We Tested 16 Chest Exercises, These Are Best For Growth

This is Betty, a $12,000 EMG machine who is going to help us determine what the best chest exercises actually are. How does this all work? I'll explain in a minute, but here's a hint. Let's talk about why I bought a $12,000 piece of equipment in the first place. I remember the first time I watched Crazy Stupid Love and saw Ryan Gosling's ripped, muscular body on screen. And I thought to myself, damn, I would feel incredible if I looked like that.

Seriously, it's like a photoshop.

So at 15 years old, weighing in at a frail 120 pounds, I decided to dive head first into the gym. But almost instantly, I became confused and overwhelmed with what to do. Everyone had a different opinion on how to train and what to eat. I tried it all, and while I saw some some results, I just wasn't satisfied.

Until one day during my studies in.

University, I accidentally came across a 2010 study titled the Mechanisms of Muscle Hypertrophy and Their Application to Resistance Training. This paper dove into the science behind what made muscles grow and how to apply that science to your training. I was fascinated. I felt like I stumbled upon a gold mine. I started reading more studies and applying these methods to my own training, and my results skyrocketed. I taught these methods to my friends and my family, and the same effect happened there. Finally, a source of truth I could actually trust. That's when I went all in to pursue a career in fitness, Learning from the experts and dissecting the research in a way that the average Joe could understand and apply. However, I wanted to go a step further. I want to not only communicate research and spread the truth to the world, but I want to be a part of that research process. Which brings me back to Betty. She's what's known as an EMG machine.

Just don't tell her that. She likes to feel human.

EMG stands for electromyography, and it's a way of measuring the electrical activity produced by muscles when they contract. Researchers use this to assess how well different exercises are at activating our muscles. But there's a problem. I haven't used this machine since back in university, and I want to make sure I run this experiment as best as possible so that we and you could actually trust the data. So I called up a few colleagues of mine, and they led me to. To John, a master's student specializing in EMG who taught me everything I needed to know. Finally, Betty and I were ready for our first test run.

Oh, yeah, put that on my bicep stick.

This on.

All right. It's a moment of truth.

Boom.

So you see this green? That is my bicep.

After getting the hang of her, it was time to prep the experiment and think about all the variables we had to control. First off, subjects. Everyone's bodies are slightly different and the more subjects in a study, the more reliable the data. So although it would triple the work, I wanted at least three subjects in total. Luckily, we had Alex and Raza eager to give it a go. Raza is more of a beginner, so it's going to be interesting to see how his results compare to me and Alex. Next, we had to figure out how much weight we'd be using on each chest exercise to ensure that they were equally as challenging. So a week before the test date, we all spent a whole day in our gym and figured out our estimated 1 rep max. This is the maximum amount of weight we could lift on each exercise. On test day, we'd use 70% of this weight for each exercise. However, we couldn't really do this with push ups since you're forced to use your own body weight, which led to some really interesting results that I'll share later on. Finally, the wager.

This is Raza and this is Alex, one of our Billy science coaches. Betty over here is going to help us determine which chest exercises are best at activating the upper, the middle and the lower chest. Now, before we reveal the results, each of us is going to write down on a piece of paper which we think the top two exercises are going to be for each region. The person who gets the least exercises correct, well, they're going to have to face the wrath. In this case, it's a full body.

Dunk into a human body sized Canadian tundra death trap, guaranteed to shrink whatever.

Manhood you have left.

Here's a list of all the chest exercises we'll be testing. But before we test, there's just a few you more final things we need to get done. First, to make sure the sensors stick, we needed a clean shave. Thanks to my half Filipino jeans and Alex's Vietnamese background, we were ready to go. Raz, on the other hand, needed some work. Next, electrode placement. We put sensors on the upper, middle and lower portions of the chest, but we also put one on the front delt to see if any exercises led the shoulders to take over rather than the chest. And finally, before we could go into the first exercise, we had to take a crucial measurement to make sure we could standardize the data. It's what's called MVC or Maximum voluntary contraction. This represents the maximum activation your muscle can reach. But this value will be slightly different for everyone. So by gathering this value before we start testing the exercises, we're able to then accurately compare the chest exercises we do against each of our own maximal values to see how well the exercise works. Works for our individual chest muscles. Getting this value wasn't easy. With that out of the way, we're ready to test. We're sticking to a similar design as EMG research papers use by doing one set of five reps for each exercise and then taking at least a five minute rest before moving on to the next one. Form is also extremely important to activate the right muscles in the first place. So I closely monitored and tweaked form if needed. In fact, this is Raz's chest activation using his original form. And this is his chest activation using our corrected science based form for the flat dumbbell press. There was a 150% boost in his chest activation. It's these little details that make all the difference and is what we teach you how to do in our brand new 2.0 online fitness programs over@builtwithscience.com after this video, if you head there and take our analysis quiz if want to you, it'll determine which of our step by step programs are best for you and your body. Anyways, all was going well until we realized something.

Damn. Okay, so I just realized that one of the most popular exercises on the list is the pec deck machine. And it's the one exercise that we don't have at the built With Science gym. So I'm going to call the nearest gym and we're going to see if they don't mind if we run a little bit of a science experiment.

I called but there was no answer, so we decided to just show up.

Yeah, hi. Yeah, I'm not sure how entirely to explain this. Are you able to come to the.

Front for a second?

And we're testing a bunch of different machines and the only one we didn't have was a pectic machine. All you guys need to sign here. We're in. Let's go see something. We don't want to give. We don't want to give. Which exercise gives the best reading? Exactly. My chest exercises in seconds. Yeah. Is that good? Good.

With that out of the way, we managed to finish up the rest of the exercises.

