No Bench, Big Gains: My 2-Month Journey to a Stronger Chest with Floor Exercises

Lifting heavy weights takes its toll on the body. While you might not feel it initially, it will eventually catch up to you. Don’t believe me? Look at Ronnie Coleman, for example.

As someone who has been lifting weights for over 17 years, the effect of weight training started to affect my joints and tendons in the past few months. It was especially bad during the bench press. Although this exercise has helped me sculpt a solid chest, I knew I had to change my routine to prioritize longevity.

After over 45 hours of research, I finally settled on floor-based exercises. These movements involve a restricted range of motion, limit the amount of weight you can lift on an exercise, and can also help work on certain aspects of your lifts to fix weaknesses. Floor-based exercises do all this while ensuring enough muscle stimulation to promote hypertrophy.

You shouldn’t wait for your joints, muscles, and tendons to start hurting to take up floor-based exercises. Remember, prevention is better than cure, and incorporating these lifts into your workouts can add variety and help prevent strength and muscle plateaus.

With all this in mind, I embarked on an eight-week challenge, switching every exercise in my routine with its floor-based variations. In this article, I share the benefits of floor work, my exact two-month workout program, and the results. There’s a lot to unpack, so sit tight and read on.

Why Floor-Based Chest Exercises?

Your muscles have no idea if you’re doing a barbell bench press or push-ups. All it knows is fatigue and stimulation. Bodyweight exercises like push-ups and dips can be effective for boosting muscle hypertrophy and strength, particularly when variations and progressions (such as increasing reps or modifying leverage) are applied to progressively overload the muscle tissues. (1)

Pushing the muscles outside the comfort zone results in tiny tears in the muscle fibers. The right amount of nutrition and recovery helps these muscle tissues grow back bigger and stronger.

Benefits of Floor-Based Exercises

The following advantages of the floor-based exercises tilted me toward this regime:

Shoulder Health

Pressing exercises put your shoulders under immense strain, increasing the risk of overuse injuries. Floor-based exercises usually involve a restricted range of motion (ROM), which can take some of that stress off.

Functional Strength

Floor work prioritizes stability, core engagement, and full-body tension, which are all essential for everyday movements and athletic performance.

Accessibility

Most floor exercises require minimal equipment, allowing you to do them anywhere at any time. With floor exercises, you really don’t have an excuse to miss your workouts.

Research Suggests Floor Work Can Be Just As Effective

I like to base my strength training routine on scientifically proven principles. One of the most well-designed studies found that push-up and bench-press exercises at 40% one-rep max (1RM) over eight weeks are similarly effective for increasing muscle thickness and strength gain. (2)

Plus, a review published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research found that both low and high loads can significantly increase muscle hypertrophy, suggesting that bodyweight exercises, which often involve lower loads, can be effective for muscle growth when performed to mechanical failure (where form starts to break due to fatigue). (3)

The best part about switching to floor-based resistance exercises and calisthenics is that they involve similar training principles.

“The kind of principles of building strength is the same across powerlifting, general lifting, calisthenics, or whatever your strength sport is.” — Dr. Milo Wolf, Ph.D. in Sport Science.

This means that you still need to stick to the eight to 12 rep range to maximize muscle strength. Since you might not be able to use additional exercises in some exercises, opt for challenging variations that lead to mechanical failure in the recommended rep range. (4)

The 2-Month Floor-Based Chest Workout Program

Now that you understand the rationale behind this approach and its benefits, it’s time to hit the floor — literally.

Below is a comprehensive eight-week chest training program to maximize muscle and strength gains:

Warm-Up (5-10 minutes)

Although you will not be lifting as heavy in this workout regime as in a conventional chest-training workout, that doesn’t mean you can skip the warm-ups. I recommend starting with a five to 10-minute warm-up routine comprising cardio, dynamic stretching, or mobility drills. Change the warm-up depending on the exercises you’ll be doing in the workout.

Weeks One To Four

Here is the first four-week block of the training regime.

Exercise	Sets	Reps	Rest (Seconds)
Barbell Floor Press	3	8-12	60
Incline Push-Up	3	Max	90
Dips on Parallettes	3	Max	90
Dumbbell Floor Flyes	3	10-15	45
Svend Press on Floor	3	15-20	30
Hindu Push-Up	3	Max	60

Dedicate the first week of training to mastering the movement mechanics and getting comfortable with the exercises. Focus on contracting the target muscles throughout the ROM to max out your muscle pumps. (5)

If you don’t have access to parallettes or parallel bars, you can perform dips on a chair or a table. Ensure you are following a full ROM for optimal target muscle stimulation.

Weeks Five to Eight

The goal in the second half of the workout program will be to push yourself as hard as possible in each exercise. Take note of the changes in exercise selection and training volume.

Exercise	Sets	Reps	Rest (Seconds)
Barbell Floor Press	4	6-8	75
Decline Push-Up	4	Max	90
Weighted Dips on Parallettes	4	6-8	90
Barbell Rollout Flyes	4	12-15	45
Isometric Chest Squeeze	4	20-25	30
Archer Push-Up	4	Max (per side)	60

I kept the barbell floor press in the workout as it is one of the few floor-based exercises that allows you to lift heavier weights. You could also perform dumbbell floor presses in its place.

