The TRX is an extremely effective way to train the muscle of the chest, especially if you training at home or with limited equipment. The TRX has a wide range of exercises that can be used to train the chest that we will walk through in this article, thankfully some are great for more advanced individuals and others are perfect for true beginners. Let’s have a look through the 7 TRX chest exercises you can add to your workouts.

Benefits of TRX Chest Exercises

Progressive Overload

A huge benefit of using the TRX to improve the strength of your pectoral muscles is that progressive overload can easily be applied. This is because the exercises offer an opportunity to progressively increase the intensity of exercise selection. If a beginner who struggles to take their own body weight uses a TRX to train their chest they can start with a TRX top of press up hold and progressively move to a TRX Eccentric (High). Whereas an advanced individual who is comfortable performing press-ups can us a TRX Feet elevated press-up to challenge the strength of their chest, which can be progressed to a TRX archer press-up. This wide variety of exercise selections shows how progressive overload can be applied to TRX chest exercises.

All Abilities

As the example above illustrates, TRX chest exercises can be useful for all abilities. The TRX is often considered for just those who are beginners or are training at home, but they can be very useful pieces of training equipment for those who are more advanced too. This means that people of all abilities can get excellent training results from TRX chest workouts.

Shoulder Stability

The TRX is a challenging piece of equipment in the sense that it creates a great deal of instability that the shoulders need to become comfortable with. This adds a very beneficial degree of challenge to every TRX chest exercise. It can be particularly beneficial for injury mitigation, making these exercises beneficial for both the general population and athletes.

The 7 TRX Chest Exercises to Add to Your Home Workouts

The TRX Top of Press Up Hold is one of the best entry-level exercises for the muscles of the upper body. Many people who are either overweight or have been sedentary for a very long period of time can greatly benefit from learning to take their body weight with the TRX top of press up hold. This hold can be made progressively more challenging by changing the position of the feet, slowly adding weight to the hold. Although this exercise has many benefits, more advanced individuals may want to give it a miss as it will likely create no stimulus at all, maybe a feet-elevated version would be great if you are more advanced and find this exercise too easy.

The TRX Press Up (feet in TRX) is a great way to add some difficulty to the traditional press up. The effect of having the Feet in the TRX will require you to have to put more emphasis on keeping your core stable. It will likely not add any difficulty to your upper body but will certainly challenge your core muscles more than a traditional press up.

TRX Press Up to Pike is a mix between a chest exercise and a core exercise, it’s fun and can be very effective at creating adaptation in both if performed correctly. One key thing to put emphasis on is to not rush from one part of the movement to the next, finish the press up completely, and then move to the Pike part of the movement. Be very wary of how fatigued your core is getting, if you lose your position on the press up or the pike the exercise becomes a waste of time.

TRX Feet Elevated Press Up is a very advanced exercise for people who are very comfortable performing a wide variety of press-up variations. Elevating the feet will put a lot more resistance on the muscles of the chest and the triceps so it’s important you feel confident before trying this exercise. Add to that the instability of the TRX and we have a very challenging exercise. Only attempt this exercise in your training routine if you can do 15 or more press ups.

TRX Chest Flies is a great option for training the chest with the TRX, especially because the difficulty can be modulated through the positioning of the feet. This means that individuals of all abilities can use it. The key to this exercise is creating a stretch in the muscles of the chest but in a very controlled and deliberate manner. Taking your time and finding a mind-muscle connection here will be very important.

The TRX Bottom Of Press Up Hold is another isometric exercise but this time it can be used by more advanced individuals. Beginners will likely find this exercise far too challenging, holding your body weight, with a tight core position at the bottom of the TRX will be extremely challenging for a beginner and even some intermediate-level trainees will find this exercise too challenging. When performing the TRX bottom of press-up hold it is important to keep the hips high throughout and not “rest” your chest on the TRX, you need to hover your chest just above your hands.

The TRX Archer Press Up is one of the most challenging bodyweight variations to target the chest. Taking this much of your body weight on a single side of the chest is challenging enough when performing the archer press up on the floor, but doing it on the TRX is extremely challenging. Beginners should avoid this exercise, it will be too challenging. Advanced individuals can use this exercise to great effect, if you are very competent then adding a tempo or hold at the bottom can make things even more fun.