Alright, so chances are you’re here because you want to get the most out of your bench press, blast through plateaus and develop a strong chest.
In this post, you’re going to:
Optimize your bench press and
Unlearn some old habits you could be still doing when you benching. These can be robbing you of gains and quite possibly getting you injured. After you address these bad habits, you’ll be well on your way to more strength, more size, and a bigger chest that you’ve been looking for.
BONUS tips: we’re also going to discuss a few ways to overcome plateaus with awesome training methods at the end of this post…
LET’S GET STARTED:
First and foremost, the holy grail of all exercises - the barbell bench press.
There are a few crucial things that you need to remember before you dive in.
The first thing we need to perfect is your set up. Without the perfect set up, your entire lift will be thrown off, and you could be leaving pounds on the table - which means you’re not maximizing your fullest potential…which means untapped gains.
THE SET-UP
So to begin, you want to:
Sit up straight
Squeeze your back, and contract your shoulder blades downward, almost like you’re pointing your shoulders away from your ears.
Then you want to lay back and keep a nice healthy arch in your back.
Be sure that your feet are flat on the ground and are parallel to each other.
You’re going to be using your feet as a driving force to create tension and pressure that’ll be transferred into the weight itself so that you can get the most out of your rep.
For this, just imagine driving your feet INTO the ground pushing away from the end of the bench press and driving all of that force you’re exerting into your rep. Remember to keep your glutes ON the bench, and to execute these steps in a controlled way…
Now that we have our foot placement and beginning set-up figured out, lets get into the grip placement.
GRIP PLACEMENT
Grip the bar just slightly wider than shoulder width apart. This will also vary from person to person, given your limb lengths.
Be sure that your wrist are are not flexed back, and make sure they remain locked in place throughout the movement with the bar literally in alignment with your wrists. This is probably one of the most important takeaways when setting up your grip.
You’ll want to make sure that the bar is resting on the meatiest part of your palms, and not resting near where your calluses are. If the bar is resting where your callus are, then all of the force coming down from weight and bar will be putting a substantial amount of force and torque on your wrists alone. This is far from optimal. SO - grip the bar on the meatiest part of your palms so that the force of the weight and bar can be directly exerted in direct alignment of your wrist with the support of your radius and ulna bones (the bones found in your forearms).
Having the support of these bones will allow you to drive maximal force for each rep…instead of letting just your wrists do all the work, which is a recipe for injury.
Alright, moving on now. Before lifting the bar, be sure that your eyes are in line with the bar.
When you are ready to lift the bar grab the bar with your thumb over the bar.
Pretend like you’re trying to bend the hell out of the bar into an arch. This helps activate your lats. The better you are in activating you lats for this lift, the more proficient your bench press will be.
You may be thinking that the bench press is just a chest exercise, but it’s far more than that. Several other muscles come into play when executing this lift - which is why its one of the most important compound lifts there is.
Next, inhale and brace your core.
Tighten your glutes and prepare your feet for that driving force I mentioned earlier… and lift the bar off the rack.
Bring the bar forward and towards the center of your chest, keeping your elbows extended but not locked out. The concentric phase of the lift should be very controlled. Keep your elbows tucked in your arms should form almost a 45 degree angle with your torso.
REMEMBER: don’t want to perform bench press with your arms at a 90 degree angle as it could injure your shoulders and cause nasty shoulder impingements. Instead, bring the bar down towards your lower chest in a controlled manner, almost in line with your nipples, and make sure the bar gets a nice touch-n-go…and not a bounce from your rib cage.
Lowering the bar in a controlled fashion will maximize the time under tension for your chest muscles - which is part of the recipe for muscle growth.
If you’re letting gravity do the work - our you’re bouncing the bar right off your chest like a pogo stick, then you’re missing out the necessary time under tension for your muscles need to develop and grow.
The eccentric portion of the lift will be the portion where you explode.
Nice and controlled on the way down, and explode up.
But like I said, be sure not to bounce the bar on your chest. Push yourself away from the bar rather than the bar away from you, ensuring that your shoulders remain in the proper position rather than lifting off the bench.
TAKE A SECOND TO VISUALIZE YOURSELF DOING THIS RIGHT NOW, OR EVEN GO THROUGH THE MOTIONS.
Lets take a quick look at the bar path.
BAR PATH
The path that you see me do here is the correct path and what will keep you from injury.
The bar is lifted in a curvilinear manner until the elbow are fully extended again.
Alright, Bonus tips…
Plateaus are some of the hardest things to overcome when training. It can almost feel like everything you’ve tried, no matter how hard you try, isn’t getting you past a certain point in your training.
What I’ve found in my training is that there are 3-4 main reasons why you’re stuck.
One, you’re training too much and incurring too much training fatigue. In other words, you’re accumulating too much volume for your muscles AND central nervous system, and not giving them the proper rest and recovery they need for regeneration.
