Dumbbell Thruster
The Dumbbell Thruster is an excellent movement for increasing overall fitness, cardiovascular endurance, and sport performance. A thruster is simply a front squat into an overhead press. It emphasizes unilateral strength training while also incorporating conditioning. Unilateral training significantly helps correct and prevent muscle imbalances.
The key to this movement is to descend into a front squat while maintaining an upright position with the back vertical. Then with the legs, you ascend explosively into a standing position and shoulder press the dumbbells overhead.
Some benefits of the Thruster is maximizing injury resilience, coordination, muscle development, individualized wrist and shoulder positioning, increased joint stabilization, increased neural stimulus, and performance enhancment for strength and olympic lifting athletes. Muscles utilized in this exercise are the glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, core, back, triceps, and shoulders.
