in what way...barbells are the shit for every exercise. plus its pretty hard to get injured benching unless your form is shit tier
Well I'm pretty sure you already know the pro's and con's but for the people who are reading this thread, here's my reasons why I think dumbbells are better... but lets first look at the con's of barbell bench pressing.
Con's of Barbell Bench Pressing
False sense of strength. You feel like your able to lift a lot when the reality is the exercise involves a great deal of tricep movement as the bar provides stability across your two arms.
When lifting too heavy, you place a considerable amount of pressure on your shoulders. This because a critical issue when the weight is dropped too quickly or to fall on your chest, you could end up damaging your shoulder or worse the rotator cuff
Not many people execute the proper bench press properly. I see many people bring the bar down to touching their chest. It worries me greatly as this causes overstretched pectoral muscles.
Bad form in general. I see this all to often. People attempting to press with their entire back to the bench.
Limited chest engagement. How does one perform a chest fly on a bench press?
Here's my pro's about dumbbells
Dumbbell Bench pressing
I like to think that using dumbbells constitutes as a compound exercise as you engage a number of muscles to the exercise. After all your already at such a disadvantage prior.
To execute it properly you would have to do the following:
Lift the weight of the rack or floor.
Sit down and with the weights either resting on the floor or on your thighs, bring the weight to your chest
Lower the weight and your upper body to the bench. This engages your core
Engage your chest by pinching your shoulder blades and pushing out your chest thus leaving a gap in your middle back. Your middle back should not be touching the bench
Spread your arms to engage the stabilizer muscles in your shoulders
Engage your triceps and lift the weight
As you bring the weight up, your hands should start drifting towards each other thus contracting the inner chest fully
Bring the weight down until the other part of your chest is contracted fully.
Rinse and repeat until concentric failure.
As per above, your concentration will greatly increase due to the nature of the exercise
You will build out your stabilizer muscles.
Range of movement, variants in exercise. Chest flys' for example.
Con's of dumbbell bench pressing.
If your injured already, primarily in the shoulder, attempting to kick off a substantially heavy weight off your knees can and will probably do more harm to the existing injury. However, you can lighten the weight considerably to avoid further injury and possibly work around it.
Without a spotter, you cannot go as heavy as you like where as on a bench press you have safety mechanisms in place to ensure the weight cannot crush you if you are to lose control.
Bragging rights
Come on, this is given. Being able to lift and bench 100+ lbs dumbbells would be a phenomenal personal goal. I'm personally trying to get past 75lbs dumbbells right now.
I always give mad props to people who are able to lift 100 lbs effortlessly from the rack and then bench it, chest or shoulder wise.
Quote:
Originally Posted by instantneedles
(Post 8177832)
+1 I don't see either dumbbell or barbell being more effective than the other, but both as a strong compliment to each other...
My personal unbiased view (all hypothetical):
dumbells: good for stability and triceps because dumbbells don't allow you to compensate with your dominant side like you would with barbell. dumbbells allow you to be able to merge the dumbbells at the peak activating more pecs. Good for without a spotter because you can just drop the weights
barbell: good for benching really heavy weight. Very simple, I'm not able to bench as much with dumbbell as I am with barbell because I do not have to kick the weights up into starting position unlike barbell where I can just have my spotter unload the barbell from a racked position. With the barbell, I know exactly where I need to go to perform a full range of motion (touching the chest), whereas the dumbbell will be harder to gauge how low I will need to go (alot of guys go half way and don't even realize it). With the dumbbells, I have to keep it fixed on the transverse plane (to prevent the dumbbells from falling off to the side or falling ontop of me) in addition to the saggital plane, while for barbell my goal is to push the bar straight up in front of me. however, being able to work with dumbbells and working on this stability will be highly transferable to barbell bench.
Well said.
When I look back at my post, what I should have stated is that you should graduate from the bench press to dumbbells as soon as possible. Move back to the bench press when you need to lift heaver than 100+ lbs dumbbells.
However, I don't see the need mix bench press AND dumbbell bench pressing. Focus on one discipline and one discipline only.
Excelsis
03-06-2013 02:29 PM
you're forgetting that with DB you're going to have a hard time getting your dumbbels up if you're working anything like 5 reps and lower
red_sir
03-06-2013 02:31 PM
Wow that's a lot of theory. You want to get past 75lb dumbbells? Go bench press and get strong.
