The Best Chest Workouts For Ripped Pecs

What up Zen Dude Fitness Fam?!
It’s our goal here at Zen Dude Fitness to help people just like you get that lean and athletic body that looks and feels amazing. For many of us, getting strong, ripped pecs is a huge motivator for getting in shape. That’s why we’re going to focus on chest workouts today. We are going to show you some great exercises that will help you get the upper body you’re aiming for.

We’re going to start by giving you a list of workouts and explain how to do each of them. Then, we’ll provide you with a couple different circuits so you that you’ll have two full workouts to try once you finish this article. These routines target the chest and help you shape them to perfection.

Let’s get to it.

Chest Exercises

If you want a bigger and stronger chest, we’ve got five exercises that don’t involve your jump rope that you’ll want to start using immediately.

But rather than just tossing your rope aside, we recommend using these exercises in conjunction with your jump rope routines to get the maximum benefit.

Alright, let’s go through the five chest workouts.

Regular Pushups

Good old regular pushups. There’s a reason why these are such a common workout – because they work.

Pushups give your chest, triceps, and shoulders a great workout and also work out many other parts of your body too, including your abs. To do them, lay face-down with your body straight. Put your hands on the ground just outside of your pecs.

Start by pushing your body up with your arms so that they are fully extended and your arms are straight. Keep your body straight from your feet to your head the entire time. Then, go back down, letting your chest get within an inch of the ground before pushing yourself back up again.

regular pushups from Zen Dude Fitness on Vimeo.

Continue this process to finish until you finish the set. Depending on your workout, you’ll either be completing a certain number of pushups or you’ll be doing as many pushups as you can in a within a specific time frame.

Don’t underestimate this exercise. It’s popular for a reason. If you want to get a ripped chest, this is THE workout to incorporate into your routine.

Hand Over Hand Pushups

For the next exercise, we’ve got the hand over hand pushups. This builds off of the regular pushup by adding some lateral movement.

You begin by doing a regular pushup. Once you’ve pushed yourself up and your arms are extended straight, you’re going to take a step to your side, then perform another pushup. After that pushup, you’ll take a step in the other direction to get you back where you started. Then do another pushup.

Continue taking steps to the left and to the right after each pushup until the set is complete.

You want to make sure you are sidestepping correctly. If you are stepping to your right, keep your legs wide and cross your left arm over your right arm.

Put your weight on your left arm then bring your right arm over to the right and your left leg next to your right leg.

From here, you’ll just do another pushup, move your left leg out to the left, bring your right arm over and across your left arm, then bring your left arm and right leg over to put you into a regular pushup position again.

Then you do another pushup and repeat the process.

Walking Pushups

Next up we have the walking pushups. These are similar to the hand over hand pushups, but instead of moving to the side, you’ll be moving forward and backward between after each pushup.

You start by doing a regular pushup. Then, you’ll walk forward with your hands and feet.

To do this, first move your right foot up. Then, you’ll move your right hand and left leg forward.

At this point, you can bring your left leg a little farther than your right leg.

Finally, you’ll bring your left hand to meet evenly with your right and you’ll move your right foot up a tad to even up with the left.

Now you should be in pushup position and you can do a regular pushup.

Once you finish your pushup, walk backwards in your pushup position to your original starting point. Bring one leg and one hand back, then follow with the others to get into pushup position, right where you originally started.

Bodyweight Tricep Presses

This next exercise will give you a great upper body workout and focuses on your triceps. It also requires a fixed horizontal pole for you to work with. You can find poles like this is many parks and gyms, and even guardrails often work for this as well.

You want to find a rail or pole that is roughly waist-height, but you can always use a higher one for an easier workout or a lower one for a tougher workout.

You’ll start this exercise by standing roughly four feet away from the pole and grabbing it slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. You want to keep your body straight and your arms extended straight as well.

Next, you’ll let gravity move your body toward the pole, bending your elbows as you move forward. Your elbows will bend and move under your arms, not to the side of them.

