How to Workout Chest at Home with No Equipment

So you can’t make it to the gym today on the most glorious day of the week, chest day. Maybe the gyms are closed because of yet another pandemic and you’re missing your chest workout. Maybe because you’re just starting your fitness journey you don’t think you’re ready to go to the gym yet.

Whatever your reason is, you’re sitting around wondering how you’re going to train chest with nothing but your bare hands. You’re probably even wondering if it’s even possible to grow your chest without a gym full of heavy weights.

Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered with everything you need to know to workout chest at home with no equipment and build a ton of muscle in the process.

The Anatomy of the Chest

Pectoralis Major is the biggest of all the muscles. It’s the most visible so it’s probably the muscle you think about when you think about a great chest. Its major function is to move your upper arm from the side of your body to the front, like if you’re doing a cable fly in the gym.

Therefore, you’ll notice that all of the exercises we’re including in our chest workout at home will involve the upper arm moving from the side to the front of the body.

The muscle has two heads, a sternocostal head and a clavicular head. Because both run in different directions, they perform slightly different movements.

The first runs upwards so it is responsible for raising your arms in front of you. The second runs downwards so it does the opposite action. Think incline vs decline fly.

We’ll refer to these muscles as Upper and Lower chest from now on and we can focus on developing each muscle by adjusting the position our arms are in relation to our body during our home chest workouts.

Pectoralis Minor will mainly stabilize the scapula during the exercises where we target Pectoralis Major.

Now that we know how the muscles of the chest work, we can finally talk about how we are going to train them.

Chest Exercises for Home Chest Workout

Its time to get down to business. Here are the exercises we are going to use to workout chest at home, with a convenient difficulty rating so you can know what’s best for you.

This one is no surprise. It’s a time tested classic and will make up the bread and butter of your home chest workouts, and for good reason too. It works.

The standard pushup works the entire chest. It also has the added bonus of working the triceps, shoulders, abdominal muscles, glutes and legs to stabilize the body throughout the exercise.

Because they are simple, effective and challenging enough to stimulate the muscle growth we’re looking for, pushups and pushup variations will make up the bulk of your home chest workout. Therefore, make sure you’re able to feel your chest with pushups.

This pushup variation is a great alternative for beginners who don’t have the strength to master the standard pushup yet. This exercise reduces the load placed on the chest muscles so you can develop them until they become strong enough to bear the full weight of a standard pushup.

The movement also reduces the use of the abdominal, glute and leg muscles, so you can really focus on your chest even if your core strength may be weaker.

This one is another great beginner alternative to standard pushups. Because of the elevation, the load on the chest is reduced. However, because of the angle, this variation puts a greater emphasis on the lower chest. Click here for more info on incline pushups.

The higher you place your hands, the easier the exercise becomes. Perform this movement with your hands on a chair, table, staircase, wall, or whatever stable elevated surface you can find.

This pushup variation is a bit more advanced. It requires you to place your feet in an elevated position causing you to shift your body’s center of gravity to put even more load on your chest.

Because of the angle your body will be positioned, this variation puts greater emphasis on the upper chest muscles. This position also recruits more of the shoulder or deltoid muscles. The abdominal muscles, glutes and legs are also engaged. Click here for more benefits of decline pushups.

The higher you place your feet, the harder the exercise becomes, with more load being placed on the upper chest and shoulder muscles. You can place your feet on any stable surface such as a chair, table or staircase.

This is an easy variation to implement especially if you’re not ready to do decline pushups yet. Because of the wider hand placement, you reduce the use of the triceps muscles during the pushup and puts more of the load on the chest muscles we’re trying to target.

One caveat is that the hand position also reduces the range of motion that you’re working the chest muscles through. However, it’s still a good variation to shock the muscles into new growth whenever you’re getting bored of standard pushups. Find out more about wide pushups here.

These variations put more of a demand on the triceps muscles. However, they also put the chest through a greater range of motion. Diamond pushups work the entire chest but you’ll feel it more in your lower and middle chest.

Plyometrics is all about producing high speeds and forces in order to increase muscle power. This combination of speed and force generation leads to the recruitment of fast twitch Type II muscle fibers, but I won’t get into the science of muscle fibers here.

What you need to know is that these are the muscle fibers we use to produce large forces. They’re also the biggest muscle fibers and they’re the reason why we train with such heavy weights in the gym.

We don’t have these heavy weights during our home chest workout, but that doesn’t mean we can’t stimulate these large Type II muscle fibers and make the most gains as possible.

Our goal here is to produce these large forces without heavy weights. The only weight we have is our bodyweight, and what happens if we apply a force greater than our bodyweight when we do a pushup?

That’s right. We leave the ground.

