Grease the Grove vs less sets/higher intensity.

[maximus__]

I like reading discussions about exercise usefulness.

I don't have experience with the hex press but when I read this I wonder if differences in someone's proportions might make it a great exercise for some and not so great for others?

It's just a closer grip variation of a press. The entire purpose of the hex press in this situation is to limit aggravating the recovering shoulder. The reality is if you don'y need to bench press for your sport, any lift that uses the pec, tricep, shoulder area and doesn't cause injury will do the job. Usually you get around shoulder injuries with single arm variations to allow weight to be the limiter through a full range. It makes sense though it wouldn't be my choice of exercise.

 

[NoSmilez]

I like reading discussions about exercise usefulness.

I don't have experience with the hex press but when I read this I wonder if differences in someone's proportions might make it a great exercise for some and not so great for others?

There are better alternatives. If you had one of those imaginary tier lists for chest exercises. The hex press wouldn't be on top for hypertrophy. If you had some sort of issue that prevented you from doing a better exercise then the hex press is one of the options to consider. You can argue you want to use it as an accessory or not. I have given some of my reasons in other posts why it isn't a great exercise. You don't have to optimize all your lifts. Everyone has preferences. There are worse exercises for chest than the hex press. I seen people incline with it or do that single plate press. It is just wasting time if you are healthy and have access to other equipment. In general you need maybe an incline/flat press variation and some kind of adduction like a cable fly. I would say cables/pec-deck > dumbbell fly.

There are different criteria to a good exercise. Here are some simple criteria
-easy to setup without injury
-good bang for your buck. High reward and low risk of injury
-exercise takes you through a full range of motion. In general for pressing exercise you want to depress your shoulders down and pull them back in order to have a big chest to press. Try that while holding two dumbbells together. The ROM is too short.
-ability to progressively overload with time. You can do this by adding reps or more weight. You need to increase the resistance when reps get too high. Exercises where you can't overload properly aren't really good exercises.
-Other limiting factor. Goblet squat is like the hex press. It's not the worse thing in the world but it is inferior to the front squat or back squat. You can't load properly on the exercise. I used to do them when I didn't want to wait for a rack to open up. The goblet squat gets difficult when you go past 100 lbs. Your legs aren't the limiting factor for this exercise.