# Chest Exercises for Women: Where to Start with Pressing > Updated: 2026-07-08 · Source: https://dorsi.ai/blog/chest-exercises-for-women What the research does and does not say about women and upper-body pressing, including one practical barrier that rarely makes it into a training programme. ![An illustration of a person doing an incline push-up with their hands on a low bench, seen from the side in a bright, near-empty room.](/blog/chest-exercises-for-women.webp) Two things are worth separating when it comes to women and chest training. There is what the research actually establishes, which is narrower than most articles imply, and there is the accumulated convention of how people are taught to press, which is mostly not research at all. This piece tries to keep those apart, partly because the second one is where nearly all confident writing on the subject lives.

Key Takeaways

## What the strength research establishes A [2023 narrative review in the *Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research*](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36696264/) by James Nuzzo summarises a large literature on sex differences in muscle strength, size, fibre type and training adaptations. Two of its findings are relevant. Sex differences in strength are more pronounced in upper-body than lower-body muscles, and more pronounced in concentric than eccentric contractions. And the difference is not attributed to voluntary activation, the measure of how completely someone recruits a muscle during a maximal effort. The review associates it with greater male muscle mass and larger type II fibre areas. The activation point is the one usually mangled. It does not mean technique is irrelevant, and it does not mean training adaptations are purely a matter of tissue. Voluntary activation during a maximal test is a narrow laboratory measure, and a review of group averages cannot tell you what limits any particular person's bench press. The review also reports that men train with weights more often than women, that men show greater preference for upper-body and high-intensity exercise while women show greater preference for lower-body and supervised exercise, and that women experience greater relative strength improvements with training depending on age and muscle group. Those are observations about populations. They do not establish that chest is the least-trained area in any individual's week, and this is a narrative review rather than a controlled experiment. ## What the chest muscle does The pectoralis major runs from the collarbone, breastbone and ribs out to the upper arm. It brings the arm across the body, draws it toward the midline, and helps lift it forward. Anything that presses away from the chest trains it, as does anything that brings the arms together against resistance: push-ups, dumbbell presses on a bench or the floor, and the barbell bench press. Breast tissue sits on top of the pectoralis major rather than within it. Training the muscle changes the muscle. What that does to the appearance of what sits above it is a separate question with its own small research literature, covered in [a companion piece](/blog/breast-lift-exercise-what-chest-training-does). ## The barrier that rarely gets programmed around A survey of 249 women [published in the *Journal of Physical Activity and Health*](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24905581/) by a group at the University of Portsmouth asked what kept women from being active. Seventeen percent reported at least one of five breast-related barriers, which placed breast-related issues fourth in this sample behind energy and motivation, time constraints, and health. The two most influential were difficulty finding the right sports bra and embarrassment about breast movement. Breast pain increased with vigorous activity and with poorer breast support. The correlation the authors report between sports bra use and vigorous activity was moderate at r = 0.423; the correlation between self-rated breast health knowledge and sports bra use was weak at r = 0.144. Read the design before the number. This was a survey recruited largely through family, friends and colleagues around Portsmouth and Southampton, with a skewed age distribution and a sample more active than the English female population it was compared against. It did not study pressing exercises, test any bra as an intervention, or establish that better equipment increases training. What it does support is that breast-related discomfort is a common enough obstacle to be worth naming. If pressing is uncomfortable for reasons other than the load, that is a real problem and not a lack of will. Whether a different bra solves it for you is a practical question this survey cannot answer. ## Where the evidence stops and convention begins This is the part most articles blur, so it is worth marking clearly. Neither source above tested how to progress a push-up, whether raising your hands beats dropping to your knees, how many pressing sessions a week women should do, or whether push-ups, dumbbells or a barbell suit a beginner best. What follows is ordinary coaching convention, offered as such. Push-ups scale in both directions without equipment, which is why they are a common starting point. Raising the hands onto a counter, a bench and then a low box gives a progression that keeps the same trunk position as a floor push-up, which is the usual argument for preferring it to knee push-ups. Dumbbells let you add load in smaller increments than bodyweight allows. Most programmes place two pressing sessions in a week and add either repetitions or weight over time. None of that is wrong, and none of it comes from the studies cited here. Treat it as a reasonable default rather than a finding. ## A note on framing There is a version of this article that reads as though women's upper bodies are a deficiency to be corrected, and it would be easy to write, because the strength comparison invites it. That framing is not supported and is not useful. A difference between group averages is not a verdict on anyone's capacity, and the reasons women train are their own. What the evidence supports is modest and worth having: pressing strength responds to loading, activation is not the limiting factor, and relative improvements can be substantial. ## References 1. Nuzzo JL. [Narrative Review of Sex Differences in Muscle Strength, Endurance, Activation, Size, Fiber Type, and Strength Training Participation Rates, Preferences, Motivations, Injuries, and Neuromuscular Adaptations](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36696264/). *Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research*. 2023;37(2):494–536. doi:10.1519/JSC.0000000000004329. 2. Burnett E, White J, Scurr J. [The Influence of the Breast on Physical Activity Participation in Females](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24905581/). *Journal of Physical Activity and Health*. 2015;12(4):588–594. doi:10.1123/jpah.2013-0236.