reckonerDumbbell squeeze press
Two dumbbells held together over your chest, palms facing each other, and pressed up as one while you push them into each other the whole way. It is a bench press with a second job added: your arms push inward as well as up, from the first rep to the last. Some gyms call it a hex press or a crush press, and it is the same lift.
Bells pressed together, all the way up.
- Pattern
- Horizontal push
- Trains
- Chest, triceps, front delts
- 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
- Moderate
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder
Muscles worked
How to do it
Bring the bells together over your chest
Sit on the end of the bench with a bell resting on each thigh, lie back, and bring them up over your chest. Turn your palms to face each other and close the gap until the bells touch along their length. Hexagonal bells sit flat against each other. Round ones want to roll, so hold them firmly.
Set your back and start the squeeze
Shoulder blades together and down into the bench, feet flat on the floor. Now push the bells into each other, hard enough that nothing could slide between them. Pushing your arms toward each other in front of your chest is work the chest does1, and it starts before the first rep.
Lower to your chest, still squeezing
Bring the pair down the middle of your chest until the bells touch your breastbone lightly. Your hands are together, so your elbows travel close to your ribs. Let them. The bells stay pressed together all the way down.
Press up as one
Press the pair straight back up until your arms are straight. The two bells move as a single weight, and the inward push stays on while they rise.
End the set when the bells come apart
The set is over when you can no longer hold them together, even if you could still press them separately. Bring your knees up, sit forward, and set the bells down. Log the weight of one bell.
What goes wrong
Letting the bells drift apart
As the set gets hard the squeeze goes first, and a gap opens between the bells. From there it is a neutral grip dumbbell press, which is a fine lift and a different one. If you cannot keep them together, the bells are too heavy for this set.
Picking up the bells you bench with
It feels right to reach for your usual pair, because the movement looks like a dumbbell bench press. Hands close together is a weaker position to press from even on a bar: in one study trained lifters pressed about six kilograms less at their maximum with a narrow grip than with a wide one2. Here part of your effort goes inward as well. Start lighter and let the log move the weight.
Easing off at the top
At lockout the weight sits over your shoulders and the press gets easy, so the squeeze tends to switch off for a moment on every rep. That rest is the thing this lift exists to take away. Hold the pressure through the top and start the next rep from it.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 12 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 12 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 12 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 12 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 12 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 12 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 12 kg | Load up 12 kg → 14 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 2 kg to 14 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
Does a squeeze press work the chest more than a dumbbell bench press?
Nobody has measured it. No published study of this lift was found, so there is no honest number for what the squeeze adds. What is known is narrower. Pushing the arms toward each other in front of the chest is an action the chest performs1, and when lifters bring their hands close together on a barbell, the balance of chest to triceps activity barely changes3. Treat it as a press with inward work added, done beside a heavier press and not in place of one.
Is a hex press the same as a squeeze press?
Yes. Hex press, crush press and squeeze press are three names for this lift. Hexagonal dumbbells have flat sides that sit against each other without rolling, which is where the first name comes from. Reckoner lists it as the dumbbell squeeze press and finds it under the other names when you search.
How does Reckoner add weight to a squeeze press?
In the step your dumbbell rack actually has. The weight prescribed and logged is one bell, not the pair, and the step for this movement is in the fact block at the top of this page. It shares a swap group with the dumbbell bench press, so either can stand in for the other.
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
- Paton and Brown, Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology, 1994. An electromyographic analysis of functional differentiation in human pectoralis major muscle that an isometric effort to move the arm across the front of the body drew on the middle segments of the pectoralis major whatever the height of the arm; a small, older study of isometric efforts in eight men, cited from its abstract
- Larsen, Gomo and van den Tillaar, Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 2021. A Biomechanical Analysis of Wide, Medium, and Narrow Grip Width Effects on Kinematics, Horizontal Kinetics, and Muscle Activity on the Sticking Region in Recreationally Trained Males During 1-RM Bench Pressing that fourteen trained men bench pressed a significantly lower one repetition maximum with a narrow grip than with a wide one, about six kilograms lower on average; a barbell study, cited for the hand position and not for this lift
- Tanimoto and colleagues, Sports, 2023. Lateral Force and EMG Activity in Wide- and Narrow-Grip Bench Press in Various Conditions that the ratio of pectoralis major to triceps activity was almost unchanged between a narrow and a wide grip bench press in fourteen men; a barbell study, cited for the hand position and not for this lift