Is an Incline Dumbbell Press Better Than an Incline Bench Press?

Variability is one of the reasons why weight training is effective for achieving a general level of fitness. You can perform many staple exercises in slightly different ways to achieve slightly different benefits while targeting the same muscles. For example, doing presses with dumbbells on an incline bench works the upper pectorals, the triceps, the deltoids and the trapezius, but using a weighted barbell gives you a different exercise than using dumbbells during the exact same motion. Choosing one over the other depends on your fitness goals and your familiarity with free-weight exercises.

  1. Incline Dumbbell Press

    • The incline dumbbell press targets the same muscles as the incline bench press, but it adds a degree of difficulty, because it requires you to balance two dumbbells through a uniform motion simultaneously. This balancing act more thoroughly engages stabilizers in the arms, neck and back. The additional stabilization work increases flexibility, but typically you’ll press less weight using dumbbells than you would with a barbell. The advantage is that the weight you do press is more evenly distributed throughout your upper body. Because the form requires you to balance each dumbbell, it takes more practice to adjust to than the form of the incline barbell bench press. Adding or reducing weight levels also requires access to a wide range of dumbbells of every poundage, rather than using a single barbell and a few weight plates that you can combine to achieve different poundage levels.

    Incline Bench Press

    • The incline bench press targets the top portion of your pectoralis major, and engages the triceps, the deltoids and the trapezius as secondary agents. Although it’s thought of as a chest exercise, the equipment and form is similar in nature to a barbell shoulder press, except you position the barbell’s motion a little more forward, directly over the top part of your chest. Although it’s not strictly an isolation exercise, because multiple joints are put into motion, the barbell lets you press more weight on an incline, and focus that weight more directly on your chest and shoulders.

    Dumbbell Versus Barbell

    • Basically, the difference between the two exercises comes down to the equipment used. Dumbbells require a stricter adherence to form to make sure the path of each press rep is angled correctly. The barbell is a little more forgiving in this regard. The use of a barbell, however, requires the support cradle used for bench press racks, while you can perform the dumbbell press on any inclined workout bench without other equipment. If you’re a beginner and press 45 pounds or less, you may want to begin with the dumbbell press instead because the weight of an unladen Olympic barbell is 45 pounds.

    Considerations

    • Each exercise offers similar benefits and drawbacks, and because each uses the same basic form, you can choose one over the other. Ideally, though, you would be able to fold a couple of sets of each into your chest workouts to improve both strength and flexibility. A good way to incorporate both exercises is to alternate between the two for each workout. For example, do your incline bench presses on chest day one, then do sets of incline dumbbell presses on chest day two. This helps alleviate performance stagnation that may set in with the same exercise performed repeatedly. For bench presses of any type, find someone to spot your reps.