What's going on, Schuyler Diehm here, men's weight loss coach.
And today we are going over the dumbbell bench press form.
Now the dumbbell bench press is one of those exercises that is super,
super important for chest, development,
for health of the shoulder and the chest.
And it's one that I see a lot of beginners actually doing wrong.
Usually when we try to imitate people and we watch them a lot of times,
some small cues are missing that is actually not only preventing you from seeing
a lot more strength and muscle development,
but also actually potentially putting your shoulder and your chest at risk for
injury.
And so this video we're really going to work on four specific cues to make sure
that you're getting the most out of this exercise, so let's get into it.
So what I tend to see the gym is a lot of beginners go straight to the barbell
bench press cause that's the one that most guys tend to really focus on.
But the dumbell bench press is really an important aspect of chest development.
You know, not only do you get more of a range of motion with dumbbells,
but you also allow each individual side of the chest to be working individually
rather than feeling like you're going to be overcompensating. Along with that,
you're also recruiting the stabilizers.
Whereas with a barbell you're kind of locked into one plane emotion with the
dumbbells,
you're allowed to kind of balance them to make sure that they're staying in that
plane. So when we're looking at, for me,
we're going to look at four specific cues to get into place.
So number one is elbow position. Number two is tightness of the body.
Number three is really focusing on chest activation and then number four is
making sure you have full control. And so let's just start getting into it. Um,
so the first one is going to be elbow position. Now what I see a lot of guys do,
especially when they are beginning and they see other people doing the bench
press is they Tend to keep their elbows out at a 90 degree angle from their
body.
And so the problem with that is that when you're actually in that position,
you're putting your shoulder at a very, very vulnerable state.
And so basically what the dumbbell bench press, we don't want to be at that 90.
Degree angle. You see how my elbows are straight out here.
This is really putting that.
Shoulder in a vulnerable position. So we instead.
Want to come to a 45 degree angle.
So your elbow should be kind of pointing like down and away from you.
And when you get in this position.
You also want to make sure that you are holding the dumbbells at that same
angle.
Right? You don't want the dumbbells to be perpendicular to your body.
You want them to be kind of in that same plane.
As your arms. And so that's the first cue, right?
Instead of having your shoulders out here, this is a big mistake.
People make two on the incline dumbbell bench press,
but really we want to just make sure that we're coming down rather than out,
right down rather than out. So once you have that cue in place,
you want to focus on tightness of the body.
Now what a lot of people tend to do is they tend to flatten the spine.
They tend to kind of stay loose and just use their shoulders and their chest.
But when we're getting this position,
we really want to be in that spot where we just maintain total tightness.
And so what does that mean? That means moving your feet up closer to body,
that means squeezing your butt cheeks.
That means tightening your core and then tightening your chest, right?
So pulling your shoulder blades down is a really great way to tighten your
chest.
And it's actually a great way to make sure that you have stability and you're
not putting your shoulders at more risk of injury. And so the way to do that,
as you can kind of just drive your shoulder blades down, down,
meaning drive your laps to your knees, your shoulders, to your knees,
and then also your shoulder blades to the bench. And so.
What a lot of people tend to do is when they drive their shoulder blades down
and I made this mistake when.
I was first starting out, they tend to lift their shoulders up to their ears.
We want to make sure that we're in a very.
Tight position where our shoulder blades are down, our scapula is down.
And so this.
Is something that could potentially take some practice. Um,
a good trick that you can do to kind of get this.
Into motion is when you get into.
Position and you have these dumbbells up,
you can actually kick your feet and move your butt up.
So you can slide your butt up while keeping your shoulder blades in position.
And that's kind of going to put you in this more powerful position.
And then here, when we're maintaining that straight form,
we want to make sure that our butt is not coming up off the seat.
So squeeze the butt, but have it touching the seat at all times,
drive into the floor with your feet.
And if someone with a super skinny arm were to reach under you,
they should be able to slip their arm under your lower back, right?
