Lean Gains

What's more rewarding than putting in long hours at the gym and getting a perfectly-sculpted upper body as your result? Men and women can both benefit from an intense upper body workout. While it's never a good idea to focus only on your upper body (as anyone who's heard the common gym rat advice "don't skip leg day" knows), targeting upper-body muscle groups during your routine workouts can help strengthen and tone your arms, chest, shoulders, back, and more!

Try bench presses. For a large, strong chest, there are few exercises better than the bench press. Whether you're using free weights or an exercise machine, bench presses involve laying horizontally and pushing a heavy weight away from you. Note that if you are using free weights, you should strongly consider using a spotter — someone who stands over you while you exercise and helps you lift the weight back into place if it becomes too heavy for you. Though rare, bench press accidents where the weight falls onto the lifter's chest can potentially cause major injury or death.Lean Gains

Try chest flies. For a lower-risk alternative to bench presses, try flies. These exercises, which get their name from the fact that they mimic the flapping motion of a flying bird's wings, involve moving a set of weights in a half-circle arc in front of your chest using the muscles near your armpits. Flies can be done lying flat on your back with a set of dumbbells, sitting upright at an exercise machine, or even standing in front of a cable setup.

Use incline/decline benches to work the entire chest. Each side of the chest is mostly made up of one large, fan-shaped muscle called the pectoralis major.Since this muscle is so large and wide, it's important to work every part of it evenly to promote optimal strength and balanced muscle growth. To hit the upper and lower parts of the chest, try doing bench presses at incline and decline benches, respectively.

Try pushups for a no-equipment workout. It's important to mention that you don't need any weightlifting equipment to get a strong chest. Pushups, one of the quintessential chest exercises, can be done almost anywhere and offer a great workout for the shoulders, abs, and triceps in addition to the chest (depending on the form you use for your pushups. Pushups come in many different variations — a few of the most common are listed below:

Use pullups to build back and lat strength. One of the best exercises for strengthening your back and lats (the muscles along the side of your torso under your armpits) is the pullup. This exercise, which is similar to (but not the same as) the chin-ups described above, involves hanging from a bar and pulling yourself up to it so that your chest comes near it. In addition to the back and lats, pull ups can work your shoulders and arms as well, making them a great all-around upper body exercise.