Around the World
Trains the Pecs.
- Equipment
- Dumbbells and either a flat bench or an adjustable bench
- Mechanic
- Compound
- Force
- Push
- Level
- Intermediate
How to do it
- Lie on a flat bench with a light dumbbell in each hand, arms straight down beside your hips, palms up.
- Keep a small bend at the elbows and hold it.
- Sweep both arms out and up in a wide arc along the floor's plane until they meet above your head.
- Keep the dumbbells at roughly the same height from the floor throughout.
- Reverse the arc, sweeping back down to your hips along the same path.
- Move slowly — the path is long and the shoulder is open for all of it.
Common mistakes
- Going heavy. The arms are straight and travelling through a very long arc, which is the least mechanically favourable way to hold a weight, and the shoulder is in an open position for the whole of it.
- Letting the elbows bend and straighten. The fixed elbow is what keeps the arc honest; bending turns parts of it into a press and parts into a curl.
- Arching the back off the bench at the top. Ribs down is what keeps the movement at the shoulder; the arch appears exactly where the arms run out of range overhead.
- Rushing it. The end positions — arms overhead, arms at the hips — are where the shoulder is least supported, and speed is what carries a dumbbell past where it should have stopped.