Two, you’re not eating enough. To get progressively stronger in your lifts, you’re going to need to be nourished properly.
Increase your calories slightly each week (protein, fats, and/or carbs). I show you exactly how to do this in the Physique Building program, by the way…you’re going to want to tune up your calories carefully, as going overboard might have you gaining more excessive fat.
You CAN make strength gains while in a deficit, but that’ll require a slightly more advanced method of manipulating your macronutrients.
3. And three - you’re probably not training enough, or not accumulating the necessary training volume your muscles need. In order to address the third reason, here’s what you can do:
Increase the number of sets as the weeks go by in your training program. For example, in the 2nd week, you’re doing 4 sets of 8 reps on bench. Well in the 5th week, you’ll be doing 5 sets of 8 reps on bench. And so on and so forth.
Another example you can do is to add the total amount of reps for each lift. So, week 2 you’e doing 4 sets of 8 reps…well come week 3, you’ll be doing 4 sets of 10 reps.
And lastly - you can increase your intensity, aka add more weight to your lifts. Go up with micro loads, like 2.5 or 5lbs while still aiming for either 4 sets of 8 on a lift. So week 2 you’re doing 225lb on bench press for 4 sets of 8. Well, next week you’ll do 230lbs on bench press for 4 sets of 8. If you really feel like, you can combine all of these three and grind out more reps, sets AND add more weight - but I’d highly suggest you work on one variable at a time to see what’s working for you.
By the way, if you still can’t get past your plateaus and you’ve tried eating more, and tried progressively adding in more load as the weeks go by, then maybe its time for a deload phase and/or cut back a little from the volume, which I also show you how to do in the Physique Building program.
Shifting focus now to the dumbbell bench press.
In order to preserve the most energy at the beginning of your lift, place the dumbbells on your thighs, while leaning back to lay down, simultaneously raise the dumbbells up, above your chest and rotate your wrist until your palms are facing away from your face.
Similar to barbell bench press, there’ll a healthy arch in your back…and your foot placement will be like barbell bench press, flat on the ground and parallel to each other enabling you to develop that driving force up into your legs, through your torso and into the dumbbells.
Maintain full control of the dumbbells, bring them down slowly, and just like in bench press, keep your elbows tucked in throughout the movement. Make sure to get a nice stretch in your chest as you lower the dumbbells. I go down until my arms are about parallel to the ground.
Explode on the way up, making sure to contract your pec fibers… but be sure not to lose control of the dumbbells as you’re finishing off the movement. Pay attention to how I end this workout, I don’t throw the dumbbells on the ground next to me because it could throw off your rotator cuff, instead I bring them back down to my thighs and then put them down, always keeping control of the weight.
So remember I mentioned those plateaus and how to get over them? Let’s apply one of those methods here to progressively get bigger and stronger…which for this exercise, means getting a carved out, bigger and stronger chest.
We’ll be going up in weight but keeping the sets and reps the same.
For example, if on week 1-2 I dumbbell bench press with 70 lbs for 4 sets of 8, then on week 3-4 I will add 5 lbs and bench press with 75 lb dumbbells , week 5-6 80 lbs and week 7-8 85 lbs, all for 4 sets of 8.
Take note that it’ll be hard to jump up by 5lbs on each dumbbell at a time.
If you can, it’ll be better to incrementally increase your weight. So if you can find a set of 72.5lbs, then that’ll be the better option rather than to jump up a whole 5lbs.
Again, this is just an example of how to increase loading with absolutes, you could apply this to any exercise and customize how much you increase, safely. Remember, that some muscles can only tolerate only a small increase in weight at a time.
The last way to increase loading is by using a target rep zone.
So lets say your training zone is 6-12 reps.
If you apply this to a machine fly, then on week 1 you will do 4 sets of 6 reps of 80 lbs. Week 2 you will do the same amount of sets but for 8 reps, and in week 3 you will do 10 reps and week 4 you will do 12 reps.
Once you have reached the target rep zone, then you will increase the weight the following week and start over at 6 reps until you reach 12.
So to sum this all up, here’s how to bench press in the most optimal way:
THE CHECKLIST
Keep a slight arch in your back
Keep both feet flat parallel to each other, flat on the ground so that you can use your driving force you generate from pressing into the ground, which will in turn drive that generated force into your core which will then be transferred into your upper torso and into the weight you’re pressing.
Align your eye sight with the bar so that the bar is directly over your eyes
Make sure that the bar is resting on the meatiest part of your palms
Grip the bar tightly and bend the bar, as if you’re ready to snap it or shape it into an arch
Engage your lats
Take a deep breath and engage your core
Tighten your glutes
Lift-off
Keep your elbows tucked in
Bring the bar down slowly, and explode up.
It looks like a big check-list just for once exercise, but I promise you that once you have these nailed down in sequence, your bench WILL go up, and your chest will grow. If you’re still stuck, refer to the bonus section above and see if you’re training too much, not enough, or if your diet is on point.