Barbell bench press Vs. Dumbell bench press

Variety is the spice of life - same goes for the gym.

Back in the day when plateauing was an issue on the bench - I would switch from bench to incline for 6-8 weeks or low incline db's and then go back and do the bench.

I found for example once that when my max on the bench was somewhere around the 400-420lb mark I was stuck. I then decided to pack in the bench and hit the incline and to my surprise within 8 weeks I was doing 400-420 on the incline leading me to think (correctly) that my flat bench must now be better.

Mix it up and on db's especially play around with the incline.

If you the total weight is the same I'd say Dumbbell presses are better as they would work the muscles harder to keep each dumbbell stable.

Parsley wrote: »

but this may limit the weight you can use...

Thats very true, some gym's only have 30kg dumbbells. Work your way up to what ever your gym has then you can switch over to the barbell. I'm assuming the op is taking about using the same weight for both?

Another advantage is you don't need a spotter.

Parsley wrote: »

Guvnor, when you switched to incline for 6-8 weeks as you said, would you do any flat barbell benching at all? I did a similar switch from regular bench to close grip bench for 6 weeks and saw good progress from that... except i didn't do any regular grip benching at all during that period, and ended up being stronger close grip than regular grip. :pac:

Not one set. It was about 7 years ago now and IIRC I was getting hacked off with the bench and going heavy every week as in 400+ every week but all never going over the 1rm.

So I did the incline purely as a break and a change of pace, did not do it to aid the bench but we did do the same rep and sets for the incline.

At the end of the 8 weeks I think I did somewhere around the 420 if not a bit more mark so I figured if I could equal or slightly better my max on the incline vs flat things must be better on the flat. I then think 15 weeks later I did my 501 bench.

I think the incline you use is important most of the inclines in gyms are crap but the one which was in Crunch back then was actually decent.

If I was to do it again my preference would be db's assuming they went to 200lbs. Reason for db's is the variety in the angles you can use on the db bench vs rigid incline on the incline bench.