Today I was reminded of how important it is to maintain the proper form when executing an exercise. Today was chest and shoulders day for me and I discovered that I had a tendency to execute my dumbbell flyes poorly. If you’re like me who’s a self-starter at the gym (one who never really worked out with a one-on-one personal trainer regularly), then you’ll want to monitor your posture and form closely the next time you work out.
Wether you choose to do dumbbell flyes on a bench, a decline, or an incline bench, you’ll want to make sure your posture is correct. You can cause injury to yourself which in the worst case, could cause a long term injury that will prevent you from performing any exercise at all.
Since you are working your chest during this particular exercise, you’ll want to make sure your elbows aren’t parallel to your shoulders. Notice in the images above that both the man and woman have their elbows lower than their shoulders. Today I realised I needed to be mindful about keeping my elbows lower like they do. Instead, I had my elbows nearly parallel to my shoulders. What happens with that is I end up activating the wrong muscles. Instead of working my chest, I was activating my shoulders.
There was a minor but immediate consequence to my poor form. When I had moved to the incline press machine later on, I felt a pain (not a piercing one) in my deltoids; I had strained my shoulder because I wasn’t executing the exercise the right way.
Check out the video below for the correct way of performing dumbbell flyes courtesy of Scott Herman Fitness.
WHY STOP THERE? 