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Dumbbell Chest Press and Progressions
Build upper body strength with this dumbbell chest press tutorial. Learn progression exercises to ramp up your chest workouts, with step-by-step instructions from an experienced trainer.
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Transcript
00:03 - 00:06This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, and we're talking about one of my
00:06 - 00:11favorite strength training exercises for the chest, one of our favorite pushing
00:11 - 00:15motions, the dumbbell bench press. I'm going to have my friend Joe come out,
00:15 - 00:19help me demonstrate this exercise. First things first, when we grab these
00:19 - 00:25dumbbells, notice Joe gets into a nice deadlift form, nice straight back, lifts using his
00:25 - 00:30glute complex, and then sits down with the dumbbells on his lap. He's not twisting, he's not
00:30 - 00:33grabbing one at a time, he's not trying to lift them onto his lap from a seated
00:33 - 00:37position which is going to put more strain on your lower back. He's then
00:37 - 00:43going to roll back and get into his dumbbell press position. I'm going to
00:43 - 00:48make sure he stabilizes his core first, that's going to include drawing-in, and
00:48 - 00:52then I want you to press your heels through the floor, engaging your glute
00:52 - 00:56complex. Good. Let's go ahead and see what a dumbbell press looks like just right
00:56 - 01:01off the bat here. So go ahead and push up. I don't want to over queue, all we want to
01:01 - 01:06get people doing is a push to start. Now we can go for a couple variations from
01:06 - 01:13here. If Joe had upper body dysfunction leading to an extensibility issue in his
01:13 - 01:17shoulder complex, we could start with a sagittal plane press. Now, what a sagittal
01:17 - 01:20plane press is going to look like is Joe's going to drop down this way,
01:20 - 01:25toward the bottom of his rib cage, and then push straight back out like he's
01:25 - 01:30pushing open a door.
01:31 - 01:39So, what that does, is it maintains the space between his acromion shelf and
01:39 - 01:44the top of his humeral head, so that we don't contribute to an impingement
01:44 - 01:49syndrome. If I know that he has optimal extensibility though, we can go back and
01:49 - 01:54go ahead and do a transverse plane press. This is a more traditional way of doing a
01:54 - 01:58dumbbell bench press. It also incorporates a lot more of the chest
01:58 - 02:03musculature. Of course this is fairly easy for Joe, so we're going to make it a
02:03 - 02:06little bit more challenging for you. So the first thing we're going
02:06 - 02:12to try is the alternating dumbbell press. Now, the trick of the alternating dumbbell
02:12 - 02:18press, this is a challenge for Joe, is to not shift. You want to try
02:18 - 02:23to keep this dumbbell directly over your shoulder, or whatever arm is straight
02:23 - 02:27directly over your shoulder, and you want to try to not shift at the pelvis. Keep
02:27 - 02:33going. A little tougher? -A little bit. Good. You also want to try not to collapse at the
02:33 - 02:41arm, I'll show you a different angle for that. Let's try another progression.
02:41 - 02:46Now, I'm going to take one dumbbell away. Now, of course, at this point Joe loses
02:46 - 02:50his counter balance, which means now he's going to have to press his heels into the
02:50 - 02:56floor even harder, keep that glute complex engaged and really draw-in to
02:56 - 03:03keep this dumbbell from flipping him off sideways from the bench. How does that
03:03 - 03:09feel? -Good. Think 12 of those on each side will be a little difficult? -15
03:09 - 03:1615, awesome! Of course you can go ahead and switch arms after he does his 15 reps.
03:16 - 03:20I want to show you just one last angle so we talk about proper
03:20 - 03:26form completely with this dumbbell press. Let me have you stand up really quickly.
03:26 - 03:29I'm going to turn the bench this way.
03:30 - 03:34Let's go ahead and have you sit back down, we're going to do a dumbbell press
03:34 - 03:36one more time.
03:44 - 03:49Alright Joe, go ahead and show me a press. Let's do our nice transverse
03:49 - 03:53plane press with that wide grip we were talking about before. Now, one thing I
03:53 - 03:58want you to notice in his dumbbell press form, is he maintains his forearms
03:58 - 04:01perpendicular to the floor, so they're straight up and
04:01 - 04:06down throughout the entire range of this movement.
04:06 - 04:13Now, that should persist throughout our progressions as well. So, let's try
04:13 - 04:17alternating. This arm stays up nice and straight, perpendicular to the floor, and
04:17 - 04:21hopefully the arm that's going down, the forearm stays perpendicular to the floor so
04:21 - 04:31he's not collapsing in. And even when I take him to a single dumbbell, now you can see
04:31 - 04:34he's collapsing just a little bit. He's going to have to work to maintain
04:34 - 04:40perpendicular, maintaining to keep the stress off his elbow joint. You
04:40 - 04:44should also note that one hip isn't raising up. He's staying nice and drawn-
04:44 - 04:50in, his shoulder complex is staying nice and stable. So those are our form
04:50 - 04:57queues as well as some progressions for our dumbbell bench press. Thanks again to
04:57 - 05:02Joe for helping me demonstrate this exercise! Have fun.