Hey guys, i didn’t start strength training until the last 2 months. before this i’ve trained competitively as a boxer and 200-400m runner but not much weights.
Whenever i benched in these years i used dumbells. I bench 75x4 with dumbells. But i can just bench 165x4 with a barbell. Is this weird? I feel like people who can bench heavier than me with a barbell can’t bench as heavy as my dumbell bench.
I have the same “problem” as well.
Let the dumbbell bench be the corner stone of your chest workout. Chances are you’ll progress faster on that movement. The other pressing movements tend to follow suit after.
For example I trained the BB bench for about 3-4 months, with little to no gains in strength. Then after I focused my efforts on DB’s and floor presses, and stopped training regular bench. In the same time frame, I put 40lbs on the db’s (from 80’s to 100’s), Put 30lbs on my Floor press. The best part is that yesterday I decdided to test my BB bench max, and It went up 80lbs.
What I’m trying to say is that if it works then use DB’s. Chances are that you’ll save youself a lot of time and frustration trying to achieve your goals.
I am like that also. Like Iflashback said stick with the dumbells if you have access to them.
If you’ve been DB pressing for a while, but only BB pressing for 2 months, it’s not surprising. If you want to BB press heavier, you need to practice BB pressing. They are not the same movement.
[quote]pcdude wrote:
If you’ve been DB pressing for a while, but only BB pressing for 2 months, it’s not surprising. If you want to BB press heavier, you need to practice BB pressing. They are not the same movement.[/quote]
This is pretty spot on.
What you want to do moving forward depends very specifically on what your goal is. If you want a bigger barbell bench, you gotta barbell bench. If you want chest development, you have to figure out which one works better for you. If you want general strength gains, little bit of both.
Personally, I’ve found dumbbell bench to hit the chest, and obviously stabilizers better than barbell bench, and barbell bench does more for front delts and triceps. That’s just me though.