Tip: Build Pecs and Tri's, Save Your Shoulders

For lifters who are battling really bum shoulders, this variation of the floor press is well tolerated. The reason? The setup.

When getting into position with the dumbbells off the floor, you can set them down at your sides and move them into position without the need for rotating the shoulders under loading, which can irritate even healthy shoulders at times.

If you're going to train around pain and injury, your setups (positions getting in and out of the lifts) must be spot on. This exercise is perfect for that.

Neutral-Grip Dumbbell Floor Press

Before you go all-out and load this up with too much weight, find your ideal carrying angle and hand position. Don't risk re-injury due to a poor setup.

Set the dumbbells at your sides so that when you go to grab them you're already locked and loaded in your ideal angle, which for more people will be about 30 degrees away from the sides of the body.

Remember, there's no training rule saying that you must use arbitrary fully pronated or neutral grip hand positions on the press – or any other exercise for that matter. So if you find the hand position and angle that feels the most stable for you, use it and load it with confidence.