These are the fancy acrobat pushups you’ve probably seen people doing on the internet. We’ll go through a couple of them. They’re sure to bring a lot of fun and added challenge to your home workouts, but to avoid beating up your wrists I’ll advise to do them on a soft surface like grass.

Deadstop Pushups

These are similar to jump pushups but it emphasizes force production at the lower part of the pushup, rather than the upper part of the pushup in jump pushups.

If your goal is to recruit Type II muscle fibers and increase muscle power then it would be smart not to neglect the muscle fibers in this range of motion.

Whereas a normal pushup has an eccentric or lowering phase where the muscle will be stretched and some of the stretch will contribute to the force produced (like a rubber band), the deadstop pushup ignores it.

The pushup is done from a dead stop, so all of the force to perform the pushup must come from the muscle contracting and not the elasticity of connective tissue.

The pike pushup variation is similar to the decline pushup as it targets the upper chest and the deltoids. However, it may be slightly easier on the chest because it does not place as much load on it, when compared to the decline pushup.

The only difficulty is getting in position so it may be an awkward exercise for some.

Consider these exercises a mix between a pike pushup and an incline pushup. They target the entire chest very well.

You can consider them to have 2 eccentric and concentric phases. It starts in a pike pushup. However, when you lower your chest to the ground you push up lifting your chest into the air. Then you lower your chest back to the ground and do a pike pushup to get back into the pike position.

The Hindu pushup is the easier variation because it ignores the pike pushup part of the exercise. You return to pike position from the first concentric phase.

This pushup variation increases the load placed on the pectoral muscles because it makes it a unilateral movement. You perform a pushup with one arm while stabilizing the body with the other arm.

This exercise is a great way to increase the load on the chest muscles, so you stimulate those important Type II muscle fibers.

Archer pushups are also a great way to progress from standard pushups to one armed pushups or to just add a challenge to your home chest workout.

It’s pretty self explanatory here. It’s a pushup, but with one arm.

This pushup variation puts all of the stress on one side of the chest in order to fully overload the pectoral muscles. All of the supporting muscles like the triceps and the deltoids are loaded too, but you’ll find that your core muscles are worked more in this variation as they try to stabilize the body.

One arm pushups require you to recruit large motor units to get off the floor, leading to serious gains.

These pushup variations allow you to target the chest from different angles but focus more on developing core stability. They are a useful assistance exercise when working up to one arm pushups, or to just keep your home workouts interesting.

This variation kills two birds with one stone by combining the pushup with an abdominal exercise. It builds core strength and stability while also adding much needed variety to your home chest workout.

Another variation to add some excitement to your home chest workout. This one is a cross between a wide pushup and a diamond pushup, giving you all of the muscle stimulation in one compact set.

This variation stimulates the chest and abdominal muscles. It will especially stimulated the deltoid and the upper chest muscles, making it an easy way to progress to the pike pushup.

Dips are the perfect exercise to workout your chest at home. They’re so effective that there are entire pieces of equipment dedicated to them at the gym. We don’t have equipment, but that’s not a problem.

The dip allows you to train your chest with a load equivalent to that of your entire bodyweight. Compare that to a pushup, which always loads a fraction of that regardless of variation.

That’s not to say pushups aren’t effective. It’s just to say how much more effective dips can be for your chest development.

Before you begin, you’ll need to find a stable surface that can bear your entire bodyweight, like a countertop. Two parallel surfaces are even better as you will be able to maneuver your body in the space better. You can achieve this with 2 chairs, but this can be unstable.

This exercise will stimulate the entire chest but will focus more on the lower chest and triceps.

Bonus Chest Exercise – Isometrics

What are isometric exercises?

An isometric muscle contraction is one that causes the muscle to produce tension or a force without changing the length of the muscle. So isometric exercises will be focused on generating and maintaining a muscle contraction without actually shortening the muscle.

You won’t be moving for these exercises. Rather you’ll be in one static position.

Isometric exercises have been proven to stimulate muscle hypertrophy. That’s good news for your chest gains.

However, if it’s strength you’re chasing then there’s a caveat. Isometric contractions only build strength in the muscle at the particular length you’re training it at.

What does this mean? It means if you hold an isometric contraction at the bottom of a pushup, it will only build strength at the bottom of the pushup. Not the middle. Not the top. But we can get around that by holding contractions at different phases of the muscle contraction.

How to use Isometric Exercises to train Chest?

You can start by pausing at different points in any of the exercises we’ve discussed and holding the contraction for a few seconds. Really flex your chest muscles when you do this.

You can also train them by themselves. Just get into position and hold the contraction for as long as possible.

This is an easy way add some more intensity to your home chest workouts, because you won’t have to generate much force to hold the contraction.

I have a better idea.

Remember those big Type II muscles I mentioned? The ones that are activated when we need to produce large forces. How about we use isometric contractions to stimulate them?

