The latissimus dorsi and trapezius muscles in your back power any strong pulling motion done with the arms; the pectoral muscles, in your chest, power any pushing motion. If you've got a very strong back, it's important for you to work your pectorals, too, to keep this muscle pairing in balance. The Mayo Clinic recommends one set of 12 repetitions for any given exercise, although bodybuilders may choose to do more.
Presses and Push Ups
Anything that involves pushing a weight away from your body--bench presses or chest press machines, for example--or pushing your body against gravity, such as push ups, will help strengthen your pectoral muscles in addition to the front of your shoulder muscles and the back of your arms. Adjusting your body position or the machine grips so that you're pressing the weight slightly down or up in relation to your torso will work the lower or upper portion of the pecs, respectively, with more intensity. So, for example, if you lay on an incline bench with your head raised at a 45-degree angle and do a dumbbell chest press, you'll be building your upper pecs; if you lay on a decline bench and do the same exercise, you'll be building your lower pecs.
Flies or Flyes
Variously spelled as flies or flyes, these exercises effectively isolate your pectoral muscles because your elbow--which involves the triceps muscle at the back of your arm when it bends--stays straight. You can do flies laying on your back on a weight bench, standing up or bent over between two cable pulleys, or in a weight machine sometimes referred to as a pec deck.
It's important to distinguish between chest flies and rear lateral flies, which are also sometimes referred to as rear deltoid flies or reverse flies. Because this rear deltoid exercise, which looks rather like a mirror image of chest flies, pulls the weights toward the back of the body, it's not working the chest at all. In order for flies to work your chest they must be done in front of your body, pushing your arms together against resistance.
Pullover
The pullover exercise can be done laying flat on your back with a dumbbell or barbell, in a pullover (sometimes called a super pullover) machine, or with a cable pulley oriented almost directly overhead. While your lats--the powerful, winglike muscles in your back--are the prime movers in this motion, your pectorals also work powerfully to help push the weight down across your body.
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