maratoolStanding Dumbbell Press
How to do the standing dumbbell press
- Standing with your feet shoulder width apart, take a dumbbell in each hand. Raise the dumbbells to head height, the elbows out and about 90 degrees. This will be your starting position.
- Maintaining strict technique with no leg drive or leaning back, extend through the elbow to raise the weights together directly above your head.
- Pause, and slowly return the weight to the starting position.
Muscles worked
The prime movers are the deltoids, which raise and rotate the upper arm at the shoulder joint.
Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the triceps straighten the elbow to finish the movement.
How this movement works
The working muscles shorten as they drive the load away from you, and more than one joint changes angle to do it. Load spreads down a chain instead of sitting on one muscle, which is why a compound push handles more weight than any single-joint alternative — and why joint position, not the muscle, is usually what fails first.
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.
Every exercise using:Dumbbell
These train the shoulders too, using equipment this one does not:
- Standing Front Barbell Raise Over Headbarbell
- Standing Low-Pulley Deltoid Raisecable
- Standing Two-Arm Overhead Throwmedicine ball
- Two-Arm Kettlebell Cleankettlebell
- Back Flyes - With Bandsband
Difficulty
Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.
Of the 141 shoulders exercises in this database, 74 are listed at beginner level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.