How to use dumbbells to train chest muscles?

Many people want to go to the gym to train their chest muscles. In fact, you can buy a pair of dumbbells and practice at home. You only need a pair of dumbbells to develop a strong physique and perfect chest muscles. By doing dumbbell exercises, we can get the benefits of barbell training while opening up every fiber in our body. So how do we use dumbbells to exercise our chest muscles? Let me tell you the method below.

1. Lie on your back on a stool with your legs naturally apart and your feet on the ground. Hold the dumbbells with your palms facing each other. Place directly above your shoulders. Keep your upper back pressed against the bench, your spine in natural curvature, and your core tight!

2. Open your arms and slide down steadily, making your elbows at the same height as your shoulders. When lowering the dumbbells, focus on the chest seam and use the tension of your chest muscles to control the slow lowering of the dumbbells. At the same time, breathe in fully and straighten your chest. The amplitude must be exactly right.

3. While exhaling, push the dumbbells to the initial position, and use the contraction of the chest muscles to drive the arms upward until the dumbbells touch each other. This can avoid excessive involvement of the shoulders and back in exerting force.

How to breathe:

① Medium and small weights: inhale when expanding your chest and exhale when returning to the original position.

② Heavy weights: Before starting the movement, take a few deep breaths, and hold the last breath until the continuous chest expansion movement is completed, then exhale; you can also take half a breath (not full) before starting, and when the chest is expanded to the largest position (outward), exhale (exhale) quickly, and immediately take another half breath, and then breathe again when the movement is restored.

【Pay attention to the shoulder joint】

Do not exceed the normal range of motion at the shoulder joint. If your arms are lower than shoulder level, it puts extra stress on your joints, muscles, and support structures. When doing this movement, your arms and shoulders must be in a straight line. This will keep the angle of the arms to the chest less than 90 degrees to ensure that the lower chest is trained. At the same time, the forearm and upper arm form an angle of about 135 degrees.

When it comes to training the chest muscles, we need to have a good grasp of the method and strength. If the angle is too small, the lever arm will be reduced a lot, which is not conducive to muscle stimulation. If the angle is too large, the pressure on the elbow and shoulder joints will be very great. Therefore, we should constantly explore and find the feeling during practice, and do not blindly stimulate to increase the intensity, otherwise it will not only have no effect, but may also cause damage to the muscles.