I need some tips. Here is my situation. I am 6ft and 168lbs and have been training for about a 1 year now. While most of my training a been done with dumbbells for my chest workout. I have switched over to doing chest workout with a barbell. I could do flat bench with 85lb.DB and incline with 80lb.DB. Since I have since switched to using a barbell I am having a tough time doing 165 flat and 155 incline. Can anyone tell me if this is normal? Is this drop in strength to be expected and if so what can I do to bring up the weight? any tips would be appreciated.
I can help you, but only if you (a) clarify the reps you do these weights at and (b) post your stats and others in my stats thread below :).
assuming you are doing the same rep range and tempo the only thing i can think of is the actual movements with the barbells might be new to your body and because it is a new exercise your body may not be as neurally coordinated in that movement yet. usually dumbbells are a lot harder though because of the stabilization required. if your barbell lifts don’t go up after a few weeks of doing the movement another possibility could be that your triceps are weak. dumbbell presses don’t seem to hit the tris as much as barbell bench press so maybe you have the chest strength, but not the tri strength.
there is something called the “bilateral deficit” at play here, look it up, i don’t fully understand it.
Hey Rhojin, I’ve had the same problem in the past. Your body gets used to the DBs, but when you change to the BB, it seems like your weaker. Your body’s nervous system has to get used to the movement. Once it does, you’ll probably see the improvements you want. It happenes for me.