How To Do A Dumbbell Chest Workout: Complete Guide For Beginners

A dumbbell chest workout is an important routine when you want to build your pectoral muscles.

Ideally, dumbbell workouts should always be included in your routine for a multitude of reasons. Dumbbell exercises help you understand any strength or muscle imbalance between two sides of a muscle group.

These exercises, just like barbell exercises, can help you work on each part of your pectoral muscles. There are certain elements of a dumbbell chest workout you should know about before adding it to your routine.

Strengthen Your Chest with Dumbbells

Before understanding the benefits, mistakes, and other elements, here are some dumbbell chest exercises you should add to your chest workout routine to develop your pectoral muscles.

Upper chest

Middle chest/inner chest

Flat bench press
Flat bench dumbbell fly
Dumbbell pullover

Lower chest

Decline bench dumbbell press
Decline bench press with external rotation

Benefits of Working Chest Muscles With Dumbbells

Now that you know the exercises for a chest dumbbell workout, here're the benefits of working on your pectoral muscles using dumbbells.

Better range of motion

When you’re working with barbells, it touches your chest before you’ve used the entire range of motion. However, when you use dumbbells, it increases the range of motion, as your dumbbells move past the chest level when you’re lowering it.

Allow proper strength and balance development

Usually with barbells, your stronger side often uses more pressure than your weaker side.

However, in a dumbbell chest workout, you will need to use the same pressure on both sides to lift the dumbbells and properly develop both sides of the pectoral muscles.

Harder contraction of muscles

Using dumbbells means your pectoral muscles will need to contract more to keep the dumbbells from drifting back towards you. Therefore, using dumbbells can be harder for the muscles.

How does it work?

A dumbbell chest workout uses the same mechanisms to build your pectoral muscles as any other bodybuilding exercise.

When you use the weight, it adds pressure to the muscle fibers. That causes the fiber to tear and then repair itself to become thicker and stronger. As that happens, the pectoral muscles take shape and start developing.

Common Mistakes

Here are some common mistakes that can occur during a dumbbell chest workout.

Not using the full range of motion

While you may feel you’ve completed a rep, it’s still incomplete if you’re not using the full range of motion.

Bending your wrists

When you’re holding dumbbells, the wrist needs to be aligned with the dumbbell with your palms facing forward. You should not bend your wrist where your palms face upwards.

It’s of utmost importance to protect your wrist during dumbbell exercises.

Safety and Precautions

Here are some safety precautions you can take during a dumbbell chest workout:

Incorrect form

When you begin with exercises, focus on correcting your form first. If you’re not using the correct form, you won’t be able to reap all the benefits from the exercise.

Going too heavy

While dumbbells aren’t barbells, it still doesn’t mean you should go as heavy as possible. Start off slow, and understand the range of motion, form, and breathing patterns. Once you’ve mastered those, move onto heavier weights.

Not adding variation

While a dumbbell chest workout will serve you great, it still doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have exercises such as cable flyes or hammer strength press or even barbell exercises.

FAQ

Can I build chest with dumbbells?

Yes. You should focus on the correct exercises, progressive overload, and proper nutrition to build your chest.

What dumbbell exercise works chest?

There are several dumbbell exercises that work on your chest. Some of the most popular ones are incline, flat dumbbell bench presses, dumbbell flies, and dumbbell pullovers.

How do I tone my chest with dumbbell?

To tone your chest with dumbbells, you can focus on working on 3-4 sets with at least 10-12 reps each.