A top strength coach ranks the best to worst chest exercises – the best one might surprise you

When you’re on a mission to build a bigger chest, we can all agree that you don’t want to be wasting your time on sloppy exercises. Instead, you want to focus on the ones that deliver the most bang for your buck. That’s exactly what Strength Coach and Physical Therapist, Jeff Cavaliere, breaks down in a recent Instagram post.

He ranks some of the most popular chest exercises from best to worst, and you may be surprised that not only does the bench press not come out on top, it’s not even in his roundup of exercises. We know, mind-blowing!

He uses seven tiers to categorise the exercises into different tiers – S, A, B, C, D, F – ‘S’ being the ‘best’ and ‘F’ being the ‘worst. Although, he does write on his post: “Everyone’s selections may be different.”

At the bottom of the rankings is the plate squeeze. “One plate, wrong angle, no pay-off, nothing to see here,” Cavaliere says. Ouch! This is closely followed by the dumbbell flye which, may surprise you, as this was a staple in Arnold Schwarzenegger's routine, and we can all agree he had a great chest. But for Cavaliere, he says that he’s seen far too many shoulder injuries occur from it.

Push-ups make it into ‘C’ tier, while the dumbbell bench press (not barbell) made it into ‘A’ tier. “It’s safer on the shoulders, still easy to overload and adjustable, flat or incline, so you can target your chest development weak points.”

However, Cavalier adds that if you want to bump the dumbbell bench press up into ‘S’ tier, you should superset it with cable cross-overs – the best combo for adding strength and mass to your chest.

“Heavy mechanical overload, while training all functions of the pecs in the same pairing – that’s strength, plus stretch, plus squeeze, making it a worthy chest-building combo and of its place at the top of the tier.”