Fun Chest Exercises You Can Enjoy

Here are some chest exercises other than the bench press, peck deck, and other similar exercises.

The exercises I am about to show you can still build big, strong chests, but they can also improve your balance, coordination, and muscle reaction time. Plus, as always, they are a lot of fun!

Some of these chest exercises can be performed by beginners while others are more suitable for advanced athletes. Please do not try to do any exercises on this page that you do not feel comfortable doing.

It is not worth getting injured because you want to try an exercise out or push yourself so you can gain enough strength to complete an exercise.

Before starting these exercises make sure to do a good fitness warm up so you can get your muscles ready for a great workout.

Fun Chest Exercises That Produce Results

Fitness Ball Pushup

You can do this one either with your feet elevated or your chest inclined. Let us start with feet elevated.

To do this with your feet elevated, place your palms on the floor in front of the ball. Slowly bring each leg and place it on top of the ball. Take a second to balance yourself, and start doing regular pushups on the floor with your feet on top of the ball.

To do this inclined; simply place your hands on the top-side of the ball (about the 2 and 10 o'clock positions) and start doing pushups!

To make this chest exercise a bit harder, you can add a weighed vest and/or pushup bars when doing it with your feet elevated.

Either way you do this is a great exercise. It will give your core a great workout and let you know what it feels like to use your whole body in 1 exercise.

Plyometric Pushup

This is a great exercise for explosive strength which is very important to have, especially if you are an athlete. Just do a pushup as you normally would, but push as hard as you can off the floor and get airborne. Land on your hands (or knuckles if you like to do knuckle pushups) and repeat.

You can also do this and clap while you are airborne for an added degree of difficulty. If it is still too easy for you, try adding a weighted vest or put a cinder block under each hand so you can go down further before you spring upwards.

Power Overs

These are a very fun exercise to do that will improve balance, coordination, plus reactive and explosive strength in the upper body.

To do this, pretend you are about to get into the pushup position. Place something that is about 6 inches high and will not slide in the middle of your shoulders. Solid cinder blocks are great for this, but anything that is a small platform will work.

Move over to one side and place 1 hand on the ground and 1 on the cinder block or other block that you are using. Explode as fast as possible up and sideways, pushing yourself into the air far enough that your other hand can land on top of the block and the other off the floor. As fast as possible, explode back again, doing the same thing.

If you are a beginner, be careful with this exercise as you are doing an explosive movement which, if not warmed up properly or not in good enough condition, can possibly hurt your joints and muscles a bit.

1 Armed Pushup

This should only be done if you are a strong person and have a very strong core. If not, you will fall flat on your face. To do it, just get into a pushup position and take away 1 arm. Then try to do it as your normally would! It might take a few tries to get the balance right for this 1.

If you don not possess the strength to do this, try some of these variations.

Place 1 hand on a cinder block and the other on the floor. (Like in a Power Over) Just do regular pushups in this position, but make sure you work both sides evenly.
Get into a pushup position and lean your entire body to 1 side, including your legs if you can. Do a few pushups and reverse the position. This puts more pressure on 1 side of your upper body which allows it to get used to only using 1 side.
Instead of having your 1 arm at shoulder width, simply take it out more. This will help stabilize your core and give you more balance which will make it easier. Then with each workout, bring your hands back in a few inches.

Hindu Pushup
This is a great one that blasts the shoulders and chest while also stretching your spine and giving you an incredible cardiovascular workout. Click on the link for more information on it. Ready for more chest exercises?
Medicine Ball Throw
This is a great exercise that can be done right after a hard set of a different chest exercise that is generating strength, such as a 1 armed pushup.
To do this, grab a medicine ball that corresponds with your strength level, and lie on the floor. With 1 hand, push the medicine ball up with force straight up into the air. Your arm should go in a straight line, you are trying to push the ball, not throw it like a baseball.
Catch it on the way down with both hands, and repeat. Do this a few times on each side. You can also do this with both hands instead of just the 1 if you lack the coordination and/or strength to do this.

I think you'll agree that these chest exercises are much more fun than the conventional bench press. You don't need to bench press in order to get strong or big.

While some of these are more geared towards endurance and explosive strength, that's still very important when it comes to strength.

After all, what's the point of being strong if you can only exert your strength for 5 seconds and have no explosiveness with it?

Have some fun with these chest exercises and try to mix them into your current routines. I am positive that you will be glad you did.

The Chest exercises that are extremely effective are isometric chest exercises. Isometrics is something I have discovered recently when I bought an e-book about isometric training by Paul O'Brien. I have been doing these exercises daily as taught by Paul and they are a lot of fun and the results are just phenomenal.