The chest flat dumbbell bench press is a great way to stimulate the mid and lower areas of the chest. Beside working your mid/lower chest, the auxiliary muscles involved are the front delts and the triceps. The only difference between this exercise and the flat barbell bench press version is that in order to stabilize the dumbbells your body will need to recruit more muscle fibers. As a result, this exercise is even more effective than the flat barbell bench press.
Difficulty: Hard
Time Required: 30-40 seconds depending on amount of repetitions performed and setup time.
Here's How:
- Lie down on a flat bench with a dumbbell on each hand on top of your thighs. The palms of your hand will be facing each other.
- By using your thighs to help you get the dumbbells up, clean the dumbbells one arm at a time so that you can hold them in front of you at shoulder width. Once at shoulder width, rotate your wrists forward so that the palms of your hands are facing away from you. This will be your starting position.
- Bring down the weights slowly to your side as you breathe in. Keep full control of the dumbbells at all times.
- As you breathe out, push the dumbbells up using your pectoral muscles. Lock your arms in the contracted position, hold for a second and then start coming down slowly. It should take at least twice as long to go down than to come up.
- Repeat the movement for the prescribed amount of repetitions.
- When you are done, do not drop the dumbbells next to you as this is dangerous to the rotator cuff in your shoulders and others working out around you. Just lift your legs from the floor bending at the knees, twist your wrists so that the palms of your hands are facing each other and place the dumbbells on top of your thighs.
- When both dumbbells are touching your thighs simultaneously push your upper torso up (while pressing the dumbbells on your thighs) and also perform a slight kick forward with your legs (keeping the dumbbells on top of the thighs). By doing this combined movement, the momentum created will help you get back to a seated position with both dumbbells still on top of your thighs. At this moment you can place the dumbbells on the floor.
Tips:
- Another variation of this exercise is to perform it with the palms of the hands facing each other.
- Also, you can perform the exercise with the palms facing each other and then twisting the wrist as you lift the dumbbells so that at the top of the movement the palms are facing away from the body. I personally do not use this variation very often as it seems to be hard on my shoulders.
- If you are new to this exercise, it is advised that you use a spotter. If no spotter is available, then be conservative with the amount of weight used.
What You Need:
- Flat Bench
- Dumbbells
