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The Best Bench Press Variation for Chest (WINNER)

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Rating: 4.0; Vote: 1

m going to pit them all head to head in an iron face off challenge. I will go over the pros and cons of each version of the bench press exercise to land on one ultimate winner when it comes to your training. That said, we start off with the dumbbell bench press. I-m using the flat bench version of this exercise throughout the video rather than an incline or decline so that we keep one variable of bench angle out of the decision. With the dumbbell bench press we have the opportunity to weight the exercise quite a bit, making it a good option for progressive overload. The issue however is the amount of shoulder stability that is required because of the independent motion of the dumbbells vs the fixed bar you use in a barbell bench press. That said, the mechanics of the press are even a little different. With the barbell bench press, the weights are wider apart and balanced equally around your hands in almost a see-saw mechanics. The dumbbells have all of their weight distributed in a much smaller amount of space (your hand) making it more difficult to support their motion. Back to the dumbbell press however, you gain some additional range of motion here that you are not afforded with the barbell bench press. This is because the hands are not fixed on a bar and therefore can travel towards each other into adduction towards the top of the movement. This extra range of motion does require more control and time under tension however making this somewhat more difficult than the straight up and down bar path of the bench press. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the adduction that does occur here in this bench press variation is resisted however. Side to side motion of the dumbbells at the top is not altered by the downward force of gravity. You may feel more going on in your chest because you are able to actively contract your chest and feel the squeeze as it does so. This just isn-t occurring under any additional resistance and it is something worth noting since it is something people point to as an advantage of dumbbell bench that really is not an advantage. The standing machine press does provide you with a greater opportunity to resist adduction of the arms, but at a cost. It requires a tremendous amount of core stability to counteract the push of the weights away from your body, and even more so, the slow return of the weights back to the stack. If you have a weak core you will not be able to match your true pressing strength ever with this variation of a bench and will therefore be selling your capabilities short. Even the laying down version of the machine cable bench is limited by the ability to -curl- the weight into position to even start performing your reps. The overall winner becomes the barbell bench press. Though slightly limited in its range of motion, it does allow for the greatest amount of progressive overload and strength building. You can press up to 20 percent more weight in this version than you can the dumbbell version as a matter of fact. If you were seeking pure strength, the barbell is the clear choice for these reasons. If you wanted an additional hypertrophy boost you would simply bookend this exercise with another that you could do standing that would overload adduction more significantly. My choice here would be the 3D crossover. For a complete program that includes the winners of all the iron face offs as well as the best step by step workouts for building ripped athletic muscle, be sure to head to the link below and start training like an athlete with the ATHLEAN-X Training Programs
Date: 2022-04-22

