3 Chest Exercises You Haven’t Seen Before With EC Athlete Christian

Consistently performing the same exercises and increasing weight little by little per training session is a sure-fire way to grow your muscles. But sometimes it’s nice to switch up your routine, especially if you’ve been doing the same one for weeks. Not only will this switch up in your routine leave you sore (because of the new exercises your body wasn’t comfortable with) but it’s great for breaking plateaus and giving your training sessions a new edge.

Today we’re going to show you 3 chest exercises you probably haven’t seen before, as performed by EC Athlete Christian.

Add these to your next routine, and let us know what you think!

The exercises:

#1 The Dumbbell Wide-Grip Push Up

Push Ups are a favorite exercises both inside and out of the gym. Push-ups require no physical equipment, only your body weight, and are an amazing exercise for building upper body strength. Wide-push-ups recruit more of your pectoral muscles whereas a regular push-up uses your triceps muscles more. TIP: Keep your shoulders wide when performing this exercise to avoid “pinching” in your shoulders.

How-To:

  • Place your hands around a pair of dumbbells, parallel from each other and with your hands wider than shoulder width apart and in line with your chest.
  • Elevate your body upso your bodyweight is distributed between your feet and your hands.
  • TIP: Contract your abdominals and keep your body completely straight from head to heels.
  • Bend your elbows and lower your chest to the floor. Once your elbows bend slightly beyond 90 degrees, push off the floor and extend your arms so that your body returns to starting position without locking out your elbows at the top.

#2 Hands-On Dumbbell Push Up

How-To:

  1. Place a pair of dumbbells, slightly wider than shoulder width apart.
  2. Set yourself in a pushup position with hands on top of the dumbbells.
  3. Lower your body to the floor, pause, then complete 1 push up.

Placing your hands on top of the dumbbells requires your body to work harder to keep yourself stabilized. This variation also targets the triceps better.

#3 Shoulder  to Hand Dumbbell Push Up

How-To:

  • Place a dumbbell on its face and place your hand on top of it. Place your other hand in the spot it would go for any normal push up. This will be your starting position.
  • With the arm that is atop the dumbbell, slowly lower your shoulder towards the top of the dumbbell.
  • Push back up to the starting position and repeat.