Dumbbell Floor Press

If you don’t know about floor press, then you definitely will want to try after this. Floor press is the ultimate only upper body strength exercise variation. It only targets the muscles that you need to avoiding unnecessary stress on other joints and muscles. Dumbbell floor press is just another variation of floor press that involves dumbbells rather than barbell or kettle bells.

Floor Press

Floor press is ultimate upper body exercise that doesn’t stresses the shoulder joints much. You have wider base to support your back and the movement is strict so you focus on some portion of press. The origination of barbell bench press can be taken from floor press alone. Back in the days, lifters used to perform some strict floor presses to improve the strength and for hypertrophy. As bench press popularity increased, floor press got lost somewhere.

Dumbbell Floor Press Benefits

Dumbbell floor press is a easier variation of barbell floor press. You have the freedom of movement and better mind-muscle connection. Though it doesn’t sounds much, but the benefits are worth trying the workout atleast once.

• Strictly upper body movement with less strain on shoulder
• Massive room for progressive overload
• No leg drive involved, putting max focus on chest, triceps and delts
• Can include in any workout program for mass, toning, bulking, cutting etc
• With dumbbell, it is easier to do single or both arms variation focusing on weaker side
• Acts as building block for your huge bench press numbers

Why Dumbbell Floor Press?

There are many reasons apart from the benefits of floor press. You are getting maximum output over the amount of input you are feeding. Whether your training for hypertrophy or strength, you can always adjust floor press in your schedule.

Huge arms:

Floor press allows you to overload the bar. It requires powerful extension of the elbow putting tension onto the triceps to huge extent. For bigger triceps, overloading them is the best bet. With that much of overload, you are sure to have huge arms.

You May Also Like: Warm Up Exercises

Improved control and lockout:

Dumbbell floor press improves your lockout and allows controlled negative of the press. As the range of motion in floor press is limited, you have better lockout in the middle portion that you lack in bench press.

Upper Body Strength:

As there is no leg drive to support your press, you intend to improve your upper body strength. It is your pure upper body strength that allows you to push through the sets. With overload purely focused on chest, triceps and shoulder, you are sure to have improved upper body strength.

Easier on Shoulder:

With longer range of motion in bench press, the scapula movement is high hence putting more strain on the shoulder joint and causing impingement in shoulder. Floor press decreases the travel distance of the shoulder keeping it in the proper range of motion and allowing you to focus on lift. Hence, you have healthier and stronger shoulder to live with.

Steps to Perform Dumbbell Floor Press

This step applies to other variation on floor press as well.

1. Position yourself below the bar on the floor. Lying under the bar with bar right above your eyes suits most of the lifters.
2. For barbell, take slightly outside the shoulder width apart grip. Line yourself up with dumbbells and push yourself down to have stable base.
3. Keep your foot flat on the ground to neglect the leg drive.
4. With you being in position, ask your spotter to help you with the lift off.
5. Begin the movement by lowering the bar just till your triceps tend to touch the floor.
6. Tuck your elbows in at about 45 degrees from torso.
7. Live your ego aside and take weight that you can control. Slowly lower the weight, pause at the bottom and blast off.

Conclusion

Dumbbell floor press is an awesome exercise variation that ticks all your boxes. Just follow the steps and check for yourself. You will definitely find the floor press safer to perform than regular bench press. Find details on t-nation website as well. You can easily load weights and find yourself stronger as well.

Warm Up Exercises

The only important thing in your whole workout session is correct form and proper warm up exercises. By not warming up your muscles properly, you run a great risk of injuring yourself. While working out, you have very thin margin for mistake, a slight twist in joint can severely damage your joints and might even end your career on spot. Injury is a curse in bodybuilding or any other sports. And in normal life as well, it messes up your schedule. Here in this post, we will discuss some easy yet effective warm up exercises. You will also learn some basic yet important stretches to perform.

Warm Up and Workout

If you own any vehicle, you probably know how crucial it is to warm the engine. Our body is no different than the engine. While you are at rest, your muscles are at rest, any sudden movement can shock the muscle and cause muscle tear. It is better to loosen the muscle first to prepare it for beating later.

There are few major joints and muscles that needs to be warmed up properly before workout. Joints like shoulder, pelvis region, elbow, knee, etc. needs warming up. These joints are very important and needs proper care. While these joints move freely, your muscles can work at full strength.

Few Warm up Exercises

Some dynamic stretches and some dynamic movements will warm you up pretty quickly with much less effort. Bodybuilders generally perform some stretches and perform light exercise movements in their first few sets to warm their muscles. This as well is very effective way to start up the workout session.

Shoulder Warm Up

Shoulder is the most important joint in upper body. If you screw your shoulder joint, you are likely to get useless from upper body. Some of the warm up exercises are as follows:

• Arm Circles:
  Perform this exercise by rotating your arms in circle, clockwise followed by anti-clockwise movement.
• Shoulder Band Dislocation:
  Hold your arms straight and far apart, pulling on the bands. Raise your arms up and behind your body and bring it back front. It increases the mobility of your shoulder.
• Cross-body Shoulder Stretch:
  With your arms stretched to the opposite side, hold the stretch with another arm. Applying the stretch in different directions, loosen your different heads of your shoulder.

Glutes Warm Up

Your glutes or hip muscles are one of the bigger muscles in the body. To ensure the good health of your lower body, the mobility in your glutes is very important. Some of the warm up exercises of glutes are:

• Body Weight Squat:
  With body weight squat, you can go lower in the squat and hold the stretch in your quads, glutes for long. Perform few of these to prepare for the big lift.
• Glutes Kick Back:
  Work glutes from different angles through glutes kickback. A straight kickback behind will work one muscles while to the side will work another. Perform this from different angles to target overall glutes.
• Touch Toes:
  Touch toes is one movement that gives you an idea of your hip mobility. With your legs straight(no bend at knees), try touching your toes. You will feel stretch in your hamstrings immediately.

