Home Chest Workout with No Pushups

The pushup can easily be regarded as the king of home workouts and is one of the best exercises for chest development, which is why many seem to believe we can’t have a home workout without it. But can we possibly train chest at home with absolutely no pushups?

Maybe you can’t do a pushup yet, but you still want to workout chest.

Maybe you think pushups are too easy and you want a home chest workout that is effective.

Maybe you’re sick of the monotony of pushups all the time.

Don’t worry. Here are some chest workouts you can do with absolutely no pushups.

Chest Dips

This exercise is more effective than the standard pushup for stimulating the chest muscle. It is also great for triceps development and hits the shoulders as well.

To perform this exercise you’ll need to find a stable surface that can hold your bodyweight, like a countertop or a table. It is even more effective if you can find a place where your hands can be parallel and your body can move in the space in between, such as between 2 chairs.

How to Perform Dips for Chest Growth?

1. Place your hands on the stable surface. Aim to place them a bit wider than shoulder width apart to really target your chest muscles.
2. Lean forward to place your bodyweight over your hands.
3. Bend your legs at the knee so your entire body suspended by your arms. This is the starting position.
4. Bend your arms at the elbows so that you lower your chest to just above the surface you are using.
5. Pause for a second.
6. Contract your chest muscles and extend your arms at the elbows so you raise your body back into the starting position.

Aim for between 10-12 repetitions per set. You can increase the difficulty of chest dips by using a backpack full of books or other heavy objects.

Isometric Exercises

These can build your chest muscles without doing a pushup or even moving. Simply get down in a pushup position and hold it, while making sure to squeeze your chest muscles, and hold the position for as long as possible.

These exercises are easier than pushups and still lead to a lot of growth.

Another way to build your chest muscles from isometric contractions is by pushing a heavy object that you can’t possibly move. This can be a wall or a car.

How to Perform an Isometric Chest Press at Home?

1. Get under your doorframe.
2. Place your hips against one side of the door frame. This is to secure your body and prevent it from moving.
3. Place one hand on the opposite doorframe.
4. Push as hard as possible for between 5-10 seconds.
5. Repeat this with the opposite hand.

How to Perform an Isometric Chest Fly at Home?

1. Face your doorframe.
2. Get in a staggered stance with one foot in front of the other and your knees slightly bent. This is to prevent you from moving.
3. Place one hand on the doorframe.
4. Squeeze your chest muscles and try to pull the doorframe across your body.
5. Maintain the contraction for 5-10 seconds.
6. Repeat this with the opposite side.

Do 10-12 repetitions per side on these exercises. You can also try to push for as long as possible but your true goal should be to push as hard as you can if you want to stimulate as much muscle growth as possible.

Chest Presses

You can perform these with a pair of dumbbells or resistance bands, or you can improvise with another heavy object like a backpack full of books or bottles of water.

How to Perform Chest Presses at Home?

1. Get down on the floor.
2. Hold the object you’re using on your thighs as you lay back on your back.
3. Kick the object up so you are holding it above your chest.
4. Bend your elbows so you gently lower the object to just above your chest. Make sure not to flare your elbows out to the side.
5. Pause for a second.
6. Contract your chest muscles and extend your elbows so that you raise the object back over your chest. This is 1 repetition.

Perform at least 10-12 repetitions of this exercise per set.

Should You do Pushups in your Home Workout?

Why not include pushups in your home chest workouts. There isn’t any other exercise that is so effective for building muscle and strength at home than the pushup. Especially because there so many diverse variations that can work for anyone with any goal and any level of fitness.

You should include pushups in your home chest workouts and there are only 2 reasons you don’t want to:

1. You cannot do a pushup.
2. You think pushups are too easy and can’t build muscle.

But I have a solution for both.

What to do if you can’t do a Pushup?

I get it, pushups are hard. If you’re a beginner and you’re yet to be able to do your first pushup then the solution is simple. Use easy variations of pushups that aren’t as stressful on your body such as incline pushups or knee pushups until you are strong enough to do pushups.

That way you won’t miss out on the benefits of doing pushups, without actually performing a standard pushup.

What to do if Pushups are too Easy?

There are many things to do to build more muscle out of pushups. You can focus on more challenging variations like decline pushups or one arm pushups so you can continue using pushups to stimulate muscle growth.

Either way, you should be including pushups in your home workouts in some form to make the most muscle and strength gains as possible. If you want to find out how, don’t forget to read ‘Using Pushups to Build Muscle and Strength.’

You can workout chest at home with no pushups, and now you know how, but why waste such a great exercise?

References:

Adams, G., Cheng, D., Haddad, F. and Baldwin, K., 2004. Skeletal muscle hypertrophy in response to isometric, lengthening, and shortening training bouts of equivalent duration. Journal of Applied Physiology, 96(5), pp.1613-1618.

Ebben, W., Wurm, B., VanderZanden, T., Spadavecchia, M., Durocher, J., Bickham, C. and Petushek, E., 2011. Kinetic Analysis of Several Variations of Push-Ups. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 25(10), pp.2891-2894.