Functional Chest Workout – Build Explosive 🔥 Power with This Chest Workout!

Functional chest exercises, are a bit of a contradiction. In order to make an exercise functional, it should utilise the entire body, instead of isolating the chest, in a lying or seated position.

For a Boxing Chest Workout, please see this article

Making an exercise functional, is specific to the task required.

A functional boxing chest-workout for example, should generally consist of exercises performed in the standing position (as in boxing) and done explosively, with one arm – rather than slowly with a typical bench press exercise.

This is because, boxing is done standing (not lying on a bench) and requires explosive power, rather than strength.

One thing to remember with functional training – don’t use a weight/resistance that’s so great, that it interferes with the mechanics of a technique.

When replicating a movement from MMA or boxing with resistance – make sure that the weight isn’t too heavy – as it will alter the mechanics of the movement.

Last updated 22nd January 2020

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If you want to build some pecs like Luke Rockhold without becoming too stiff and rigid to throw a punch properly, then this routine may suit you! Read on to see a possible Luke Rockhold workout and visit our MMA workout guide for a more complete, all body routine that is periodised.

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Functional Chest Workout Exercises

Functional Warm up

I like to foam roll each major muscle group to begin a session, then either skip-rope or perform a number of MMA-specific movements like sit-throughs, chest to chest sweeps, bridges, stand up techniques/Turkish get ups and sprawls.
Do anything explosive at the end of the warm up. Sprawls for example, should be done when you’re already relatively warm.

Warm up

• Skipping rope – 5 minutes
• 20 Hindu Squats
• 20 wrestler’s sit throughs
• 20 Turkish get ups (use a lightweight or no weight)
• 20 Walking Lunges

Once warm & sweating

• 10 sprawls
• 10 burpees
• Dynamic stretches

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1. Dumbbell Bench Press

I currently do about 4 warm up sets, then literally 1 ‘working’ set to failure on bench press.

Mainly because I’m 35 and my shoulders are goosed. I find dumbbells put less strain on my shoulders than barbell bench press (although I imagine the chances of acute injury from a heavy dumbbell are greater).

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2. Plyometric Chest Press Ups

These can take various forms – clap press ups, ‘depth’ press ups where you drop from a higher staring position with the hands and explode back up.

Using a medicine ball, or BOSU, you can add some specific variations

Here is a medicine ball throw into press up exercise.

It works a lot better when the ball actually bounces back to you.

The main idea of including plyometric exercises is to ‘teach’ the muscles to work explosively.

Lifting heavy weights slowly all the time, as many bodybuilders do, will generally make the muscles strong, but slow too.

In addition to this, plyometrics have been shown to increase strength when added to resistance training programmes:

“In order to optimise strength enhancement, the combination of different types of plyometrics with weight-training would be recommended, rather than utilizing only one form”

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S144024400900187X

3. Medicine ball Shot Puts

Again, this exercise works better with a medicine ball that bounces, so that you can catch it as it fires back towards the hand that threw it, thus giving a stretch-reflex of plyometrics.
Sorry about the terrible gif:

Landmine ‘ShotPuts’ are also a great exercise. Similar to what this muscular fellow is doing, but twist the back-foot, as you would when throwing a cross or a shotput:

The shot put movement is also an excellent band exercise. Tie a band to a static post or get a partner to hold it.

Replicate the punching movements (hook, cross and jab), for 15 reps on each arm. Repeat this 2 to 3 times on each arm.

The band provides more resistance the longer it gets/more stretched it gets.

This teaches the trainer/fighter to ‘drive-through’ at the end of each punch, and stay more relaxed at the start of the punch.

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Muscle Ups – A Special Functional Chest Exercise

Muscle ups are the best, functional chest exercise.

However they do take a lot of technique and practice and they can be used an entire chest workout in themselves. At them in as your first or second exercise to create the ultimate functional chest workout. A word of warning too – a friend of mine completely tore his chest from the shoulder/insertion point doing muscle ups – so be very careful.

Muscle Ups Tips include – Practicing a ‘kipping high knee’ by explosively bringing your knees towards the very top of your chest as you swing backwards. And practice using a bench or a lower bar.

4. Eccentric (negative) Chest Exercise

I’ll often add in an eccentric exercise, where I’ll get a spotter to lift the weight off my chest, and I’ll lower it down to my chest.  Eccentric exercises are actually superior to ‘normal’ concentric exercises for muscle growth, so are a must for any natural bodybuilder.

Eccentric exercises are also great for building grappling strength, as it simulates resisting someone pushing against you (kind of).  Eccentric chest exercises also put massive strain on the shoulders however, so use with caution.