J.C
03-06-2013 02:49 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stealthy
(Post 8177853)
bro i dont want to get big, just toned
said that the right before i signed up for the gym :fuckthatshit:
Sid Vicious
03-06-2013 03:35 PM
Lol dude stop with your broscience. Ive been benching since hs with absolutely no shoulder problems. And there no such thing as "overstretching" your pec, you should alway touch your chest. False sense of strength? Notice how every serious strength athlete benches Posted via RS Mobile
L0uie69
03-06-2013 03:39 PM
BB for strength
DB for assistant
Fcukedd
03-06-2013 04:04 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by DaFonz
(Post 8177710)
Damn son, you got strong.
Mine
225 bench
315 dead
305 squat
@ 175
:failed:
Yeah my training has been primarily based on strength. Did you get injured? I remember seeing you deadlift 365+ and squat over 315.
Since when did you hit 3 plates for bench :suspicious: :fuuuuu:
exdee
03-06-2013 04:11 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fcukedd
(Post 8178004)
Since when did you hit 3 plates for bench :suspicious: :fuuuuu:
Quite recently actually did 275lbs for fun and found it easier than I thought and put on 3 plates to try a few days later and got 1, but problem is I have problems doing high volume workouts and I'm trying to fix that now :(
strykn
03-06-2013 04:25 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by XplicitLuder
(Post 8177500)
fuckkk i wanna lose weight so bad so im doing a workout of 3x10-12 or so , but i feeel SO WEAK! ugh bruhs :( i wanan do strength training sooo baddd haha . what to do what to do :okay:
take some DNP , CLen , and T3....
Spoiler!
I'll be at your funeral brah
hal0g0dv2
03-06-2013 05:04 PM
Fuck thought spoiler was a new picture Posted via RS Mobile
Just because you don't have shoulder problems doing barbell press, doesn't mean everyone else doesn't have problems. Sushi can say whatever he/she wants, everyone can have an opinion.
hal0g0dv2
03-06-2013 08:45 PM
that's where my gardening gloves went ^^^^^^ Posted via RS Mobile
Sid Vicious
03-06-2013 08:56 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by bmwx1
(Post 8178311)
Just because you don't have shoulder problems doing barbell press, doesn't mean everyone else doesn't have problems. Sushi can say whatever he/she wants, everyone can have an opinion.
Uninformed opinion has no place in the realm of science. Im sure for the people repping 400+ will probably have shoulder problems. Lol that guys videos are hilarious..405 deadlift 100% natural Posted via RS Mobile
instantneedles
03-06-2013 08:58 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Araaadi
(Post 8177834)
Hmph, just posting up some new PRs. 3 weeks ago I was 238, currently at 232 pounds. Cutting my way down to 200. Currently on my second month of the Jim Wendler 5/3/1.
Dead PR - 425 x 1 with a little arch of back
Bench - 315 x 1 - going to attempt a little more tomorrow
Squat - 315 x 5 - slacking a little, working my way to build flexibility to go a little lower than parallel with heavier weights
Overhead Press - 185 x 3
keep it going dude, those are some solid numbers regardless of what your weight is.
so I'm thinking you got a stretching routine that you do to work on that flexibility?
instantneedles
03-06-2013 09:15 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sushi604
(Post 8177904)
Spoiler!
Well I'm pretty sure you already know the pro's and con's but for the people who are reading this thread, here's my reasons why I think dumbbells are better... but lets first look at the con's of barbell bench pressing.
Con's of Barbell Bench Pressing
False sense of strength. You feel like your able to lift a lot when the reality is the exercise involves a great deal of tricep movement as the bar provides stability across your two arms.
When lifting too heavy, you place a considerable amount of pressure on your shoulders. This because a critical issue when the weight is dropped too quickly or to fall on your chest, you could end up damaging your shoulder or worse the rotator cuff
Not many people execute the proper bench press properly. I see many people bring the bar down to touching their chest. It worries me greatly as this causes overstretched pectoral muscles.
Bad form in general. I see this all to often. People attempting to press with their entire back to the bench.
Limited chest engagement. How does one perform a chest fly on a bench press?
Here's my pro's about dumbbells
Dumbbell Bench pressing
I like to think that using dumbbells constitutes as a compound exercise as you engage a number of muscles to the exercise. After all your already at such a disadvantage prior.