All right, guys, it has been a long day. Over eight hours of testing. I'm gonna get some sleep and then I'm gonna process the data. And then it's gonna be time to reveal the winners. But first I want you to comment down below what you think the top two exercises will be for the upper chest, the middle chest, and the lower chest.

And.

And let's see if any of you guys would be the ones summoned to the ice plunge. Good night, Betty. It's time. So, before I present the winners, it's important to be mindful of the limitations of this little experiment. With several variables and just three subjects, it's hard to detect any statistical differences. That said, I did average the data across the three of us, and I found some really interesting findings that that actually aligns with a lot of other research out there. Let's start with the upper chest. Generally, exercises done on an incline bench will better target the upper chest. So it's no surprise that the top two exercises were both inclined dumbbell presses just at different bench angles. So we tested 15°, 30° and 45°. But for all three of us, as soon as the bench incline reached 45°, the upper chest activation began to decrease and the shoulders started to take over. The something that I've actually seen in past EMG studies as well. As a result, the lower inclines of 15 and 30 degrees, which is usually just one to two notches up from the bottom position, those came out on top. 15 degrees actually worked best for me, so I'm going to be sticking with that. Whereas 30 degrees worked best for Raza and Alex. I'd highly suggest that you try both angles and just see what feels best for you. There is, however, one more upper chest exercise I want to highlight. It's called the pinch press, a popular Instagram influencer exercise that I thought would be fun to throw in and test. This ended up being by far Roz's top upper chest exercise and scored quite well overall for me as well. But I wouldn't recommend it. Which brings me to one of the limitations of betting. I'm sorry, baby.

Don't take it personally.

Although an exercise may activate a muscle really well, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the best option to grow that muscle. In the case of the pinch press, the chest is activating really hard to keep the weight squeezed together. This type of contraction on the chest is what's called an isometric contraction, which unfortunately just isn't very effective for building muscle. It's like trying to grow your legs with wall sits instead of squats. Luckily, the pinch press is the only high activation but low muscle building potential exercise in the list I tested. Okay, so now the middle Chest. The first winner is actually a not very well known exercise, but it's something we use in our built with science programs and it's a favorite of a few popular bodybuilders such as John Meadows. It's the decline dumbbell press, but not the typical version that you see at the gym. Here we use just a very slight elevation by placing a weight plate underneath the front of the bench. Usually this helps favor the lower chest a little bit more, but to my surprise, it did an excellent job of activating the mid chest for all three of us. The other winner was an exercise with a very stable setup and one that provides constant tension to the chest throughout the whole range of motion. The seated cable fly. And in this case, we put the cable handles at chest height, which seemed to be the perfect setting for the middle chest. Before we move to the lower chest winners, I just want to highlight one more exercise. Push ups. Body weight push ups scored extremely poorly for both me and Alex, but for Rauza, because they were more challenging for him to do, it actually ranked the highest for his middle chest. So while it can be a great exercise and just as effective as something like the bench press for beginners, they will become less effective as you get stronger and need more of a challenge. Last but not least, the lower chest. Here I expected high to low cable flies to win because the tension from the cable aligns well with the lower chest fibers. While it did end up scoring well, seated cable flies came out on top of the which might be because it's a more stable setup with the tension from the cable still aligning quite well with the lower chest. So both are great options. But I would be interested to see if activation would change at all if I place the sensors a little bit more on the outer chest, the area where I personally feel high to low cable fives working the most. The other winner was once again the decline dumbbell press, suggesting that the very slight decline aligns the press very well with both the middle and the lower chest fibers of the chest. For those of you who want to take a deeper look into the results, I'll leave a link in the description box down below to where you can view all the data.

The moment of truth we got changed and gathered round for the verdict. At this point I still have no idea who is going in. Is it the master coach, the beginner, or my worst fear, me?

The results are in. Jeremy, you got four correct. Alex, you got four correct.

Oh, four.

And Raza, for you to avoid the dreaded ice plunge, you need to get at least four correct. You got three, which means you're going.

In the ice cold plunge. Can I do anything? Do anything else, I mean. Let's go, Reza. Come on, baby. Embrace it. Feel like a new mat after this.

10. Let's go.

5. 8. 7.

6.

5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 1. Good job. Come still. Besides. Jeremy, what are you doing? I couldn't resist. You know, I can see Raza and pain and not have to go through it myself.

Seeing Raza take his ice plunge like an absolute champ inspired me to jump in. But as I sat there freezing in the rain, I started getting a little emotional. After hitting 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, I founded Built with Science, which stemmed from a bigger vision I always had in mind to build a legacy that would last long after I'm gone and be much greater and larger than myself. A legacy that would bring a more scientific and research backed approach to fitness and weed out the BS and bro science that plagues the industry. This little science experiment was a big step towards realizing that for the first time ever, rather than just observing the science, I'm in a way kind of.

Actually doing the science.

I'm excited for where this leads and I appreciate you joining me on this journey.

Thank you for everything you helped with. You were an absolute chad more spicy. How do you feel about that? Huh? How do you feel about that? About what?

Everything.

The shooting and stuff. Honestly, it was like a huge step and a huge step forward. Not only in my vision, but like also in just trying to make my videos a lot more entertaining. Like stepping outside of my comfort zone and trying to do something different, you know, and like bringing the team in, like it was so much more fun instead of just having me in it to have like other characters and people like Raza and to show you guys who else is behind the scenes, who else is working with science. Because it's not just me. Like I can't do everything. So I have these incredible people with me. You know, we've tested chest and we're testing shoulders. Next, there's a poll up on our site where you can vote on the exercises that you think will come out on top. Winners get a free Built with Science program and all entries get a discount code. You can vote over@builtwithscience.com vote. I'll also leave a link in the description box down below. Good luck and I'll see you next time.