I actually prefer to do eccentric exercises on a machine, as you don’t get the stabilisation and ‘wobbling’ with freeweights, that I imagine, is likely to cause injury if you’re too fatigued to completely control it.

5. Sport Specific Exercise to Finish – Like Punchbag

Rounds on the punchbag at the end of this functional workout is a killer, because your chest and arms will be pumped full of blood. However, if you are training for boxing or MMA, then I feel like it’s best to finish off with ‘a bit’ of the sport you are actually training for.

I’ve included a video of me here, mainly to shame myself into improving my cardio.  It’s useful to film yourself to pick up on your mistakes and make note of where you can improve.  Obviously, punchbags and padwork are no replacement for real sparring, as I can confirm – I look better on the pads than ever before, but can’t spar for toffee, as I do it too inconsistently.

6. Whole Body Movements

Finally, consider adding some whole body movements, using kettlebells or parallettes into your chest routine. Obviously, you want the emphasis to be on the chest in a chest workout, but to realistically make it functional, there needs to be at least 1 whole body movement in it, even if it’s just in the warm up:

Although more of a shoulder exercise than a chest one, kettlebell, band or barbell push press or also a great addition to a function workout.

Finally any chest exercise that challenges the core and stabiliser muscles; such as Olympic Ring press ups, or stability ball press ups is a good addition.

Be careful not to overtrain with too many chest exercises and remember to stretch dynamically to maintain your range of movement around the chest & shoulders.

For sports like boxing & wrestling etc. include some whole body movements in your fighting stance. For example, do some squats in a boxing, side on stance. You can also squat & then ‘push off’ – replicated footwork for a jab

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Top Functional Chest Exercises Tips

• Train Movements not Muscles!
• For combat sports – replicate the punching movement with Landmine exercises & ball shot puts*
• Replicate punches with bands & cable exercises
• Include Bench Press for Mass & a Base of Strength
• Include plyometrics for increased explosive power
• Work on shoulder mobility to ensure the ‘whip’ in your punches
• Stretch dynamically before and statically afterwards. Having a tight chest makes it difficult to throw hooking and overhand punches effectively. If you can’t fully extend/open the chest, you cannot incorporate elastic recoil.
• Perform the majority of your chest exercises whilst standing & with a single arm
• Always consider the risk to reward of any exercise. Is it worth risking injury with a weighted muscle up on the rings for example? How much will in benefit your sport’s performance Vs what’s the likelihood of injury
• *When replicating punching movements – don’t use a weight that is so heavy that it will interfere with the technique & mechanics of the movement. Keep it light and ‘whippy’ and relaxed, not strained

It’s a bit of an oxymoron, calling a chest workout ‘functional’. If you’re training one muscle group in isolation, it can never be totally functional, in my opinion.

In addition to this, MMA strength doesn’t really equate to chest strength.

Strong and explosive hips, grip strength, leg-power and core strength are far more important.

Make sure you train strength, fitness and technique if you want to succeed in MMA!

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Boxing-Specific Strength & Conditioning

This study (which I don’t have access to unfortunately) states that there are ‘5 trainable variables when it comes to throwing a right cross:

1. increase rear leg drive
2. following the step forward, land with a rigid leg to increase breaking and transmission of force
3. increase the stretch-shortening cycle action of the trunk musculature
4. increase the velocity of the punch
5. increase the effective mass. it is possible, through appropriate strength and conditioning programming, to target the development of each.To address the above variables…
   a) include some explosive leg work like jumping squats & depth jumps
   b) Focus on technique, but also include some lower body plyometrics
   c) The stretch-shortening cycle relates to elastic energy.
   With an orthodox cross for example, you would normally rotate your waist/hip backwards/clockwise (stretching the muscles & loading-up the body with power), then drive the hip forwards/anticlockwise (shortening the muscles to deliver the punch).  This can be trained with some medicine ball and band work

Functional Chest Workout

Exercise	Sets	Reps	Notes
Dumbbell Bench Press	2	8-12	Pause at the top of each rep. Lower for a count of 3 seconds.
Plyometric Chest Press Ups	3	12
Medicine Ball Shot Puts	2 (each arm)	8
Eccentric Bench Press Machine	2	8	Have a partner lift the weight up, then lower it down on your own. Yo
Tabata Intervals on Punch Bag	2	4 minutes	Rest 1 minute in between tabata intervals*

Read my boxing strength & conditioning article here.

Download our Functional MMA Workout as a .pdf here

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