Your lower back doesn't have to be flat with the bench.
So when you get that tightness, what.
You're going to find is you just are more stable.
You have more control over everything.
It seems like rather than try to muscle up the weight.
You can go in this one range.
Of motion and you can really control it the entire way. And.
So that's cue number two to number three that we're going to get into is
focusing.
More on the activation of the chest rather than focusing on the
actual.
Movement itself. And so this is a mistake. A lot of beginners make,
especially when they're getting into the gym is they're just focused on the
motion, right? They're focused. If they're curling,
I'm getting the weight from the bottom to the top,
they're focused on bench press getting the weight from the bottom to the top.
And in the process,
they miss a lot of strength and muscle gains from activating the actual muscle
they're using. And so you may have heard of the term mind to muscle connection.
It's one Arnold Schwarzenegger made super popular,
but basically when you're working out,
you want to make sure that you're actually activating that muscle.
So this can be very difficult for a lot of beginners.
And so a way to kind of get that activation into motion would be to stand or
sit,
make sure you press your hands up against each other and just feel the squeeze
in your chest. So that's kind of going to be variation one,
once you have that down,
you've really started to tune into that muscle and feel that muscle activation,
do the same exact movement, but don't touch your hands. So hands,
squeeze, no touching hands, and you should feel the same squeeze in your chest.
And then you can just put your arms down,
rest them and then squeeze them and see what it's like. Right?
And then the more you do that,
basically what you can do is in the actual motion, focus on squeezing the chest.
And so a good cue here is rather than thinking about bringing the hands and the
weight the top, think about bringing your elbows to the top, right?
Or the inside of the elbow. I forgot the name of this. Um,
but basically thinking about driving that up rather than driving the hands and
the weight up, because sometimes when you do that,
you can put a little more focused on the triceps.
Whereas if you're focusing on the inside of the elbow,
you can actually work on activation and I'll kind of put this altogether in a
second,
but the final thing that's going to be the most important here is make sure you
are picking a weight You can fully control.
As you're getting this form down and you may have to go 15, 20,
30 pounds lighter just to make sure that you're getting your form right to make
sure your butt is staying on the seat. You're staying tight.
You have full control over it the whole time.
And so really here's some good cues is really squeeze the weight,
but also make sure that you're not using momentum, right?
You can even come down,
maybe even make it like a three to five second drop and then hold it at the
bottom and then push up.
And I really good at other activation cue is instead of just like exploding up,
you can make it a slow and controlled up, maybe like three seconds to the top.
So let's put it all together here so we can see how it looks.
So first thing I'm going to focus on is when I get in position getting tight.
So for me, that means kicking my feet closer to my shoulders.
Squeezing my butt cheeks and activating my shoulder blades.
And what you'll notice here is when you actually activate your shoulder blades,
the dumbbells will stay in the same position,
but you'll notice more of a stretch in your chest. This.
Is just kind of a natural when you get more of that range of motion.
So elbows 45 tight, and then I'm going to focus on using a weight.
I control really squeezing it and just come up.
And when I'm coming up again, focusing on the activation of the chest,
focusing on driving the inside of the elbows up to the sky.
Down, squeeze, up.
And if you even want to take it a step further, and when you come down,
as long as you keep a tight grip on the dumbbell,
you can actually kind of relax the chest.
And then up, down, relax,
up. Right?
And so test that out, try that out a couple times,
make sure you're making those small tweaks.
Make sure you keep all of those cues, stay tight, full range of motion,
45 degrees and really squeeze and control. And the more you do it,
the more you're going to notice that not only are you more in tune with your
chest, but of course,
you're going to be able to control more weight and you're going to be able to
actually dig into the pain more. And I mean the good pain, not the bad pain,
right? The burn. And so this is something we teach our clients.
This is something that we've had a lot of awesome success with.
So if you're looking for those strategies, we've got 30 day workout plan,
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