You want to stop lowering your body once your face is about an inch from the pole. You’ll know that you’re standing at roughly the correct distance if the pole is right in front of your nose or eyes.

Again, it’s important to make sure that you are keeping your body tight and straight. Good form is extremely important, especially as you get stronger and make your workouts more difficult.

After you’ve finished bringing your body down you’ll use your triceps to push yourself back up to the original position with your arms extended and your elbows straight.

We recommend starting with a bar that is higher than your hip to begin, working your way to lower bars as you get stronger.

This is a great exercise for getting your upper body and arms jacked. Get there and you’ll be seeing ninja status in no time.

Triceps Bench Dips

This is another excellent workout for you dudes. The bodyweight dip is a fast way to shred your chest, triceps, and front shoulders since you are pushing your entire body weight up and down.

For this exercise, you’ll need two parallel bars that are roughly six inches away from each side of your chest. They also need to be raised at least a few feet so that your feet or knees don’t touch the ground when you’re doing your dips.

Start by grabbing the bars with each had and straightening your arms while you hold yourself up.

When you’re ready, slowly lower your body until your armpits are about six inches away from the bars, like this:

Then, push yourself back up to your starting position and you’ve done your first bodyweight dip.

Take note – this is another difficult workout for beginners. To get started, try dipping down only a few inches before pushing yourself back up. If that’s easy, go a few more inches on your next dip.

You’ll soon figure out what your body is capable of. Keep doing these and you’ll be doing full sets and rocking a cut upper body before you know it.

Workout Routines

Now we want to show you a couple circuits so you can put these exercises into practice.

15 Minute Chest + Triceps Bodyweight Workout

This is an amazing upper body workout that you can complete with just 15 minutes.

The circuit consists of the following five exercises:

• Pushups
• Hand Over Hand Pushups
• Bodyweight Tricep Presses
• Bodyweight Dips
• Pushups (again)

For this workout routine, you’ll do five reps of each exercise. So, five pushups, five hand over hand pushups, five tricep presses, five dips, and five additional pushups.

That makes up a complete circuit. After your finish a circuit, you’ll rest for one minute, then repeat that exact same circuit.

The workout consists of five total circuits. Once you’ve done five circuits, you’ve finished the workout.

Jump Rope and Push Up Workout

This next workout mixes pushups with jumping rope. It’s a great way to give your chest a good workout while having fun and getting lean with your jump rope.

 

Side Swipe

Criss Cross

Regular Bounce

If you consistently do the two workouts above, you are going to get ripped. Not only will you get lean and cut, but you’ll have an awesome upper body too.

The best part? These workouts don’t even take much of your time. If you want the body of your dreams, you’ll easily make room for these workouts in your life. Now it’s time for you to put them to use and show us what you got.

Recap

Let’s quickly go through everything we talked about in this article.

We first went through these five upper body exercises:

1. Pushups
2. Hand Over Hand Pushups
3. Walking Pushups
4. Bodyweight Tricep Presses
5. Bodyweight Dips

Then, we gave you two full workouts to incorporate these exercises:

The 15 Minute Chest + Tricep Bodyweight Workout, where you do five reps of each of the following exercises:

1. Pushups
2. Hand Over Hand Pushups
3. Bodyweight Tricep Presses
4. Bodyweight Dips
5. Pushups (again)

The Jump Rope and Push Up Workout, where you do each of the following exercises for 20 seconds, with 10 seconds rest between each one:

1. Pushups (regular)
2. Jump Rope – Feet X’s
3. Walking Pushups
4. Jump Rope – Side Swipe
5. Pushups (regular)
6. Jump Rope – Criss Cross
7. Walking Pushups
8. Jump Rope – Regular Bounce

For both workouts, you’ll complete each circuit five times with one minute of rest in between each circuit.

That’s it Zen Dudes and Dudettes. Now it’s time to take action.

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