Ankle Warm Up

Ankle warm up is important as well. As there are many small bones in your feet connected to ankle, it is very important that you have healthy ankle to plant yourself on to the ground. Few ankle warm up exercises as follows:

• Ankle Circles:
  You can perform this exercise either standing, sitting or in any other position. Bring your leg straight in front of you and perform circle motion with you feet moving from ankle. Do it in clockwise as well as anti-clockwise movement.
• Ankle Stretch:
  Sit on floor with your feet in front of you. Reach for your toes and pull them towards yourself. You will fee stretch in back of you heel. Then push the toes away from you. This will ensure the mobility of your ankle and help you from spraining it.

Wrist Warm Up

Wrist strength or grip strength caps up how heavy you can lift. Your other muscles are way stronger than your wrist. Keeping your wrist health will help you add weights to your lifts quickly.

• Wrist circles:
  Make a fist with your arms straight. Make clockwise and anti-clockwise circles with your fist. This improves your wrist mobility.
• Knuckle Push ups:
  Perform pushups with your fist. Sometimes, normal push ups are harder for many due to lack of wrist mobility. Perform this version of pushup and progress to the normal version.

You May Also Like: Grip Training Exercises

Other Warm Ups

These are few major joints in the body that needs proper warm up. Flexibility in these joints will help you build your whole body strength.

Chest

For chest warm up, perform shoulder warm ups first as shoulder joint plays great role in lifting. The start with few push ups and make first few set of workout as warm up sets.

Back

For back as well, warm your shoulders first. Perform one or two sets of pull ups or chin ups. Perform some stretches like superman pose, cat pose etc and jump right into workout. Make first few set of workout as warm up sets.

Arms

Perform shoulder warm up followed by wrist warm up, and warm your elbows with few light sets of exercises. Excessive warm up for arms are not so required as we work them in pulling and pushing movements throughout the day.

Conclusion

Warming up before workout is very very essential. Never ever start lifting heavy straight while you enter the gym. Any sprain in the muscles or joint will throw you off your gym schedule. Your fitness is compromised without proper warm up. So always be wise to perform warm up exercises first before lifting and increase you longevity.

Beginner Gym Workout Routine Female

As the awareness for physical health is growing throughout the world, female are seen involving in physical activities more often nowadays. It is very important for female to involve in physical activities. Women are far more likely to develop osteoporosis than men. They have thinner bone than men and likely lose the strength as they age. So, it becomes important for them to involve in activities to keep themselves fit and healthy. We will discuss some beginner gym workout routine for female in this post. We focus on gym because it is the widely available option and easier one as well.

Common Misconception in Female

There is one major misconception or myth among female that they will bulk up if they workout. It is nowhere near reality. Looking at some professional female bodybuilders and thinking they might bulk up as well is not fair. Those female bodybuilders have put years of training, strict diet, discipline to achieve what you see now.

Female in general have 30% less muscle fiber than male. So, with the amount of hardwork equivalent to male,  they still won’t have similar results. So, this is just a myth that needs to be broken among female.

Another misconception is that cardio alone will take care of their weight loss. While it is correct, with only cardio, they are sure to hit plateau at one point in time. Strength training will not only break that plateau, but also strengthen their muscles.

Workout Routine for Female

Lets discuss some of the beginner gym workout routine for female. As a beginner, you need to have proper distribution of weight training, cardio and rest. While your body is getting used to the strains of the weight, it is preparing to strengthen the muscles. There are no subtle difference in the male and female beginner workout routine, it depends on the individual body strength. Given below is beginner gym workout routine for female. There are no specific splits for the beginners and working whole body might help them get used to faster.

Workout Routine A

Exercise	Set x Reps
Leg Press	2 x 8
Goblet Squat	1 x 15
Barbell Bench Press	2 x 12
SM Shoulder press	2 x 12
Lat pull down	2 x 10
Seated cable row	1 x 15
Calf Raises	1 x 25
Ab crunches	2 x 10

You might also like: Push Pull Legs

Workout Routine B

Exercise	Set x Reps
Barbell Squat	2 x 8
Lying Leg Curl	1 x 15
Dumbbell Chest Fly	2 x 12
Dumbbell Side Raises	2 x 12
Pull Up	2 x 10
Dumbbell Deadlift	1 x 15
Dumbbell Shrugs	1 x 25
Hanging Leg Raises	2 x 10

Workout Routine C

Exercise	Set x Reps
Leg Extension	2 x 8
Lying Leg Curl	1 x 15
Push Ups	2 x 12
Dumbbell Shoulder press	2 x 12
Wide-grip Lat pull down	2 x 10
Dumbbell Row	1 x 15
Triceps Pushdown	1 x 25
Biceps Curl	2 x 10

Given above are 3 sample workout routine. You can mix these workout routine within a week with cardio day in between and rest day as well.

Conclusion

Above workout routine will make your body used to with exercises. Beginner gym workout routine for female will help beginner female to burn fat and strengthen their muscles at the same time. The beginning phase of the gym is very crucial. You need to take good care of following things:

• Maintain proper form
• Focus less on lifting heavy
• Have adequate rest
• Have balanced diet
• Avoid supplements right at the start

Take good care of these points and you will be patting yourself on the back for your progress.