To execute it properly you would have to do the following:
Lift the weight of the rack or floor.
Sit down and with the weights either resting on the floor or on your thighs, bring the weight to your chest
Lower the weight and your upper body to the bench. This engages your core
Engage your chest by pinching your shoulder blades and pushing out your chest thus leaving a gap in your middle back. Your middle back should not be touching the bench
Spread your arms to engage the stabilizer muscles in your shoulders
Engage your triceps and lift the weight
As you bring the weight up, your hands should start drifting towards each other thus contracting the inner chest fully
Bring the weight down until the other part of your chest is contracted fully.
Rinse and repeat until concentric failure.
As per above, your concentration will greatly increase due to the nature of the exercise
You will build out your stabilizer muscles.
Range of movement, variants in exercise. Chest flys' for example.
Con's of dumbbell bench pressing.
If your injured already, primarily in the shoulder, attempting to kick off a substantially heavy weight off your knees can and will probably do more harm to the existing injury. However, you can lighten the weight considerably to avoid further injury and possibly work around it.
Without a spotter, you cannot go as heavy as you like where as on a bench press you have safety mechanisms in place to ensure the weight cannot crush you if you are to lose control.
Bragging rights
Come on, this is given. Being able to lift and bench 100+ lbs dumbbells would be a phenomenal personal goal. I'm personally trying to get past 75lbs dumbbells right now.
I always give mad props to people who are able to lift 100 lbs effortlessly from the rack and then bench it, chest or shoulder wise.
Well said.
When I look back at my post, what I should have stated is that you should graduate from the bench press to dumbbells as soon as possible. Move back to the bench press when you need to lift heaver than 100+ lbs dumbbells.
However, I don't see the need mix bench press AND dumbbell bench pressing. Focus on one discipline and one discipline only.
I agree with quite a few of the points you mentioned, but points #2,3,4 can be equally applied to dumbbell bench.
You can't do a fly with a barbell, because a fly =/= bench which is counterintuitive to the comparison.
And I also agree with the points for cons of dumbbell pressing, but I would feel much more safer dumbbell pressing without a spotter than barbell bench pressing without a spotter ( I can drop the weights to the side), whereas with the barbell bench, if your sticky point is at your chest, there is no safety mechanism whatsoever to get it off your chest.
Dumbbells are great, but the barbell really is the staple of most strength sports... Powerlifting, olympic weightlifting, etc. I would be much more proud of being able to do a 4 plate bench in competition than press the hundy's in the gym for the bros to see :fullofwin:
just for illustration, guys that do dumbbell press then move onto doing barbell bench, pin presses, barbell presses with chains, etc. Variety is gold!
You sound like a resolutioner. "GIVE ME A ROUTINE SO I CAN MAGICALLY LOSE WEIGHT"
Here, let me sum it up for you real easy.
Eat less.
Pick up heavy things. Put them down.
Repeat.
no im not looking for a magical routine that will jsut make me lose the weight. i UNDERSTAND that i have to eat better and clean up my diet thats not what i was asking. i was just wondering whether there is any difference as to the type of routine i should do while i try and lose weight. just like when ppl do strength training they do a 5/3/1 or 3x5 or 5x5 instead of 3x10-12 so im just curious if there was something that will somewhat benefit me more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sushi604
(Post 8177751)
You totally beat me to it. Everyone has an excuse. Everyone is looking for that damn magic-pill. Everyone listens and follows too much media and bro-science.
However since your searching for that magical routine I'll just spell it out for you.
Focus on the following 3 things.
Benchpress (if your strong enough, dumbbell bench pressing is far more effective but can injure you just as quick)
Chin up's to the sternum
Deadlifts
However as I said before, non of these matter if you don't clean up your diet. You can't get big unless the fuel you consume is in your body to support you. Remember, you should be viewing your daily goal as 90% diet and 10% to the gym.
Your better off asking us how I should eat vs how I should lift.
once again, not looking for anything magical that will suddenly have me losing 5 lbs every week while still eating the same crap. thank you for the 3 examples though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by strykn
(Post 8178028)
take some DNP , CLen , and T3....
Spoiler!
I'll be at your funeral brah
play the funeral remix by dash berlin for em brah ?
