Doing endless press-ups without any visible improvements to your pec dance? Blame biology, not your genetics. Your pectoral muscles’ main purpose is adduction of the shoulder – bringing your upper arm inward towards your body, like you do when you hit a forehand in tennis – so pushing/pressing movements aren’t terribly effective at targeting them.
What is? Any move that involves that inward motion of the arm – think dumbbell flyes – but especially ones that keep tension on the muscles for at least a few seconds each rep, forcing them to grow.
Enter the ‘Squeezer’ press-up, the home-bound gentleman’s best solution for building a bigger chest. To do it, set up as you (hopefully) would for a standard press-up – hands directly underneath your shoulders, body straight. Lower your chest to the floor and then come up – but come up slowly, trying to ‘pull’ your hands towards each other.
Enter the ‘Squeezer’ press-up, the home-bound gentleman’s best solution for building a bigger chest
Unless you’ve picked a very slippery floor your hands shouldn’t move, but you’ll still feel the pec activation from the isometric hold – and if you make the ‘up’ part of each rep last 4-5 seconds, you’ll reap the benefits of significant time under tension in each set.
The end result? Even if you do less press-ups – and no benching at all – you’ll build a chest to treasure.
