Hey what's up guys, Sean Nalewanyj here of BodyTransformationTruth.com with a Q & A video,
and this question is about barbell bench pressing and whether or not it is a necessary exercise
for maximizing your chest gains. So the reality here is that no, they most definitely are
not a mandatory exercise from a pure muscle building perspective. It's not that barbell
benches aren't effective for building your chest, obviously they are, it's just that
they don't offer any advantages that a basic dumbbell press won't give you. In fact, as
I covered in one of my previous videos, a very good case can be made for the fact that
barbell bench presses are actually inferior to dumbbell presses when it comes to maximizing
chest hypertrophy and when it comes to preventing shoulder injuries. So first off, dumbbells
allow for a larger and more natural range of motion. The primary function of your pecs,
as I've covered before, is horizontal adduction, which is to bring your upper arm across the
front of your body. And since barbell bench presses lock your hands onto the bar and force
you to press in a straight up and down motion, the total amount of horizontal adduction that
you can achieve becomes limited and this reduces the tension on your pecs and it shifts more
emphasis onto your triceps and your front delts. Dumbbells on the other hand allow you
to press in a more natural arching motion which is going to maximize horizontal adduction
and is going to move your pecs through a larger range of motion. And not only does this maximize
the stimulation of your chest, but it also puts less stress on your shoulder joints as
well. And secondly, dumbbells allow for balanced development across your entire chest. One
of the main drawbacks with the barbell bench press is that because they're a bilateral
movement where both of your arms are working together to move one single object, they allow
the dominant side of your body to compensate for the weaker side, and if you aren't careful
with this it can quickly add up over the course of several weeks or months and cause issues
not only from a basic perspective of aesthetics but from a strength and stabilization perspective
as well. Dumbbells solve this by allowing you to work isolaterally where each arm lifts
its own object independently, and as a result of that, you're going to get balanced size
and strength development across both sides of your chest. Now again, don't get me wrong
here, barbell presses are a perfectly viable chest exercise to include in your routine
and as long as you execute them using proper form and technique then you shouldn't run
into any significant problems with them. However, the purpose of this Q & A is simply to point
out that, number one, from an overall muscle building perspective, dumbbell presses are
almost certainly going to be the superior exercise and in my opinion they should be
treated as the primary chest exercise in your routine. And second of all, if for some reason
you can't perform a standard barbell bench press, perhaps due to problems with your shoulders,
or lack of equipment, or not having a spotter, or if you'd simply prefer not to perform them,
then you're not going to be missing out on anything that dumbbell presses won't already
give you. So thanks for watching this video lesson, I hope you found this information
useful. Please make sure to hit the "like" button, leave a comment and subscribe to stay
up to date on future videos. Also make sure to check out my complete step-by-step muscle
building and fat loss programs over at BodyTransformationTruth.com by clicking the icon at the top of the video
or using the link in the description box below. Talk to you again soon.