The other exercises are more challenging variations of the exercises from the previous block. Perform the ‘most muscular’ bodybuilding pose during the isometric chest squeeze to maximize chest fiber stimulation and pumps.

Progression

Progressive overloading should be front and center of your training program if you want to build bigger and stronger muscles. Advanced lifters should strive to increase the overall training volume (weights, sets, or reps) in each workout to maximize stimulation. However, make sure the additional reps do not come at the expense of form.

Incorporating exercise variations is also an excellent way to challenge your muscles further. Consider changing your grip or tweaking the line of pull to target the muscles from a different angle and promote overall adaptations.

Rest and Recovery

I’ll be honest. Initially, I tried to make up for the lowered resistance by increasing the training volume and frequency. However, the persistent DOMS made me realize that I was pushing too hard, and needed to give my muscles some time to recover and grow.

Remember, you break down muscle tissue during your workouts. They grow back bigger and stronger while you’re resting. Aim for at least seven to eight hours of sleep each night and ensure a balanced, protein-rich diet to give your muscles ample building material for growth.

You must learn to listen to your body. Systematic fatigue and soreness can be potent indicators to tell you when you should push harder or take a step back.

My Results After the 2-Month Floor-Based Chest Workouts

Honestly, the floor-based workouts delivered better results than I had expected. Here are the details:

• Chest Circumference: My chest circumference grew by a full inch on this program. Although it is not a massive leap, the results are stellar for a relatively low-volume, joint-friendly training program.
• Barbell Floor Press: My 1RM on this exercise grew by 15 pounds. This is especially impressive considering I wasn’t training for strength.
• Variations: Floor exercises offer numerous variations, which help keep your workouts interesting and unlock new gains.
• Shoulder Health: This was the main reason why I switched to floor work, and I couldn’t have been happier with the results. Eight weeks was all my body needed to return to peak conditioning.

Knowing that you can build a jacked chest without the conventional bench press is incredibly liberating. The floor-based chest workouts felt like I was working inside guard rails, which allowed me to push myself even harder, and the results definitely backed up my effort.

When you lift lighter weights than you are capable of, your focus naturally shifts toward control and stability. This heightened awareness improves the mind-muscle connection, improving overall results.

Plus, since most of the exercises in this program were compound movements, it boosted my overall functionality and performance in day-to-day activities.

Importance of Shoulder Health

Shoulders are the unsung heroes in a chest workout and are critical to building a powerful upper body. The shoulder joint is involved in almost every chest exercise, making it crucial for overall pushing performance.

Folks dealing with nagging joint muscle, tendon, or joint pain during pushing exercise should evaluate their shoulder health. This ball-and-socket joint is incredibly versatile but also very prone to injury.

Common Shoulder Joint Issues

Rotator cuff tears, impingement syndrome, and tendonitis are just a few of the issues that can derail your progress. The bench press, which is a staple in most strength training routines, can exacerbate these problems.

However, floor-based exercises work your shoulders through a more natural ROM and distribute the load more evenly, which can be a game-changer for your shoulder health.

Warm up adequately before a workout to prime your joints, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Plus, avoiding trouble-causing exercises should be the first step to taming shoulder pain and avoiding injuries.

I recommend consulting a physiotherapist if you are dealing with shoulder issues to chart a course of action to remedy these problems.

Conclusion

Ditching the bench press for two months was probably the best decision I could have made to restore my shoulder health. Meanwhile, floor-based exercises ensured I did not miss out on gains.

Although I have already started incorporating bench exercises into my routine, I highly recommend this workout for folks dealing with persistent shoulder issues.

If you have any questions about floor-based exercises, or need help tailoring this approach to your own training, drop them in the comments below, and I’ll be happy to help!

References:

1. Kotarsky, C. J., Christensen, B. K., Miller, J. S., & Hackney, K. J. (2018). Effect of Progressive Calisthenic Push-up Training on Muscle Strength and Thickness. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 32(3), 651–659. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000002345
2. Kikuchi N, Nakazato K. Low-load bench press and push-up induce similar muscle hypertrophy and strength gain. J Exerc Sci Fit. 2017;15(1):37-42. doi:10.1016/j.jesf.2017.06.003
3. Schoenfeld, B. J., Grgic, J., Ogborn, D., & Krieger, J. W. (2017). Strength and Hypertrophy Adaptations Between Low- vs. High-Load Resistance Training: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 31(12), 3508–3523. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000002200
4. Schoenfeld BJ, Grgic J, Van Every DW, Plotkin DL. Loading Recommendations for Muscle Strength, Hypertrophy, and Local Endurance: A Re-Examination of the Repetition Continuum. Sports (Basel). 2021;9(2):32. Published 2021 Feb 22. doi:10.3390/sports9020032
5. Hirono, T., Ikezoe, T., Taniguchi, M., Tanaka, H., Saeki, J., Yagi, M., Umehara, J., & Ichihashi, N. (2022). Relationship Between Muscle Swelling and Hypertrophy Induced by Resistance Training. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 36(2), 359–364. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000003478

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