reckonerDecline dumbbell press
The decline press with a weight in each hand. With a barbell the decline asks less of the front of the shoulder than a flat bench does1, and dumbbells let each arm find its own path on top of that, so this is the decline for a shoulder that does not like a fixed bar. The hard part is getting two bells into place while you lie head down.
Feet hooked, bells to the low chest.
- Pattern
- Horizontal push
- Trains
- Chest, triceps, front delts
- Kit
- Dumbbell, decline bench
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Moderate
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder
Muscles worked
How to do it
Get the bells in place before you lie back
Sit on the bench with a dumbbell standing on each thigh and hook your feet under the pads. Lie back with the bells held close to your chest, so they arrive at the start position with you rather than after you.
Lower to the sides of the low chest
From straight arms, lower the dumbbells to the sides of your lower chest, elbows tucked a little rather than flared out level with your shoulders. Lower them under control, with no bounce at the bottom.
Press up and slightly in
Press back up and let the bells drift slightly together, so they finish close but not touching over your shoulders. Each arm carries its own weight, so if one side starts lagging you will see it here.
Finish with the bells over your chest
At the end of the set, bring the bells back to your chest and lower them to the floor beside the bench under control. Sitting up from a decline with a weight in each hand is harder than it looks and is not part of the set.
What goes wrong
Clanking the bells together at the top
It feels like a finish. It is the moment the chest stops working, because the weights are resting on each other instead of on you. Stop them close, not touching.
Letting the bells drift toward your head
Lying head down, gravity pulls the dumbbells toward your face as the set gets hard, and the press turns into something closer to a flat press with the elbows flared. Keep them over the low chest on the way down.
Dropping into the bottom
A fast drop and a rebound buy a rep and cost you the part of the rep that does the most. The way down is half the set. Take it slowly.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 20 kg, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 8 at 20 kg | More reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 9 at 20 kg | More reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 10 at 20 kg | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 11 at 20 kg | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 at 20 kg | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 12 at 20 kg | Load up 20 kg → 22 kgYou hit the top of the range with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7), so the dumbbell weight goes up 2 kg to 22 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to eight. You are now working 8 to 12. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Should the weight be per dumbbell or the pair?
Per dumbbell. Reckoner prescribes and records the weight of one bell, which is the number written on the one you pick up.
Why can I press less with dumbbells than with a barbell?
Because two loose weights take work to steady. On a flat bench, trained lifters' best single rep with dumbbells came out about sixteen percent below their barbell best2. Expect the same kind of gap on a decline and do not chase the barbell number.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
Only if you choose it. Reckoner never places it by itself, but you can pick it in the movement picker, take it when a swap for a flat press is offered, or find it by name in search. Once it is in your plan it stays there, and the weight climbs in the step your own dumbbell rack holds.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Coratella and colleagues, European Journal of Sport Science, 2020. Specific prime movers' excitation during free-weight bench press variations and chest press machine in competitive bodybuilders ten competitive bodybuilders, where the sternocostal head was similarly excited in the minus 15 degree decline and the flat press, and in the flat press and the chest press machine, while the anterior deltoid was less excited in the decline than in the flat, incline or machine press; activation measured, not growth
- van den Tillaar and Saeterbakken, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2012. The sticking region in three chest-press exercises with increasing degrees of freedom eleven men with at least a year of bench press training, whose best single rep on a flat bench came out about sixteen percent lower with dumbbells than with a free barbell