A lot of people like to come up with excuses on how they can’t work out because they don’t have access to weights, but did you know that you could still make great progress without weights as far as the upper body is concerned? Well, today I am going to give you 3 amazing chest exercises that you could do to build a complete chest. Hitting a muscle group in different ways from different angles is a great way to get it to grow and get stronger so here we go.

1) DIPS (CHEST EMPHASIS)

These are great and all you need is a pair of parallel dip bars. No access to dip bars? No problem! Check out my article called “A dozen places to do pull-ups and dips”. This exercise alone works the whole chest and the stretch you get at the bottom is amazing. It also builds horseshoe looking triceps and big front delts. The old school bodybuilders such as Arnold knew the importance of pull-ups and dips, they also had the bodies to show for it. If I could only pick one chest exercise for the rest of my life, this would probably be it. Once you get more advanced you could try doing Ring dips. You will need to buy gymnastic rings for this exercise and also the third one that I will name in a few minutes, but it will be worth it. Once you are able to do 20 picture perfect ring dips with a controlled tempo, your chest will look a lot different than what it looks like now.

2) PUSH-UP VARIATIONS

There are hundreds of different push-up variations out there from single arm push-ups to behind the back clap push-ups, you while be occupied for a few years. The push-ups also work the chest very well and they also hit the triceps and front delts very effectively depending on your hand position. The important thing is that you keep progressing to harder variations without sacrificing technique.

3) RING FLY

These may look easy, but they are hard work and they are one of the best chest exercises that you could do. These don’t work the triceps, but they do still work the front of the shoulders. I would recommend doing these at the end of a chest workout when you are doing with your dips and push-ups. Also make sure that you are able to do proper push-ups before attempting these. The ring fly is very similar to the dumbbell chest fly or pec deck machine, except you are using your own bodyweight as the resistance. I also like this exercise because it works your core. The ring fly is really a squeezing exercise so you want to make sure that you squeeze at the top of the movement (just like how you would squeeze at the top of the dip and push-up). If you want to make these harder, then you could put your feet on a bench and if you want to make them easier then you could go on your knees.

Conclusion:

This is just another article showing you how you can still make amazing progress with your bodyweight. If you have shoulder problems, then I would approach the dip and the ring fly with extreme caution because they can aggravate sensitive shoulders. Be sure to slowly work up to these exercises, never do too much too soon. Remember to also include a lot of pull-ups, rows and other forms of pulling exercises to really balance out your program. A great upper body can be built without the use of weights and if you don’t believe me then just look at the upper body on male and female gymnasts. These exercises can be done weighted as well so if you have a backpack and the exercises above are feeling easy then doing be scared to put some books or weights in the backpack to take your chest training to the next level. Let me know how everything works out for you.