maratoolIncline Dumbbell Fly's
How to do the incline dumbbell fly's
- Lie on an incline bench set a 45 degree angle with a dumbbell in each hand and your feet firmly on the ground.
- Lift the dumbbells over your chest extending your arms fully and your palms facing each other.
- Keeping a slight bend in your elbows, lower the dumbbells towards the floor in and arc like motion.
- Slowly return 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 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
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.
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.
Every exercise using:BenchDumbbell
These train the chest too, using equipment this one does not:
- Incline Push-Upbody only
- Leg-Over Floor Presskettlebell
- Leverage Chest Pressmachine
- Low Cable Crossovercable
- 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.