How to do the Cuban Press

Steps

1. Take a dumbbell in each hand with a pronated grip in a standing position. Raise your upper arms so that they are parallel to the floor, allowing your lower arms to hang in the "scarecrow" position. This will be your starting position.
2. To initiate the movement, externally rotate the shoulders to move the upper arm 180 degrees. Keep the upper arms in place, rotating the upper arms until the wrists are directly above the elbows, the forearms perpendicular to the floor.
3. Now press the dumbbells by extending at the elbows, straightening your arms overhead.
4. Return to the starting position as you breathe in by reversing the steps.
5. Repeat for the recommended amount of repetitions.

Tracking it in OneRep

Add the cuban press to a routine and your previous weight and reps sit beside every set, so the decision to add load is made by what is already on the screen rather than by memory. Exercise history and volume trends are one tap away, and logging works offline for the gyms where signal does not reach.

Because OneRep tracks food on the same timeline, a stall on this lift can be read against what you were actually eating that month — which is the difference between a programming problem and an eating one. More on that in tracking progressive overload without a spreadsheet.

Where the instructions come from

The steps above come from free-exercise-db, a public-domain exercise dataset. They are general guidance, not coaching for your body: if a movement hurts, stop and get someone qualified to look at it.