#3: Can I Get A Bigger Chest Without Weights?

Getting those gains ain’t always easy, especially if you don’t have any equipment. But thankfully we have science, and science always gives us a way.

Muscle growth (hypertrophy) comes with a little something known as ‘progressive overload’. And by ‘a little’, I mean ‘a big’ something.

If your aim is to get a bigger chest, you need to kick that chest’s ass on the regular (ignore the anatomical incorrectness of that statement).

Without free-weights, there are five bodyweight exercises you can do, as often as you can, to put you in pole position for results. Believe it or not, they are all push-up variations.

Each variation can be used in varying intensity and all work the pecs (chest muscles) in different ways.

Opening or closing the arms more, inclining the position, adding some weights (like a backpack), or even slowing down (or speeding up) the time of your movement are all additional tweaks you can use to spice things up.

Let’s dive in.

1 - Standard Push Up

Lie face down and raise your body by supporting the tip of the feet and the palms of the hands on the ground. The hands should be placed a little more open than the height of your shoulders.

The initial position is with the arms stretched but without reaching the point of locking the elbows. On descent, stay about 2-4cm from the ground. This is important for you to get a full range of motion.

Throughout the movement our back should not be arched. Moreover, our trunk should remain straight.

2 - Close-grip Push Up

The whole movement is identical to the previous one. The only difference lies in the position of the hands.

Now the hands remain glued together (thumb against thumb) on the ground and at the height of the center of our chest.

It’s a great exercise for building strength in the triceps and training the inner muscle fibers of the chest. Like with a close-grip bench press, you’ll still be strengthening the chest and anterior deltoids but focusing on the triceps.

Having a narrower base of support would also help strengthen the core.

Pro tip: adjust your hand position as shown below to minimize strain on your anterior deltoid.

3 - Open Push Up

Another variation of conventional push-ups. This time, the palms of the hands should be further apart than normal. Like this, you will not have as much leverage and help from the arms, so the chest will work more.

4 - Knuckle Push Up

This variant is identical to the conventional one, but it changes the support of the hands by having the knuckles as the ‘point of contact’ with the ground. This strengthens the wrists and knuckles. It will also challenge your stability.

5 - Decline Push Up

Same procedure as the conventional push-up, but your toes would be elevated on some other surface like a chair, sofa, cabinet or table. The higher your feet are, the more difficult the exercise will be.

You can even use a Swiss ball if you want to challenge your stability.

Bonus - Plyo-Push Up

The plyometric push-up is an advanced push-up variation that will have you pitch your optimal power output and eccentric strength.

This exercise targets the fast-twitch muscle fibers of the chest which have the biggest potential for growth. These muscle fibers may have otherwise been left untouched through the above push up variations which have slower contractile speeds.

The plyo-push up is great for upper body power and strength. The increase in force development and muscle fiber recruitment has a direct transfer to other pressing movements, like the bench press.

Pro tip: don’t clap whilst airborne. It’s a great way to fall flat on your face. Please, leave that for the movies.

Training at home, without weights, may not be the easiest of things. But if you remain consistent, you will see progress.

Feel free to play around with the tension times of each exercise. You can use a 3:1 system to perform most variations. That is, performing the downward movement in a controlled manner for 3 seconds and then make the ascent fast and explosive with a duration of 1 second. This is an excellent way to increase Time Under Tension (TUT).

Quality is better than quantity. Perform each exercise in good form and work progressively. Your body will adapt much better to loads and increased difficulty.

In between sets, rest between 1 and 2 minutes. You can shorten the running time weekly to increase the intensity of the exercise. Remember, the aim is to overload the muscles. And we can do so by any means necessary.