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Comments and reviews: 10

Carlos
I need help!
I am 45 years old 5'11- and i dnt take any supplements.
My current chest routine that i perform on mondays tuesdays wed and fridays are;
280 lbs 5 sets of 7 or till failure with a rest point of 1 minute between sets. then drop dwn to 230 4 sets of 10 or till failure with a rest point of 45 seconds between sets then drop dwn to 200lbs 3 sets of 10 or till failure with rest time of 45 seconds between sets. Then i do a incline bench press of 200lbs 30degree incline 5 sets of 7 with 45 to a minute rest time inbetween sets then i move to a pec dec and perform 5 sets of 12 at 225lbs with 45 sec to 1 minute rest time. Then i call it a day. . Bench and inclime are performed on smith machine due to prior scare and no spotter. I dnt see any difference as i been doing this for 3 months of but have been working out for a year and gradually increased to were im at now. Is there a better way to pack on mass and definition or should i continue this and not give up, i wouls like to have more definition at this point, and its a little harder because i started out with man boobs, an6 suggestions would help greatly and i have not changed my diet, still byrger fries and tacos,
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ruben
Hey Jeff I got a question, you prolly won-t read this but it-s worth the shot. So I have been trying to grow my chest for the longest and believe me it has came a long way but it-s still not where I want it. At first I used to always go hard and do too much volume and over train it. It got strong pretty fast but most of them was noob gains. It also got stronger faster than usual Bc I was building strength instead of muscle. I was doing that by hitting 4-6 reps every set on barbell bench press. ( I-ve always heard big bench = big chest ) so I have made bench my priority. A year ago I couldn-t hit 1 rep for 135 and now my 1 RM is 210. I-ve noticed my strength went up but my chest hasn-t really grown, so then I realized I needed to do more hypertrophic work outs to build more muscle instead of strength. I-ve been doing 10 reps on my bench for the past 3 weeks and my pumps have been better and my chest has lowkey been looking bigger already but I don-t know. Am I on the right track? I just want my chest to get bigger lol
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cherry316316
I started doing cable lying down bench press and feels such a great pump in my chest after workout.
With heavy dumbbells like 70 to 100 lb, half of my energy used to go in getting the dumbbells from rack to my chest. And if after 4 or 8 reps i want to stop for 10 secs, then getting dumbbells down and then again up takes so much effort. With cables changing weight is so much easy. I do keep the cables a bit closer compare to Jeff, so starting position is easy.
And compare to bar, I feel cable much easy on my shoulders.
Plus with the saving of time in unloading and loading, I can do 1 or 2 etc sets.
Managed to go from 120 lb to 200 lb on bench press in a month on cable And if I need 10 secs break in the reps, it is much easier to put the cable down and start again.
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J's
I used to be stuck at a certain weight on barbell. I ditched barbell for dumbbells years back and when I returned to barbell I was through the roof. For me anyways, it seemed I always felt it in my chest more with dumbbells and the stabilization challenge seemed to increase my overall bench capabilities. Granted I would always be able to move more total weight on barbell but that for me didn-t result in increased gains. Dumbbells in the past have always helped me break through barriers. Maybe it-s just me but if I don-t touch dumbbells I get stuck much earlier on barbell.
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Dainiel
Hey jeff! Big fan here from Canada! I've been watching you for so long now but it has been exactly 14 months till i decided to take my fitness to the next level. I never miss a vid! I have been struggling getting some mass and strength on my chest workouts. But i have like pretty big lifts for my size (e. g. i can deadlift 365 kbs while being 162 lbs and having an estimate of 14% bf) but my chest hasn't even hit 2 plates yet. Im just really curious why its been like this. Mind helping me out jeff?
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Superman
-Incredible! To summarize: -
-1. - Dumbbells - stable, great range of motion w/ progressive overload, mild core activation
-2. - Cables - strong core activation, phenomenal hypotrophy potential
-3. - Barbell - Huge for strength gains, limited range of motion, best weight distribution
In summary, ground based is essential for athletic gains. Use Barbell and Dumbbell to build overload, and the assistance of gravity on cables to target muscles beyond failure.
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Epik
Hey Jeff, I-ve been working out for a long time but my diet has been extremely inconsistent. I-m not sure how exactly I would manage to work on fixing up my nutrition. I checked your programs that you offer but I unfortunately can-t afford to be a part of it. Is there any tips or additional websites or so that you can recommend for cleaning up your diet?
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Dhrubanka
Can I get help with something? I was a fat 80 kg teen who could easily put on weight. After working out for 1. 5 years I got down to 62kg somewhat lean. The problem is since the last 1 year I'm stuck at this weight despite doing weight training. I do the exercises as heavy as I can keeping proper form and eat proportionally too.
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Zetsuke4
Very good remark on dumbbell bench press range of motion chest adduction that adduction isn-t getting resistance since the weight is at the same height. The dumbbell is in the same line of distance against gravity and it-s just getting close together at the same level so very very good explanation there it got me understanding
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Dinag
I've noticed that barbell press give a puffed up upper definition of the chest while the dumbell gives a low firm definition. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Guys like Greg O Gallagher have a very good looking chest. I don't think his chest definition can be achieved solely through dumbbells
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