After 4 months, I recently went from 7.5kg dumbbells to 10kg dumbbells and it feels really heavy whenever I lift above my chest level. like my shoulders and back have a hard time doing the exercises. But 2 days ago I bought a barbell and loaded it with 28 kgs I was comfortably ( little bit challenging) able to do my exercises. I dont understand why the dumbbells feel so difficult to work with.
In: 30
Dumbbells require far greater stabilization, which in turn forces you to use stabilizer muscles that you wouldn’t usually have to use as much during a barbell or machine lift. Most of these stabilizer muscles used in a dumbbell press are extremely underdeveloped compared to a muscle like the pectoralis major (your chest muscle)
For example:
During a barbell bench press and or a machine press, the main muscles used are your chest muscles, your triceps and if your form is good enough to incorporate your lats, then that comes into play as well.
A dumbbell press brings a new muscle into the spotlight. The rear delts. Now you most likely do use the rear delts to some degree during a barbell press, but not anywhere close to how much they are used during a dumbbell press.
For the exception of a small minority of people, the rear delts are not trained to the degree that other muscles are. For this reason they are in comparison far weaker, which is probably the main reason for instability during dumbbell presses.
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