maratoolDumbbell Incline Bench Press
How to do the dumbbell incline bench press
- Lie on an incline bench which has been set to an incline of 45 degrees.
- Start with the dumbbells at shoulder height, your arms wide and elbows pointing down to the floor.
- Grasp the dumbbells with a grip so your palms face each other.
- Raise your arms up over your chest bringing the dumbbells closer together as they meet over your chest, as if you were clapping.
- Slowly return the dumbbells to starting position.
Muscles worked
The prime mover is the pectoralis major, which drives the upper arm forward and across the body.
Even with a single joint doing the moving, the muscle is not working alone — the triceps straighten the elbow to finish the movement; the deltoids stabilise the shoulder and add force at the top of the range.
How this movement works
Everything happens at one joint. That gives you direct control over where the tension sits; the trade-off is that the muscle gets no help, so the load that feels hard here is a fraction of what a multi-joint version of the pattern would take. Slow, complete repetitions beat heavy ones.
It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.
What you need
Dumbbells let each side work on its own, surfacing a strength difference between limbs that a barbell would quietly cover for, and leaving the wrist free to rotate through the movement.
A bench fixes the torso angle and gives you something to drive against, which is what lets the load go up without your position wandering.
Every exercise using:DumbbellBench
These train the chest too, using equipment this one does not:
- Extended Range One-Arm Kettlebell Floor Presskettlebell
- Flat Bench Cable Flyescable
- Incline Push-Upbody only
- Leverage Chest Pressmachine
- Medicine Ball Chest Passmedicine ball
Illustration: Everkinetic — CC BY-SA 4.0 — license. Modified versions are shared under the same license. Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.