What muscles does the behind-the-neck dumbbell press work?

The deltoids raise the arm and the triceps straighten the elbow at the end of it. Getting an arm that far overhead also needs the shoulder blade to rotate underneath it, and that turning is the trapezius, which clears the route rather than driving the weight. Set against the version that goes up past your face, this arm position read higher in the middle and rear heads of the shoulder on both halves of the rep, and the chest is largely left out.

Why do the written steps on this page mention sitting on a bench?

Because the steps come from the catalog this library is built on, and on this movement they do not match the clip. They describe a seated press starting at shoulder height. The clip shows a standing press with no bench in any frame, hands behind the head at the bottom, and dumbbells that never come in front of the body. Go by the clip. The record has been flagged for repair.

Why does my chest work during an overhead press?

On this one it mostly should not. The part of your chest attaching to the collarbone helps swing the arm up and across the front of you, so it has a job when a press travels past your face, and the measurement agreed: pressing in front registered far more chest than pressing behind the head. Here the arms go out and back instead. If your chest is what you feel, check where your hands are at the bottom, because they have probably drifted forward.

How far down should the dumbbells go on a behind-the-neck press?

As far back as your shoulders reach without the position changing shape. In the clip the hands stop around ear height with the elbows swept back and wide, and the dumbbells stay behind the head throughout. If going lower means the upper back rounds or the arms swing forward, you have already found the bottom of your rep.

Is the dumbbell version safer than pressing a bar behind your neck?

One has never been put up against the other, so there is no honest answer to give. What dumbbells take away is the fixed grip width, the single shared path, and a bar having to pass the back of your head. What they leave exactly as it was is the arm position, out to the sides and swept back, which is the thing the caution has always been aimed at.

Is this a good exercise for the side and rear of the shoulder?

It puts more into both than a press in front of your head does, and that came from a direct comparison rather than from reasoning. It is worth being clear on what that means: it is one press measured against another press, and not a case for this standing in place of side raises or of the rowing that loads the back of the shoulder.

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Dumbbell · beginner · shoulders

Dumbbell overhead press

Also called Behind the neck press, Behind the head shoulder press, BTN press, Dumbbell behind-the-neck shoulder press.

The short answer

The clip here is a standing behind-the-neck press with dumbbells: at the bottom of every rep your hands sit behind your ears, elbows swept back and wide, and they travel straight up from there over a shorter distance than a press starting at shoulder height. Raising the arm is deltoid work and the triceps close out the top of the rep. Compared directly against a press that travels up past your face, this position registered higher in the middle and rear heads of the shoulder and much lower in the chest, so the upper-chest share people credit an overhead press with belongs to the front version and not to this one.

How to do it

Step oneSit on a bench with back support and hold a dumbbell in each hand at shoulder height, palms facing forward.
Step twoKeep your feet flat on the floor and your back pressed against the pad.
Step threePress the dumbbells upward and slightly inward until your arms are fully extended overhead.
Step fourPause briefly at the top, then slowly lower the dumbbells back to shoulder height.

What usually goes wrong

Each starts with what you would notice.

The bottom of the rep feels jammed rather than heavy, and it feels that way with any weight.

WhyThis position asks the shoulder to rotate backward further than a press in front of you does. That demand has been measured: across a set of overhead presses, every joint angle the movement required fell inside what the same people could passively reach, with one exception, and the exception was backward rotation in the behind-the-head version.

FixTake the arms back only as far as they go without the position changing shape, and treat that as the bottom. If the jam is there before the weight is, this is a range question and adding load will not answer it.

You set up behind your head and by the last rep the dumbbells are somewhere near your face.

WhyThe forward position is the one the shoulder reaches more easily, so as the set gets hard the arms quietly migrate to it. The lockout looks the same from the outside, which is why nobody notices.

FixJudge the set by where your hands are at the bottom, not at the top. If they have come level with your ears or in front of them, you are pressing in front of your head now, and the standing shoulder press entry is the one describing what you are doing.

Your upper back rounds forward at the bottom and you only notice once the set is over.

WhyThe two positions start from different spines, and that was measured rather than assumed: pressing in front began from an arched upper back, pressing behind the head began from a rounded one and with less extension through the mid back.

FixStand tall and settle the ribs over the hips before the arms go anywhere, then take them back from there. If the upper back rounds anyway, the arms are reaching further back than the shoulders can supply on their own.

The bottom position feels unsettled and you slow down there without deciding to.

WhyBoth dumbbells are behind your head at that point, out of sight, and nothing joins them. Each hand is holding a loose weight in a spot you cannot check by looking at it.

FixLet the dumbbells settle at the bottom for a beat before the next press, instead of bouncing straight back out of it. When the bottom stops feeling settled at all, the set is finished, regardless of the number you came in with.

You control the way up and then let the dumbbells drop back down.

WhyThe lowering half is not the cheap half here. When the two press positions were recorded going up and coming down separately, the behind-the-head version read higher than the front version in all three heads of the shoulder on the way down as well as on the way up.

FixGive the descent the same time you gave the press, and end the set at the point you can no longer lower them slowly rather than the point you can no longer raise them.

