Do you have a sagging chest or want to make your pecs more defined? You can have a lower chest workout at home to target those areas. There’s no need to go to the gym since you can do some excellent chest exercises at home.
What Will You Learn?
After getting through this post, you’ll know how to create your workout routine and understand how to focus on the lower pectoralis.
Contents
What Exercises Work the Lower Chest? 🤔
The chest includes two muscles, the pectoralis major and minor. The entire chest is engaged when you do standard push-ups or presses.
However, we can put more load on the lower areas with the right angle to get better results.
How?
You need to do incline chest exercises. When you press, the arms close a smaller angle with the torso.
Therefore, the load is concentrated on the lower pecs.
If you do a dumbbell or barbell bench press, you need to lie on a decline bench, so your feet are higher.
Now let’s see some moves.
Lower Chest Exercises at Home 😮
What type of push-ups builds the lower chest?
How to train with simple chest exercise equipment? How to do dips for the lower chest? Learn below.
1. Incline Push-Ups + Variations
The difficulty of the incline push-ups depends on how high we place our hands.
Beginners can use a table. Advanced athletes can use a lower object, for example, stairs and a weighted vest for additional resistance.
- Place your hands on the elevated object with a shoulder-width apart. Stand with feet close to each other.
- Align your body so that your head, back, and legs are in line. So, you get into a plank pose.
- Bend your elbows and decrease your upper body towards the elevated thing. The edge of the thing slightly touches your lower chest. If not, tweak the distance between your toes and the object.
- Press yourself back to the start.
- Do the required reps.
Tip: To make the push-ups more challenging, you can modify them in various ways.
- Plyometric (explosive): Press yourself back to the start with a power boost, so your hands move away from the elevated object a few inches.
- Torso rotation: Twist your body to the side when you go down. This way, there is more load on the chest on the opposite side.
- With one arm: This is an advanced push-up variation for stronger people.
2. Pseudo Planche Push-up
Here’s how to do the Pseudo Planche Push-up:
- Get into a plank with slightly wider than shoulder-width, but your hands are at your stomach and your palms facing to the sides or backward if you can.
- Keep feet close together, your legs, back, and legs straight.
- Bend your arms, and drop your chest till it slightly touches the floor.
- Press yourself back to the start.
- Repeat.
3. Hindu Push-up
Here’s how to do the Hindu Push-up:
- A bit wider than shoulder-width, get into the plank position.
- Get into a downward-facing dog pose by pressing yourself up and raising your hips.
- From that point, start moving forward as if you need to slip under a bar. So, your first get into a standard push-up position, but then you drop your back and press your upper body up.
- Get back to the dog pose.
- Repeat.
4. Chest Dips
Dips with a vertical position strengthen the triceps, but by leaning forward, we can put more load on the chest muscles, particularly on the lower part. Learn more about the chest dips.
Here’s how to do the Chest Dips:
- Grab the bars and push yourself up.
- Lean forward as far as you feel comfortable with. There is no need to lean forward too much as it will put more load on the shoulders and inner chest.
- Lower yourself until your elbows are parallel to the ground. More muscular guys can go deeper.
- Press yourself back to the starting position.
Tip: You can use two stable chairs for dips. But be careful.
5. Single Bar Dip
If you have a dip or pull-up bar, you can do this advanced dip variation to target the lower chest.
- Grab the bar with shoulder-width apart and press yourself up.
- Lean forward and bend your legs to have a better position for pressing.
- Drop yourself towards the bar. Try to go deep.
- Press yourself back to the starting position.
- Repeat.
Before you continue, look at our top three arm and chest training equipment to help you work various muscles to build a bigger chest.
6. Decline Dumbbell Chest Press and Flyes
Aside from the bodyweight exercises, you can have a lower chest workout at home with dumbbells and an adjustable bench.
Here are our top recommended benches to get better results with the exercises here if you don’t have one already.
But what if you don’t have an adjustable bench?
To perform decline presses, you need to lift your lower body. You can get into the half-bridge on the floor.
You can place something elevated under your toes to get a higher degree. This way, you can also strengthen your glutes, hams, and back.
Incline floor press
- Lie on the floor with dumbbells in your hands, bend your knees with feet hip wide.
- Push your hips up, so your thighs and torso are in line.
- Your elbows are face outwards, and your forearms are right-angled to the ground.
- Press the dumbbells up slightly, moving them towards each other.
- Slowly lower the weights back without touching the ground.
Incline floor flyes
- The starting position is the same, so get into a half-bridge.
- With bent elbows, slowly bring the weight upwards. Imagine as if you were hugging a big tree trunk.
- At the top, stop for a moment and squeeze your chest.
- Slowly with the same bent arms, lower the dumbbells back to the starting position without touching the floor.
- Repeat.
Home Workouts for Lower Chest 🏋️♀️
Now, you have learned some exercises for lower chest training at home. Here are a few examples of chest workouts.
5-Minute Training With Push-Ups (Beginner-Intermediate)
This routine includes only push-ups, perfect for someone with no exercise equipment at home. The only thing you need is a stable table.
Calisthenics Workout for Lower Pecs (Advanced)
This tough bodyweight chest workout is for you if you are a pro and have a pull-up bar at home. It includes advanced calisthenics moves.
Dumbbell Lower Chest Workout for Home
If you prefer lifting dumbbells, this routine is the right choice. The video perfectly shows how to have a decline dumbbell press at home without a weight bench.
Check out our top recommended adjustable dumbells to help you do your workout if you don’t have one already.
Final Thoughts 🤗
As you see, it’s possible to build your lower chest at home even without using weights.
But, still, it’s better to have a complete home chest workout that targets each part, so I only have one lower chest exercise in my routine.
Unless you want to focus on the shape, I recommend doing the same full strength training.
If you find this guide useful, you may be interested in our upper chest workout at home guide.
Last update on 2022-10-13 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API