reckonerDumbbell bench press
The same press with two independent weights, which is harder than it sounds. Each arm carries its own load, so a side that has been quietly coasting has nowhere to hide, and the bells can travel further than a bar ever could.
Lower the bells to chest depth.
- Pattern
- Horizontal push
- Trains
- Chest, triceps, front delts
- Kit
- Dumbbell, bench
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 4 sets of 6 to 10 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 them up without a fight
Sit on the end of the bench with a bell resting on each thigh. Lie back and kick your knees up one at a time, so the bells arrive over your chest instead of being hauled there by the shoulders.
Set the back
Shoulder blades together and down into the bench, feet flat on the floor. The set-up is the barbell set-up and it matters more here, because nothing is holding your two hands in line with each other.
Lower to chest depth
Bring the bells down until your upper arms are roughly level with your torso, elbows at about sixty degrees. Deeper is not better once the shoulder starts rolling forwards.
Press, and let them come together
Press up and slightly in. The bells finish close together but never touch: banging them at the top is a rep that stopped being under control.
What goes wrong
Letting one arm lead
The stronger side finishes first and the weaker one drifts. Match the tempo to the slower arm, because that is the arm the weight is actually chosen for.
Turning it into a fly
Elbows wide and bells looping out to the sides is a different exercise with a much longer lever, and the shoulder pays for it. Keep the forearms vertical.
Dropping the bells to get out
Bring your knees back up, sit forward, and set them down. Dumping them from the top is how bells get chipped and floors get cracked.
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 | 4 x 6 at 20 kg | More reps 6 → 7 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 4 x 7 at 20 kg | More reps 7 → 8 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 4 x 8 at 20 kg | More reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 4 x 9 at 20 kg | More reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 4 x 10 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 10 at 20 kg | Load up 20 kg → 22.5 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 2.5 kg to 22.5 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to six. You are now working 6 to 10. The lighter week is over, so this is back to four 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 what is written on the one you pick up.
Why does it climb in a different step from the barbell?
Because a dumbbell rack and a barbell are stocked differently, and the step has to be a weight you can actually pick up. Reckoner asks each movement what its own gym holds rather than adding a percentage that leaves you standing at a rack with nothing to reach for. The step for this one is in the fact block above.
Is it a good swap for the barbell bench press?
It is the swap Reckoner offers first when the barbell version stalls, when a shoulder does not like the fixed bar path, or when there is no rack free.
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.