Due to the spectacular aesthetic results and its importance for maintaining posture, the pectorals are one of the muscle groups that most people want to exercise, both men and women. While they prefer to tone them through exercises without weight and with few repetitions, they seek the opposite, to increase the mass thanks to intense exercise and strength work.
As not everyone has the desire or the possibilities to go to a gym, from UnComo we will detail the best exercises for pecs at home, so that without leaving your home you can also aspire to show off perfect pectorals.
Slap push-ups
The first of the exercises for pectorals at home that we propose is the push-up with the clap, a fantastic exercise for tone the upper body and work on power. To perform a slap pushup you need strength and speed, something that will be of great help to exercise the upper body: chest, arms, shoulders and the core.
How to do the slap push-ups
Before starting to do slap push-ups, it is necessary to do a good warm-up, especially of the upper body. Once you are ready, get on the floor on your hands and feet, with your hands slightly wider than the perpendicular line of the shoulders and straight legs, touching the ground with only the balls of your feet. You must align your back, with the straight spine from hips to head.
Once you have a good posture, bend your elbows and lower your body towards the ground, keeping your elbows at a 45ยบ angle with respect to your chest and, when you touch the ground with your chest, quickly stretch your arms with force to raise yourself up and that you can give a clap in the air with enough time to return your hands to the ground, to repeat the operation.
Incline push-ups
One of the disadvantages of practicing chest exercises at home instead of in the gym is that we cannot regulate the weight, however, the incline push-ups are one of the ones that lends itself more to increasing weight and difficulty, apart from that, is one of the best exercises for pecs at home, since you only need a table or some point of support.
How to do incline pushups
First of all, to perform inclined push-ups you need to find a flat surface, where you should put your hands, with enough resistance and security so that it can support your weight without any problem. You can do it with large yoga balls, although a table or chair can do this perfectly.
Once you have it, arrange your hands on the surface in the same way as you did for the previous exercise, but you must bear in mind that the more open your hands are, the more you will work the pectorals to the detriment of the arms. It is important do not drop the hipTo do this, keep your abs and glutes in tension, something that will also offer you more benefits with a simple exercise done from home.
Open push-ups
As we have already said, the more open your hands are when performing a push-up, the more work falls on the pectoral. If a normal pushup works on the chest, shoulders, and arms, the open pushup mainly involves pectoral and shoulders, the work of the triceps being minimal.
The pectorals are a very specific and difficult muscle to work, hence the importance of this exercise to be able to exercise the pectorals at home, if on the other hand you also want to do arms, we invite you to visit our article on the best exercises to strengthen arms.
How to do open pushups
Another way of naming this exercise is guillotine-style bending, this is because the posture with which it is performed is reminiscent of the one those sentenced to death by this method had just before the blade fell.
To position yourself correctly you must do the same as for the rest of the push-ups, however, when you are going to place the palm of your hands on the floor you must open much more than normalWhen you go up, you will notice the difference in work between one exercise and another.
This way, you won’t be able to fully extend your arms, but you should try your best. If after a few repetitions the hands have moved out of place, reposition them and continue with the routine. These home chest exercises must be performed carefully and frequently to see results.
Decline push-ups
Decline push-ups are one of the best pectoral exercises to practice at home, offering great benefits simply and conveniently. As was the case with the inclined ones, you will also need a surface to support yourself, but in this case, instead of for the slats, it will be for the feet.
It is very important to have a good posture, that is why we recommend tensing both the abdominals and the lumbar, so that the back does not suffer.
How to do decline push-ups
To carry out an inclined push-up you must position yourself as if you were going to do a normal push-up but, in this case, the feet will not rest on the ground but on a raised surface such as a bench, chair, sofa, or stairsIn this way, your arms will be fully extended.
The exercise tries to lower the body, until the chest touches the ground and then to rise again with the force of the pectoral.
Some recommendations for exercising pectorals
We have already explained what are the best exercises for pectorals at home, now we want to give you a series of indications so that your work produces the best possible fruit and in a short time you can show off some great pectorals:
- To properly work the pectorals we recommend that you work this routine a minimum of 3 times a week.
- You must do 4 sets of between 10 and 20 repetitions of each exercise, depending on the level you are at and how long you have been doing it.
- If you see that you already do it easily, increase the demand: do more reps, increase the weight with a backpack, do more sets.
- Not only do you need to tone up, you must add to your routine cardiovascular activities like running or cycling, that help you burn fat so that your pecs can come out.
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