What changes when the press goes behind your head

This has been run as a direct comparison, with the same lifters pressing both ways and the muscle recorded on the way up and again on the way down. The gaps were large, and they did not all point the same direction.

Behind the head read higher in the middle and rear heads of the shoulder, on both halves of every rep. In front read higher in the chest, by a wide margin. So the version that quietly gives your upper chest something to do is the one that travels up past your face, and the version that leans on the side and back of the shoulder is the one on this page.

Two things stop that being a recommendation. The lifters were eight competitive bodybuilders, which is a small group and not a typical one. And they pressed a barbell and a machine, not dumbbells, so what carries over here is the arm position rather than the exact figures.

A bar behind your neck, or two dumbbells

The first difference is the one you notice immediately. A bar has to pass the back of your head going down and come back past it going up, and your hands are locked to it at whatever width you gripped. Two dumbbells drop either side of your head instead, and neither one has anything to clear.

That changes the logistics without changing the question. Your arms still finish out to the sides and swept back, which is the part of this movement people argue about. What goes away is the fixed width and the single path: your hands can sit where each shoulder allows, and they can sit at different heights with nothing forcing them level.

The reference goes away with it. A bar tells you at once whether you are even. Behind your head with a dumbbell in each hand, nothing does, and the only place you can check is the lockout, where both of them come back into view.

What the warning about this one actually rests on

Few movements get warned about as often as this one, and the warning is worth reading properly rather than either obeying it or waving it off.

It is about where your arms end up, not about the weights being near your neck. At the bottom here the upper arms are out to the sides and swept back behind the line of your body, with the shoulder rotated backward near the end of its travel. That is the position the caution is aimed at, and it is the same position whether a bar, a machine or two dumbbells put you in it.

The position itself is the part that has been measured. Researchers took 33 people, recorded how far each shoulder would passively travel, then tracked the joint angles during overhead pressing in front of the head and behind it. Every angle the pressing demanded sat inside the range those people already had, except for backward rotation during the behind-the-head version, which ran past the passive range they had recorded in the male participants. Their own conclusion was that for people who have the trunk control and the shoulder range, pressing either way was safe for the shoulder and the spine, and that where the range is not there yet, it is the thing to build before pressing behind the head.

The people doing it have not been. Nobody has taken two groups of lifters, one pressing in front and one behind, and counted what happened to their shoulders. So the widespread advice against this movement is a judgment about a joint position rather than a tally of outcomes, and the study above was run seated while the clip here is standing. That is the honest state of it, and it is not enough to tell you to do this or to avoid it.

One more claim needs trimming. Because behind-the-head pressing read higher at the rear of the shoulder than pressing in front, it gets passed around as the press that finally covers the whole shoulder. More than a movement that produces very little is still not much. Rowing and pulling are where the back of the shoulder gets loaded, and this does not replace them.

What it is for

The dumbbell overhead press version 1 is a seated shoulder exercise targeting the deltoids. Pressing dumbbells overhead from shoulder height builds shoulder strength and size, with secondary activation of the triceps and traps.

Questions people ask

What muscles does the behind-the-neck dumbbell press work?: The deltoids raise the arm and the triceps straighten the elbow at the end of it. Getting an arm that far overhead also needs the shoulder blade to rotate underneath it, and that turning is the trapezius, which clears the route rather than driving the weight. Set against the version that goes up past your face, this arm position read higher in the middle and rear heads of the shoulder on both halves of the rep, and the chest is largely left out.
Why do the written steps on this page mention sitting on a bench?: Because the steps come from the catalog this library is built on, and on this movement they do not match the clip. They describe a seated press starting at shoulder height. The clip shows a standing press with no bench in any frame, hands behind the head at the bottom, and dumbbells that never come in front of the body. Go by the clip. The record has been flagged for repair.
Why does my chest work during an overhead press?: On this one it mostly should not. The part of your chest attaching to the collarbone helps swing the arm up and across the front of you, so it has a job when a press travels past your face, and the measurement agreed: pressing in front registered far more chest than pressing behind the head. Here the arms go out and back instead. If your chest is what you feel, check where your hands are at the bottom, because they have probably drifted forward.
How far down should the dumbbells go on a behind-the-neck press?: As far back as your shoulders reach without the position changing shape. In the clip the hands stop around ear height with the elbows swept back and wide, and the dumbbells stay behind the head throughout. If going lower means the upper back rounds or the arms swing forward, you have already found the bottom of your rep.
Is the dumbbell version safer than pressing a bar behind your neck?: One has never been put up against the other, so there is no honest answer to give. What dumbbells take away is the fixed grip width, the single shared path, and a bar having to pass the back of your head. What they leave exactly as it was is the arm position, out to the sides and swept back, which is the thing the caution has always been aimed at.
Is this a good exercise for the side and rear of the shoulder?: It puts more into both than a press in front of your head does, and that came from a direct comparison rather than from reasoning. It is worth being clear on what that means: it is one press measured against another press, and not a case for this standing in place of side raises or of the rowing that loads the back of the shoulder.