You can get an effective chest workout with minimal strength-training equipment or even no equipment at all. Part of the allure of gym workouts is having access to a wide variety of equipment, which in turn gives you many different ways of exercising your chest, keeping your workouts interesting and making it easier not to hit a plateau.
Lever Chest Press Machines
Most gyms offer several chest press machines to choose from. You adjust the resistance by either sliding a selector pin into a stack of weight plates or manually loading weight plates onto bars mounted on the gym. Then you sit down in the machine and push the handles forward; the machine guides you through the motion. Although this makes the chest press machine a very beginner-friendly option, it also deprives you of the functional benefit of forcing your muscles to not just push the weight, but stabilize it too. Some machines offer handles that move in multiple planes, allowing you to swing your hands in or out as you execute the press and introducing some element of stabilization.
Bench Press
The bench press is one of the most iconic exercises in the gym. You can get hurt if you try to lift too much weight and end up with the bar stuck on your chest. Ask someone you trust to spot you, and limit yourself to an amount of weight you can lift smoothly and with control. Your spotter can also give you feedback on your technique and, in particular, whether you're keeping the bar level. If one side of the bench press bar regularly tips down, it can signal a muscular imbalance or technique problem. If you don't have anyone to spot you, try doing bench presses on a Smith machine.
Other Free Weight Presses
You can also do free-weight chest presses with dumbbells. Like any other chest press exercise, doing dumbbell presses flat on your back works your chest, shoulders and triceps. However, you can also do presses on an incline or decline bench, placing extra emphasis on the upper and lower fibers of your pecs, respectively. Most gyms also provide stability balls, which you can use as a makeshift bench for doing chest presses. Using free weights already forces multiple muscles to work together at stabilizing the weights, but lying on a stability ball makes this even more difficult; the closer together you bring your legs and feet as you lie on the ball, the harder a core workout you'll get.
Cable Presses
The cable machine is one of the most versatile pieces of equipment in the gym, and you can put it to work for a wide variety of chest press variations. The pulleys may be mounted on swing arms or on linear tracks. Depending on how you can adjust the pulleys, your chest press options include wheeling a flat or incline bench between them to do flat or incline chest presses or sitting with your back to the pulley and doing two-arm or single-arm presses. To get the right angle, adjust the pulley up or down so that when you are at full extension during the press, your arms and the pulley cable form a straight line leading back to the pulley itself.
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