How to do a dumbbell chest press

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The exercise that Yolanda is performing is called the dumbbell chest press. This exercise actually targets the pectoralis group which lies across the front of your chest. As well as the triceps group on the back of the upper arm. It is important exercise because it gives you general upper body strength that you can use for activities of daily living. In terms of setting yourself up for this exercise what we are want to try is lay back on a bench keeping your spine in a nice neutral position leaning, that your back should actually be in the same position as though you were standing. You notice that Yolanda has put her feet up on the bench and this actually helps her maintain that neutral position for her spine. If she placed her feet on the floor but you would find is at her back would probably be in an ark position. So feet can either be up on the bench or down in the floor.

Starting with the upper body what you want to do is bring your arm just off your shoulder. You are going to bring your self to a 90 degree position with the elbows and you are trying to keep the forearm perpendicular to the floor with the wrist right in line with that forearm. As you push toward the top you going to stop outside of the vertical position and just take a brief pause right there and lower slowly back down to your starting position. Breathing is going to be such that you are going to exhale as you push the dumb bell towards the ceiling and inhale as you return back to the starting position. Some tendency is that you may have during this exercise or to start in an arch position with your back or to try to arch as you are doing the exercise itself.

Other things that you want to look for on this exercise are your positioning of your upper body. You going to make sure that your arm comes right off your shoulder not any higher than that and that your elbow is positioned at a 90 degree angle so that the dumb bell is going to be directly over the elbow. If you go too wide or too narrow with that forearm you either going to end up putting too much stress on the elbow or the shoulder. Another thing that you want to stay away from as you are executing the exercise is letting the dumb bell push you to far into your range of motion. This way I end up putting a lot of stress on the shoulder which we want to stay away from. So, again that 90 degree position is the key in terms of keeping your shoulders nice and healthy.

The shoulder blades on this exercise maintain some tightness in between the shoulder blades so that we can maintain a good correct posture. If you do an exercise and allow those shoulder blades to relax, you will find that the upper body is going to end in a rounded position which we want to stay away from. Repetitions on this exercise they are going to be eight to 12 reps with two to three sets of execution and you are going to try taking 30 seconds to one minute in between each of those sets. You want to try keep this exercise in your program because of each general upper body strengthening and because you will use a lot of that strength in certain functions throughout the day.


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