The pectoralis major muscles (or pecs, as they often are known) are on the front of your chest, and their functions include flexing your arms forward horizontally and drawing your arms toward the mid-line of your body--a movement called adduction. You can train your pecs in a variety of ways using different training methods, depending on what equipment you have available.
Body-Weight Exercises
If you have limited time or resources, you can get an effective workout using body-weight exercises. Push-ups are an excellent exercise for your pecs and can be performed in a variety of ways to suit your strength and fitness levels. Push-ups are convenient; they can be performed almost anywhere and require no exercise equipment. The easiest form of push-ups involves performing the exercise on your knees and can be made more difficult by balancing on your toes. To make the push-up harder still, raise your feet onto a low, sturdy chair or exercise step, which puts more weight on your pecs. Another body-weight exercise is the parallel-bar dip, it requires that you are strong enough to lift your own body weight. Dips are an ideal pecs exercise for stronger athletes.
Barbell Exercises
The bench press is a popular exercise for developing the pecs and can be adjusted to work a variety of areas within the chest. Incline bench presses target the upper portion of the chest, and decline bench presses work the lower region. Flat bench presses work the pecs in general. Because bench pressing requires you to raise a bar over your chest or face, it's a good idea to work with a spotter to make sure you don't drop the weight on yourself.
Dumbbell Exercises
All variations of the bench press also can be performed using dumbbells, and dumbbells also can be used for a variety of fly exercises. Flies work the pecs in a similar way to bench presses but add an emphasis to the inner pec area. One of the main advantages of pec flies is that they don't involve a pressing movement, so you can concentrate all your efforts on your pecs. Dumbbells also can be used for pullovers, which work the lower portions of the pecs and also challenge the latisimus dorsi muscles (or lats) of the back.
Pulley Exercises
You can perform all the dumbbell exercises using pulleys, with the advantage of knowing that should you accidentally drop the weights, you probably won't risk injury. Pulley flies are a particularly effective exercise, as the pulley mechanism maintains tension on the pec muscles throughout the exercise for greater pec development. By varying the angle of the pulley apparatus, you can work all the regions of the chest. Pulley flies and presses usually are performed in a standing position, which also taxes the abdominal muscles, or abs.
Machine Exercises
A variety of resistance machines can work the chest, including the chest press and fly machines. These machines are found in well-equipped gyms and are designed to guide your limbs into the correct range of movement to work your pecs effectively and safely. Resistance machines also provide back support, which always helps when working with weights. Select two to four exercises, and perform two or three sets of 8 to 12 repetitions of each with a challenging weight level, resting 60 seconds between sets.
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