get a little bit of lean going on the bench because the one knock on the bench press for hypertrophy is that your range of motion is obviously constricted by where your boobies or belly may be. So you can't always get your elbows as deep as you want because the barbell is gonna stop. You get a little cambered in there, a little valley in the bar, and now you can get into a dumbbell range of motion, but you're pressing with both hands so you can use progressive overload a little bit better. You can move more weight. I actually think that's maybe underutilized in general for hypertrophy. So I'll throw it up in the excellent tier. I think that's kind of a dark horse of the bodybuilding world. Some guys definitely know about it and use it, but I think it could probably be utilized and paid more attention to than it is. Now a cable, shoulder height, fly, love it. I might even throw it in a gut gorilla tier. That's one of my favorite movements. I can really put my body weight into it. You obviously tend to fly a lot less weight than you can press, and so the stability issue with a cable when you're standing isn't actually that much of an issue for me because it's not as much weight. So I can lean into it, do a half lunge, and I can really feel with the cable a nice stretch, contract reflex, which I literally just did before we got back here, feels great. Here's another one. This looks like the reverse grip. Front raise, but how some people do it, they're flying, but again, I'm not an engineer. I'm a college dropout. You guys might have gone to college and not you guys, but your friends, and they're idiots. So if we're trying to do a fly but we're standing pretty vertically, where's that resistance going? It's gonna end up on our delts. It's gonna end up on our forearms. Now we're just doing like a front raise, right? So are we really hitting that? No, we'd be much better off on a machine or a cable where the resistance is pulling us backwards rather than pulling us downwards. So in that case, and it kind of looks like one of our members out here, we're going into the A cup, sorry buddy. Go put on a shirt. The triangle pushup. I think even the pushup clan, because I'm sure they're gonna find this video and talk shit on me because I threw all them an A cup. They're gonna say, I have a big chest and I do pushups. Well, a lot of da, bro. You would have a bigger chest if you didn't. The tricep or the triangle pushup is actually focused more on the tricep. Although obviously anytime you're pressing, you're gonna hit your chest as well. I think it's A cup or below again. There's just kind of no reason for it. Here's a great one, the Smith Machine bench press. I think that's probably going in gorilla mode, tier mega super Godzilla mode too. Lot of stability. You can set up the bench and it moves a lot so you can really focus in on an angle of not only the incline, but of where you're touching on your chest that feels good that you can feel the stretch. The one negative, sure, maybe your elbows can't go as low, but I would do a very slight incline Smith Machine press. Feels awesome. You can load it very well. You can load it infinitely and vary your reps. And I think it could be definitely a primary staple in a press. I think this is a cable press, which is actually kind of an underrated movement. A lot of people think you just cable fly or you'll dumbbell press. I think a cable press, if you have the proper setup in a big enough stack or a machine to do it, is an absolutely amazing movement. If done correctly, you can kind of, that's where you actually can build the depress fly combo, right? Cause you're getting a squeeze cause the cables are a little bit further out. So you get that kind of fly action where you're still pressing, get a little tricep, great, great, great movement. I think there's two of them so I'm gonna throw them both up there in the gorilla. One is seated, one is standing. All right, we're gonna switch it up. The seated one, because if we're pressing, we're gonna be able to use more weight, right? Cause we are utilizing our triceps and our shoulders. Rather than a fly as an isolation, we're using one joint. We're just kind of swinging them things, the tree hugs. One is a low to high fly. This guy has the example with the fly too low. It's kind of by his hip. I would never do it like that. But a slightly biased, I think one of the biggest things with all exercises is the drastic angles people take. So like, oh, I need an incline press. And then they're basically straight up and down. Just do a baby angle. Same with the fly. If you're doing an incline fly, just a baby angle. If you wanna do a decline of baby angle, you're not gonna be hanging like a vampire, pressing towards your cock. Just baby angles 10 to 30 degrees for all presses. And even rows, you don't have to be that drastic, right? We have obviously horizontal elbows out, horizontal elbows in, vertical elbows in, vertical elbows out. But beyond that, we don't have to get too crazy with those things. So for that case, we're gonna throw into the mediocre. I think he's doing the same thing, but a high to low fly, but it shits up here. It looks like he's trying to take off. And so again, I would just have it a very small angle, 10 to 30 degrees, a high to low fly has a great option. There's a lot of shit talk on the decline press, although it wasn't in here. I don't know why. Because you can use more weight, the range of motion is slightly less. So your feet up the bar path's less. And so people would talk shit on it. And they'd say like, oh dude, you need upper chest. You don't need lower chest. Which is kind of true. It is a little bit more difficult to build some mass higher on your chest. So a lot of people switch over to the incline and do no decline work. But I think there is balance and a way to do both. So I do, you know, 70, 80% incline or flat. And I always try to do a fly or one movement a little bit lower. So for that sake, besides this guy's taken off, I'll throw in the mediocre. Definitely some options that you should probably do some kind of decline. It could be a slight decline press. It could be a slight decline fly. It could be a dip which ends up being a little bit of decline. I know you're horizontal but wrap your mind around that inception or something. It does work. So it dips a little bit more of your bottom booby. Getting one or two of those in a week on top of again, the meat and potatoes, 70, 80%. Hopefully just press fly. It doesn't have to get that complicated. Find one that works. Find one that's stable. Find one that you can overload well. Find one that you feel in the muscle that properly that you're intending to target. And it's that simple. Lot of options. Lot of gimmicks. But go out there. Make me proud with your big man and lady chests. All chests are welcome here. If you like the cheerless man, give it some love. We're dropping new content every single day on the channel. So I appreciate you sign up Mike. 3sb.co for all your clothing needs. Next big announcement coming to goodcompanydiscord.com. So stay tuned. It'll be in June. And I'll catch y'all in the next one, man. Be a part of something bigger yourself. Community and culture. 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