Outer Chest Exercises: 5 Best Moves for a Wider Chest

The best outer chest exercises load your pecs hard while your arms are wide and your chest is stretched. You can't isolate the outer edge of the muscle, but you can build the kind of chest that fills out toward your armpits instead of stopping halfway.

Most people who want a wider chest just add more close-up squeezing work, and that does the least for the look they're after. What helps is heavy pressing, a big stretch at the bottom of each rep, and enough total chest volume for the whole muscle to grow. Five moves over two sessions a week will cover it. Give it 3 to 4 months before you judge it, because a wider-looking chest comes from real added muscle, not from a pump.

Before

After

The work, step by step

1. What the outer chest is, and what you can change. Your pec major is one fan-shaped muscle that runs from your breastbone and collarbone to your upper arm bone. The "outer chest" is simply the part closest to your armpit and shoulder. It isn't a separate muscle, and no exercise grows only that section. Every chest fiber still has to pass through that area on its way to your arm, so a bigger pec is a wider pec. Two honest limits. The width of your frame comes from your collarbones, and you can't train those. And where your pecs attach is genetic, so the shape you end up with won't match someone else's. Here's the filter for any exercise for the outer chest: does it load your pecs heavily while your arms are out wide and the muscle is stretched? Those positions are also where research on hypertrophy looks most promising, though the evidence for growing one region of the pec is thin.
2. Wide-grip bench press: 3 sets of 6 to 10. This is your main lift and the one to push over time. Take a grip about 1.5 times your shoulder width, so your forearms angle slightly outward at the bottom instead of staying vertical. Pull your shoulder blades back and down, keep your feet planted, and lower the bar to your mid chest for 2 seconds. Press up without bouncing it off your ribs. Don't go wider than that, because an extreme grip shortens the lift and puts more strain on the front of your shoulders without giving your chest anything extra. Expect to use a little less than your normal bench at first. Most beginners start around 30 to 50 kg including the bar. If your shoulders complain, a flat dumbbell press with a deep bottom position is a good swap, at 12 to 20 kg per hand.
3. Deep dumbbell fly: 3 sets of 10 to 12. A dumbbell fly gets a bad name because the top of the rep does almost nothing. The bottom is why it's here. Lie flat, hold the dumbbells over your chest with your palms facing in and a soft bend in your elbows, then open your arms in a wide arc until you feel a strong stretch across the chest and toward your armpits. Hold that for a second and bring the weights back up, stopping when your arms are about 45 degrees from the floor. Don't touch the dumbbells together at the top, since that's where the tension disappears. Go light, around 6 to 10 kg per hand to start. If your elbows bend more as the set goes on, you've drifted into a press, so drop the weight. Stop the stretch where your shoulders still feel solid, not where you feel a pinch.
4. Forward-lean chest dip: 3 sets of 6 to 10. Dips put your chest under heavy load in a deep stretch, and few moves match that for size. Grip the bars a bit wider than your shoulders if your gym has angled handles, lean your torso forward about 30 degrees, and let your elbows drift slightly out. Cross your feet behind you to help hold the lean. Lower for 2 seconds until your upper arms are about level with the floor, then press back up without fully snapping your elbows straight. Staying upright turns this into a tricep exercise, so check the lean on every set. If you can't do 6 clean reps, use the assisted dip machine or a band over the bars. Once you can get 12, add 2.5 to 5 kg on a belt. Skip these if they hurt the front of your shoulder, and do a decline dumbbell press instead.
5. Long-stretch cable fly and wide push-up. Long-stretch cable fly: 3 sets of 12 to 15. Set both pulleys around chest height, take a handle in each hand and step forward until the cables pull your arms back into a good stretch. Bring your hands together in front of your chest, then spend most of your effort on the slow way back, around 3 seconds. Unlike a crossover, you're not chasing the squeeze here. Your hands can stop a hand's width apart. Around 5 to 10 kg per side is a fair start. Wide push-up: 2 sets, stopping a couple of reps short of failure. Set your hands about 1.5 times shoulder width and turn them out a little. Put your hands on two dumbbells or push-up handles so your chest can drop below them for a deeper stretch. It's a good finisher with no machine needed, and when 20 reps gets easy, add a 2-second pause at the bottom.
6. Put your outer chest workout into your week. Day A: wide-grip bench press 3x6-10, deep dumbbell fly 3x10-12, wide push-up 2 sets. Day B: forward-lean chest dip 3x6-10, incline dumbbell press 3x8-10, long-stretch cable fly 3x12-15. That's 17 chest sets a week and about 30 minutes per session, plenty for a beginner. The incline press isn't an outer chest move, but it keeps your upper chest growing so the whole muscle stays balanced. Leave two or three days between sessions, for example Monday and Thursday. If you already follow a chest routine, swap instead of stacking: replace one press with the wide-grip version and any squeeze-focused fly with the deep fly. Add reps until every set hits the top of its range, then add the smallest weight you can. Add 2 sets of lateral raises on both days too. Rounder side delts make your whole upper body read wider, which helps the look more than you'd expect. Eat around 1.6 g of protein per kg of bodyweight, with a 200 to 300 calorie surplus if you're slim.

Common pitfalls

• Taking your grip as wide as you can. Past about 1.5 times shoulder width, you lose range of motion and load the front of your shoulders more, without any added benefit for your chest.
• Going heavy on flies. Heavy dumbbells at the bottom of a fly put a lot of leverage on your shoulder and elbow. Keep this one light and slow, and save your heavy work for presses and dips.
• Cutting your range short to lift more. The stretched position is the reason these moves are on the list, so half reps throw away what makes them useful.
• Ignoring your side delts and lats. If those are small, your chest has nothing around it to frame it, and even a good chest can look narrow.

Pro tip: To show chest width in a photo, stand with your elbows slightly away from your ribs and flare your lats a little, then turn about 20 degrees from the camera with a window on the side you're turning toward. Side light picks up the outer edge of the pec where it meets your arm. Flat front light hides that line.

How Muscle Editor fits in

Curious how a wider chest would look on your own frame? Take a well-lit front photo and run it through Muscle Editor's Chest editor at Fit, which is close to what a few months of steady training can add. Keep it next to your real monthly photos as a goal picture, not as proof of progress.

Frequently asked questions

Filed under Workouts. Tagged: chest, pecs, outer chest, workout, beginners.