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Are dumbbell bench presses worth it? Or should I just stick to normal bench presses with an olympic bar?

Do both.

Dumbbell bench pressing is great because it makes both of your pectorals work, rather than allowing one to compensate for the other. The great thing about dumbbells is freedom — you can do a fly motion or a bench press motion with dumbbells, allowing you to change up your chest routine and make yourself work harder.

The only real caveat to dumbbell bench pressing, other than the fact that it’s a pain in the ass to get the dumbbells, is that you usually cannot do as much weight as you normally would be able to on an olympic bar. I personally like to think of dumbbell bench presses as the equivalent of a “fine tuning” lift — you do the olympic bench pressing to crank up the weight and to work your chest and stabilizers, and you use dumbbell bench pressing/flys to further work out the chest and stabilizers in different ways to really get a serious workout.

So the answer is simple: do both.

Tags: bench press, Exercise, weight lifting