Devils Press: How to Do It, Muscles Worked and Workouts

The devils press is a burpee performed with your hands on two dumbbells, followed by a hip-driven swing that takes both bells from the floor to locked arms overhead in one motion. Think of it as a burpee bolted onto a double dumbbell snatch. It's one of the nastiest conditioning moves in CrossFit for a reason: you work your whole body, your heart rate spikes within a handful of reps, and it needs nothing more than a pair of dumbbells and a couple of square metres of floor. The trick is to use your hips, not your arms, and most people get that wrong at first.

How to do a devils press

Set two dumbbells on the floor, roughly shoulder-width apart, with the handles parallel to each other. Hex dumbbells are the best choice here because they sit flat and won't roll when you put weight through them.

1. Start standing over the bells. Feet about hip-width, dumbbells just in front of your toes.
2. Drop into the burpee. Hinge down, grab both handles and jump or step your feet back into a plank. Keep your wrists stacked over the bells.
3. Chest to the floor. Lower your chest to the ground between the handles (you don't need to do a push-up on the way back up; a sag-and-pop is fine in a workout).
4. Jump your feet in wide. Push back up and jump your feet outside the dumbbells, landing flat-footed in a deep hinge position with your back flat and the bells hanging between your legs.
5. Swing and drive. Hike the dumbbells slightly back between your legs, like a kettlebell swing, then snap your hips forward hard. Let that hip drive float the bells up close to your body.
6. Punch overhead. As the bells pass your chest, turn your wrists over and punch up to straight arms, biceps by your ears. Stand fully tall with the dumbbells locked out for a split second.
7. Return under control. Lower the bells back down in front of you along roughly the same path and go straight into the next rep.

Muscles worked

There's barely a muscle the devils press leaves alone, which is why it shows up so often in short, brutal workouts.

• Glutes and hamstrings. These are the engine. The hip snap that sends the bells overhead comes from your posterior chain, the same pattern you train with the dumbbell deadlift.
• Shoulders and traps. Your delts and upper traps guide the bells through the pull and stabilise them overhead.
• Chest and triceps. The burpee portion loads them every time you lower yourself to the floor and push back up.
• Core. Your abs and lower back keep you rigid in the plank and stop your spine folding as you hinge and swing.
• Grip and forearms. You hold the dumbbells for the entire set, so high-rep work quietly hammers your grip.

Benefits

The big one is conditioning. Because you move a load through a long range using lots of muscle at once, your heart and lungs get pushed hard in very little time. It fits neatly into what researchers call high-intensity functional training: varied, multi-joint movements that can be scaled to any level and that recruit more muscle than traditional exercise (Feito et al., definition and review of HIFT). That review is honest that HIFT has less research behind it than classic interval training, so don't expect miracles from one exercise, but the logic of training this way holds up.

It's also efficient. NHS guidance counts 75 minutes of vigorous activity a week as giving similar health benefits to 150 minutes of moderate activity (NHS physical activity guidelines), and a few rounds of devils press will get you breathing hard enough to count as vigorous without much doubt. The same page recommends strengthening work for all the major muscle groups on two or more days a week, and this move ticks a lot of those boxes in one go.

Then there's the practical side, which is that it trains power and hip extension in a way that carries over to jumping, sprinting and lifting things off the floor in everyday life. You only need two dumbbells, so it's ideal for home training where space and kit are limited.

Common mistakes

Curling or pressing the bells up. This is the most common fault by a distance. If your elbows bend early and you drag the dumbbells up with your biceps and shoulders, you'll fatigue within a few reps and you've lost the whole point of the movement. Keep your arms long until your hips have finished snapping, then let the bells float and punch through at the top.

Rounding the back. Picking up two dumbbells from the floor with a hunched spine, especially when you're tired, is asking for a sore lower back. Before you swing, set your chest up and your back flat. If you can't hold a neutral spine at the bottom, the weight is too heavy or you need to hinge less deeply by elevating the bells on a step.

A poor hinge. Squatting the bells up rather than hinging means your quads take over and the swing goes nowhere. Push your hips back with a soft knee, feel the stretch in your hamstrings, and drive from there. If the hinge is new to you, groove it first with a kettlebell swing or a light dumbbell deadlift.

Landing the feet too narrow. If your feet land between the dumbbells rather than outside them, the bells have nowhere to swing and you end up lifting them straight up in front of your shins. Jump wide.

Not finishing overhead. Half-locked elbows, a forward-leaning torso, or bells drifting in front of your head all put your shoulders in a weak spot. Finish every rep standing tall with biceps by your ears.

Regressions and variations

Struggling with the full movement? Strip it back. Each of these keeps the core pattern while taking a piece of the difficulty away.

• Lighter bells. The simplest fix. Drop to a pair you can move fast and smoothly; it's a speed movement, and slow, grinding reps defeat the purpose.
• No burpee. Skip the chest-to-floor part and just do the double dumbbell swing to overhead from a hinge. This lets you learn the hip snap without fatigue from the floor work.
• Step back, step in. Walk your feet back and forward instead of jumping. It's easier on your heart rate and kinder to your joints, and you lose very little of the training effect.
• Single-arm devils press. One dumbbell, one hand on the floor, then a single-arm swing to overhead. It's basically a burpee into a dumbbell snatch, and it's a good bridge to the two-bell version because it lets you focus on the hip drive with half the load.

To make it harder, add weight, add reps or pair it with another two-dumbbell move. The dumbbell thruster is a natural partner, since it hammers your legs and shoulders while the devils press leans on your hinge.

Sample workouts and programming

Work out the right dumbbell weight first. You want a load you can move for 10 crisp reps; if you're not sure where to start, our guide on what weight dumbbells you should use breaks it down. Then try one of these.

Beginner ladder (10 minutes). One devils press in the first minute, two in the second, three in the third, and so on, resting for whatever's left of each minute. Stop when you can't complete the reps inside the minute. It teaches pacing and keeps technique sharp because the reps start low.

EMOM finisher (8 minutes). Every minute on the minute, do 6 devils press. Rest for the remainder. Add this to the end of a strength session two or three times a week.

Classic couplet (for time). 21-15-9 reps of devils press and goblet squats. It sounds short, and it is, but it'll flatten you. Keep the bells moving and break the sets early before your form falls apart.

Longer conditioning AMRAP (15 minutes). As many rounds as possible of 8 devils press, 12 dumbbell walking lunges and 200m of running or a minute on a rower.

Because it's so taxing, limit the devils press to two or three sessions a week and don't programme it the day before heavy deadlifts or squats. For more conditioning ideas, browse our workouts section.

The dumbbells we'd use

If you're buying a pair specifically for the devils press, go for fixed rubber hex dumbbells. The MuscleSquad hex rubber pair is well made, has a knurled handle that holds up in sweaty conditions and comes in 27 weights from 1kg to 50kg, so you can choose the exact load you need. The 10kg listing was £47.99 at the time of writing; check the product page to confirm the per-dumbbell weight before ordering, as MuscleSquad also quotes a tolerance of plus or minus 3%.

Check price on Amazon

For a wider look at the options, see our roundup of the best hex dumbbells in the UK. If you'd still rather go adjustable to save space for other lifts, are adjustable dumbbells worth it weighs up the trade-offs honestly.

Recommended reads

1. The best hex dumbbells in the UK
2. Dumbbell snatch: how to do it
3. How to do burpees properly
4. Dumbbell thruster technique
5. What weight dumbbells should I use?