Is it necessary to buy a dumbbell bench for home fitness?

There is no standard answer at all. It is neither a must-have tool for home training as claimed by fitness bloggers, nor is it a pure IQ tax that takes up space as some people say. Whether you should buy it or not depends entirely on your training stage and the actual situation at home.

I also struggled with this problem when I first started practicing at home two years ago. At first, I was reluctant to spend money and was afraid of taking up space. I would lie on the yoga mat when I practiced bench pressing. Every time I pushed the dumbbell to failure, it would easily hit my stomach. I had to arch my waist to feel the force. After practicing for three months, my chest did not increase much, but my waist was sore from time to time. Later, I gritted my teeth and bought an adjustable basic model, only to realize that the previous training efficiency was ridiculously inefficient - not only can I straighten my back and feel the contraction of my chest with the flat bench press, I can also adjust the incline to train my upper chest, and I can adjust the incline to train my lower chest. I can also do bent-over dumbbell rows by turning it over on my stomach. Even when doing shoulder exercises, sitting up is more stable than standing, and I won't be swaying to borrow the power of my legs. The progress of my chest and back in those two months is more obvious than in the previous half year. To put it bluntly, if you compare practicing compound movements at home to cooking, the dumbbell is the pot in your hand, and the dumbbell bench is the stable stove. You can't just hold the pot and stir-fry in the air, right?

However, there are a lot of people around me who regret buying it. Xiao Zhou, who I rented together before, saw that my practice was useful, so he also bought one. As a result, he occasionally practiced dumbbell curls and lateral raises, and could not do any movements that required a stool. In addition, the rental house is small, and the stool was placed in the living room to block the way, and it took up half of the floor space in the bedroom. In the end, I piled clothes for two months, and sold them at half price, and even paid for the shipping.

In fact, if you are really not sure, you can not rush to place an order. Find two hard stools of the same height and put them together, or dismantle the armrests of the sofa to make a flat plate. Try it for two weeks. If you need to use this stool three or four times a week for chest, back, and shoulder training, then it is not too late to buy it. Oh, by the way, there are also many foldable models now. They are as thin as a thick board when stored. They don’t take up much space when leaning against a corner or tucked into a gap in a sofa. You don’t need to buy the heavy-weight commercial models used in gyms. They cost about a hundred yuan for ordinary household use. As long as they bear enough weight and don’t wobble, they are completely sufficient. To put it bluntly, the dumbbell bench is essentially a stable support surface with adjustable angles. If you need it to assist with movements, then it is the most cost-effective home training tool. If you don’t use it at all, then it is really a cumbersome space that takes up space. There is no need to follow the trend and buy it, and there is no need to deliberately resist it.