reckonerDumbbell pullover
One dumbbell held over your chest in both hands, lowered back over your head in a long arc and brought back again. It has a reputation as a lat exercise, and when it was measured the chest did more of the work than the lats did1, which is why Reckoner records the chest first and the lats beside it.
Ribs down, elbows soft, only the arms move.
- Pattern
- Horizontal push
- Trains
- Chest, lats
- Kit
- Dumbbell, 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
- Low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder
Muscles worked
How to do it
Lie along the bench and hold the bell by its end
Back flat on a bench, head supported, feet on the floor. Cup the top plate of one dumbbell in both palms, thumbs around the handle, and press it up until it sits over your chest.
Set the elbows and keep them set
A soft bend, and that bend does not change for the whole set. When the two versions were compared, bending the elbows handed the triceps more of the work than the lower chest, and keeping the arms long drew more from the lower chest than from the upper2.
Lower it back over your head
Ribs down and lower back on the bench, then take the dumbbell back in an arc until your upper arms are about level with your ears or you feel the stretch across your chest and under your arms. Stop there. Your shoulders decide how far, not the floor.
Pull it back over your chest
Bring it along the same arc until it is over your chest again, then start the next rep. How hard the muscles work depends on how far the weight sits from the shoulder1, so the top of the arc is a rest, not the point of the rep.
What goes wrong
Arching the back to find more range
The ribs flare, the lower back lifts off the bench, and the bell travels further while the shoulder does no more. That extra range is coming from your spine. Keep your ribs down and let the arc end where the shoulder ends.
Turning it into a triceps extension
The elbows fold as the bell goes back and straighten to bring it up, and the set becomes an arm exercise2. Fix the bend at the start and let the shoulder be the only joint that moves.
Loading it like a press
It is a long lever with your arms overhead, and the weight that lets you control it is much lighter than anything you bench. A dumbbell you have to heave off your face is too heavy.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 16 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 16 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. |
| 2 | 3 x 9 at 16 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. |
| 3 | 3 x 10 at 16 kg | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 11 at 16 kg | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 at 16 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 16 kg | Load up 16 kg → 18 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 2 kg to 18 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
Is the pullover a chest exercise or a back exercise?
Both, with the chest doing more. Measured with a barbell, the chest worked harder than the lats, and how hard depended on the lever the weight made1. A 2026 review of the lat research reached the same view: the pullover leans on the chest rather than singling out the lats3. For the lats on their own, the straight-arm pull-down is in the library too.
Why does Reckoner take this out if I declare a shoulder problem?
Shoulder is the one restriction recorded against it. Every rep ends with your arms overhead and a weight pulling them further back, which is the position an irritable shoulder usually likes least.
How does Reckoner add weight to a pullover?
In the step your dumbbell rack actually has, rather than a percentage that lands between two bells. It asks what your own gym holds, and the step it uses is in the fact block at the top of this page.
Similar movements
Reckoner has no other movement in this swap group.
Sources
- Marchetti and Uchida, Journal of Applied Biomechanics, 2011. Effects of the pullover exercise on the pectoralis major and latissimus dorsi muscles as evaluated by EMG that the barbell pullover, in eight healthy men lifting 30 per cent of bodyweight for ten repetitions, emphasized the pectoralis major more than the latissimus dorsi, and that the higher activation depended on the lever arm of the external force; a small study, cited from its abstract
- Lacio and colleagues, Journal of Exercise Physiology Online, 2021. Electromyographic Activation of Pectoralis Major and Triceps Brachii during Dumbbell Pullover thirteen men performing the dumbbell pullover at 90 per cent of their ten repetition maximum with the elbows extended or flexed, the long head of the triceps more active than the sternal pectoralis with the elbows flexed, and the sternal pectoralis more active than the clavicular with the elbows extended
- Di Fonza and colleagues, Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology, 2026. Electromyographic Analysis of Latissimus Dorsi Activation During Common Resistance Training Exercises: A Narrative Review a narrative review of twenty-three studies concluding that the pullover appeared to preferentially activate the pectoralis major rather than selectively target the latissimus dorsi