Tate Press: How to Do It, Muscles Worked and Variations

The Tate press is a dumbbell triceps extension done lying on a flat bench, where you bend your elbows out to the sides and lower the dumbbells end-on to your chest before pressing them back to straight arms. Powerlifter and coach Dave Tate gave it his name and used it to strengthen the top half of the bench press, the bit where heavy reps stall. It's short-range, it's light, and it hammers the outer part of the arm. If you already do skull crushers and close-grip pressing, the Tate press is a useful third option that asks very little of your shoulders. Here's how to do it, what it trains, and where it fits in a week.

How to do the Tate press

You need two dumbbells and a stable flat bench. A pair of adjustable dumbbells suits this exercise well because you'll want small jumps in weight, and the reps get hard quickly.

1. Set up on the bench. Sit on the end of the bench with a dumbbell on each thigh, then lie back and bring them over your chest. Plant your feet, pull your shoulder blades together and keep a slight arch, as you would for a dumbbell bench press.
2. Turn your palms to face your feet. Hold the dumbbells over your lower chest with straight arms, knuckles pointing towards the ceiling and palms facing your feet. The inner ends of the dumbbells should point towards each other and almost touch.
3. Bend your elbows out to the sides. Keep your upper arms roughly where they are and let your elbows flare outwards as they bend. The dumbbells rotate inwards and travel down towards your chest, inner ends first.
4. Touch the chest lightly. Lower until the inner ends of the dumbbells tap your chest, around nipple height. Don't let them rest there or bounce off.
5. Press back to lockout. Straighten your arms by driving the dumbbells back up along the same arc, squeezing your triceps hard at the top. Pause for a beat with locked elbows, then start the next rep.

Lower the weight over roughly two seconds and press up a little faster. The dumbbells only travel a short distance, so a slow lowering keeps tension on the triceps for longer.

Muscles worked

The triceps do almost all of the work, and the arm position decides which parts of the muscle work hardest.

• Lateral head. This sits on the outside of the upper arm and does a lot of the lockout work in elbows-out extensions. It's the reason the Tate press has a reputation for building the "horseshoe" shape from the side.
• Medial head. It lies underneath the other two and is active in nearly every elbow extension. A study of 10 healthy adults using EMG and a musculoskeletal model found the long head produced more force with the arm down by the side, while the medial head took over once the arm was raised to 90 degrees or beyond (role of each triceps head in elbow extension). In a Tate press your arms point straight up from your torso, which is that 90-degree position.
• Long head. It still contributes, but with the arm in front of you rather than overhead it isn't stretched much. Pair the Tate press with an overhead tricep extension if you want the long head covered.
• Chest, front delts and forearms. They stabilise the dumbbells and keep your shoulders steady, but they don't move the weight.

Bench press carryover

The top part of a bench press leans heavily on the triceps, because once the bar is well off your chest, finishing the rep is mostly a matter of straightening your elbows. The Tate press trains elbow extension in exactly that range, with your arms held over your chest, so it's a sensible accessory if your bench stalls a few centimetres from lockout. It won't replace the close-grip bench press, which is still the heavier and more specific lift, but it's an easy way to add triceps volume without loading your shoulders again.

Benefits

• It's kind to the shoulders. Your upper arms barely move and there's no deep stretch at the shoulder, so lifters with cranky shoulders often tolerate it better than dips or heavy pressing.
• It builds lockout strength. The hardest part of the rep is the last few centimetres, which matches where many people miss bench presses.
• It needs very little kit. Two dumbbells and a flat bench are all you need, and you can do it on the floor with no bench at all (see the variations below).
• It's a good way to add volume late in a session. Because the loads are light and the range is short, you can do a few hard sets when your chest and shoulders are already tired. That matters, because a meta-analysis of 15 studies found a graded dose-response relationship between weekly sets and muscle growth (weekly training volume and hypertrophy): more sets for a muscle, up to a point, meant more growth.

Common mistakes

Going too heavy. This is the big one. The Tate press uses far less weight than a dumbbell bench press, and loading it heavily turns it into a messy press with your elbows tucking in. If you can't keep your elbows out to the side, drop the weight.

Dropping the dumbbells onto your chest. Letting them crash down puts a sharp load through the elbows and gives you nothing in return. Lower under control and touch, don't land.

Tucking the elbows. Once your elbows come in towards your ribs, your chest and shoulders take over and the lift becomes a close-grip dumbbell press. Keep them flared and pointing out.

Bending the wrists back. Keep your wrists straight and the dumbbell handle sitting over your forearm bones. If your wrists keep folding, use a slightly lighter pair and squeeze the handles harder.

Cutting the lockout short. The top is where the exercise earns its keep, so finish every rep with fully straight arms and a hard squeeze.

Variations

Incline Tate press. Set an adjustable bench to around 30 degrees and do the same movement. The dumbbells come down towards your upper chest, and many people find the elbow angle more comfortable. You'll need a bench that holds its angle without wobbling, which is why it's worth checking our guide to the best weight bench in the UK before buying.

Single-arm Tate press. Work one arm at a time, with your free hand across your stomach. It's handy if one arm lags behind or you only own one dumbbell.

Floor Tate press. Lie on the floor instead of a bench. Your upper arms touch the floor at the bottom of each rep, which limits how far your elbows can travel and stops you overreaching. It's the best version for training at home without a bench.

Tate press vs JM press vs skull crusher

These three get lumped together, but they load the triceps in different ways.

• Tate press: dumbbells, palms facing your feet, elbows flaring out to the sides, dumbbells touching your chest end-on. It's the lightest of the three and has the shortest range of motion.
• JM press: usually a barbell, EZ bar or Smith machine. The bar comes down towards your chin while your elbows travel forward, so it sits halfway between a close-grip bench and a skull crusher. It's the heaviest of the three.
• Skull crusher: your upper arms stay roughly vertical and the bar or dumbbells travel in a long arc towards your forehead or behind your head. It gives the biggest stretch and range.

If you only pick one for strength, choose the JM press. For a long-range muscle builder, pick skull crushers. The Tate press is the finisher, the lift you add when your elbows want a break from long arcs but your triceps still need work. Our tricep exercises guide ranks the wider options.

Programming

Treat the Tate press as an accessory, done after your main pressing and heavier triceps work.

• Muscle building: 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps, resting 60 to 90 seconds.
• Bench lockout focus: 3 to 4 sets of 8 to 12 reps after your bench press or close-grip bench, once or twice a week.
• Finisher: 2 sets of 15 to 20 reps with a light pair, resting 45 seconds.

The American College of Sports Medicine position stand recommends loads in the 6 to 12 rep-max range with 1 to 2 minutes' rest for hypertrophy, and a 2% to 10% increase in load once you can do one or two reps more than your target (ACSM progression models in resistance training). With dumbbells that usually means moving up 1kg to 2kg per hand, so adjustable dumbbells with small increments make progression much easier. A third to half of your dumbbell bench weight is a reasonable place to start, though the right ratio varies a lot between lifters.

A stable bench matters on any lying dumbbell work. The METIS adjustable bench we've reviewed has a heavy steel frame and adjusts from flat to incline, covering both main versions of this lift.

Check the METIS bench price on Amazon£249.99

Read our full METIS adjustable weight bench review for what we liked and what we couldn't confirm.

Recommended reads

1. JM press: how to do it
2. Skull crushers: how to do them
3. Close-grip bench press guide
4. The best tricep exercises
5. The best adjustable dumbbells in the UK
6. The best weight bench in the UK