The Original Muscle Weight Gain & Muscle Building Blog!!

It’s amazing how if you ask 100 bodybuilders which exercise is the best for building muscle in the pectoral area, I guarantee you that 99 are going to instantly say the barbell bench press, which I completely DISAGREE with. It’s amazing how the bodybuilding industry is a “monkey see, monkey do” industry. Just because one weight lifter says that something is best, then everyone else, without questioning the reasoning, immediately follow along….”like lambs to the slaughter”.

Case in point is comparing the barbell bench press with the dumbbell press for gaining weight and building muscle to develop a large chest. People seem to think that just because you can lift more weight in the bench press, that it must mean that it will help you build muscle. But, that’s not the case. How many individuals do you know that can bench press a ton yet barely have a chest to show off? And, how many other weight trainers have you seen that are fairly “weak” in that same exercise, yet have full, round, developed pectorals? See what I mean?

Dumbbell presses have numerous advantages over the barbell bench press. To name a few:

1) Dumbbells allow you to train with a longer and greater range of motion, which means more muscle fibers are forced to work and come into play.

2) Dumbbells involve the front shoulders / delts to a lesser degree since the arms are able to come out to the sides more.

3) According to electromyography, the upper and middle pecs showed about 10-20% more activation in the dummbbell bench over that of the flat bench press with a barbell.

This is yet another reason why I’m constantly saying that to gain weight and build muscle mass, regardless of the muscle part in particular, is NOT about lifting heavy weights. There’s much more to the muscle building process than “numbers”. Forcing more fibers to come into play, proper tension, and many other factors, have to be taken into consideration.