Try this:

1. Get under your doorframe.
2. Push your hips into one side of the doorframe and get into a staggered stance. We need this to maintain support or else we will move when we do the exercise.
3. Place your hand on the opposite side of the doorframe.
4. Flex your chest muscles and push as hard as possible into the doorframe for 5-10 seconds. Make sure your arms don’t extend.
5. Do it again with your other hand.
6. Remember to vary the length of the muscle you’re contracting by leaning towards or away from the opposite side of the doorframe.
7. You can also try putting your hand just outside the doorframe and performing an isometric chest fly.

How to Build Muscle with Home Chest Workout?

If you’re trying to figure out how to workout chest at home you’re probably also wondering if it will even help you gain muscle.

It will, but you can’t train the same as if you were in the gym.

You just need to understand how your body responds to the training you’re putting it through in order to know how to train chest optimally to stimulate gains at home.

You’ll need to consider a few things.

Progressive Overload

Muscle growth is an adaptation to your training. During training the muscle is damaged and when it recovers it adapts to become bigger and stronger to deal with the training stimulus.

So if I do 1 pushup, my muscles would grow and adapt to become stronger so the next time I do 1 pushup they will be able to that pushup more efficiently. But because we’ve adapted to the stimulus of 1 pushup already, continuing to do 1 pushup again won’t have any effect on further muscle growth.

We need to continue to progressively increase the stimulus we are giving our muscles.

How can we do that?

• Increase the number of repetitions
• Increase the number of sets
• Increase the load (adding weight)
• Progressing to harder variations
• Reducing the rest time between sets

If you continue to manipulate these variables, you’ll be making a lot of gains at home for a very long time.

Training Volume

For the most part your home workouts will be restricted to using lighter weight, your own bodyweight. This low intensity of training will not be effective unless you increase the total training volume.

This is as simple as increasing the total number of reps, sets and the number of exercises you are performing. You’ll need a higher volume in order to stimulate the muscle to grow.

Training Frequency

Every time you train a muscle, muscle protein synthesis increases in order to repair the tissue and grow bigger and stronger. But this only lasts a day or two after training.

The more often you train a muscle, the more often you stimulate muscle protein synthesis and give it a chance to grow.

Because bodyweight exercises are generally low intensity, your muscles will be able to recover much faster from your home workouts. That means you’ll be able to train them again much sooner and be able to stimulate that desired growth.

Depending on your training volume and intensity you can aim to train chest around 2-3 times per week, or even everyday if you’re able to recover.

Training Intensity

Yes, I said training intensity is generally lower for bodyweight exercises but that doesn’t mean we can’t work on making our home workouts as intense as possible.

Try these tips to intensify your home chest workouts:

• Perform challenging variations
• Perform mechanical dropsets- moving from a hard variation to an easier variation immediately after
• Train sets to failure
• Focus on the eccentric or lowering phase of the exercise- aim for 3-4 seconds

Putting it All Together- Building your Home Chest Workout

In order to maximize your gains you’ll want to pick a few of the exercises that you can perform with good form whenever you workout chest at home. Make sure at least one of these exercises is challenging. This would be your main exercise.

Your goal would be to progress with this exercise, by increasing sets and reps to make sure you’re progressively overloading your chest muscles, until that variation becomes easy for you. At that point you progress to a more challenging variation and begin the cycle again.

The other easier exercises will function as assistance exercises to make sure you fully stimulate your chest muscles even after your chest is fatigued from the main exercise. For example:

Beginner Home Chest Workout

1. Knee Pushups- 3 sets of 10 reps
2. Incline Pushups- 3 sets of 10 reps

Click here to find out more about beginner home chest workouts and here for more beginner chest exercises.

Over time the beginner would progress to 12 reps, 15 reps and may even do an extra set. They would then progress from knee pushups to standard pushups. They will perform harder pushup variations, and include more exercises in their training. Their chest workout might look like this now:

Intermediate Home Chest Workout

1. Chest dips- 4 sets of 10 reps
2. Decline pushups- 4 sets of 10 reps
3. Pushups- 4 sets of 10 reps
4. Incline pushups- 4 sets of 10 rips

Over time they’ll progress to decline pushups and one armed pushups, where at that point they won’t be a beginner anymore and would have experienced and still be experiencing consistent chest growth.

Focus on progressive overload and find the right balance between training volume, frequency and intensity and you’re sure to make good progress whenever you workout chest at home. For a great example of this feel free to check out The Best Chest Workout at Home Without Equipment.

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.

VOSSEN, J., KRAMER, J., BURKE, D. and VOSSEN, D., 2000. Comparison of Dynamic Push-Up Training and Plyometric Push-Up Training on Upper-Body Power and Strength. The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 14(3), p.248.