5 Boosters To Turbocharge Your Bench
Whilst the squat reigns as the supreme lower body movement, the bench press has long been hailed as the king in the upper body department.
I mean, Mondays. International chest day. You know an exercise is held in high regard when it has its own dedicated day.
Now, you may be one of those guys who benches everyday and can comfortably outbench your squat (raise hand - this used to be me) OR you might be on the other end of the spectrum?
You might favour the squat and neglect the bench because you suck at it - and we only train what we're good at right?
Either way, this post will benefit both of you AND anyone in between.
So without further ordue, let me present you 5 bench hacks to supercharge your press!
#1 - PLANT, DRIVE & SQUEEZE.
Bench is an upper body movement right? Wrong. Well, not completely wrong, but you're not completely right either.
If your feet are planted, the force transfer begins from the floor, up your legs, through your hips, then distributed by your midsection into your upper body. That's how it should work anyway. Watch any powerlifter bench and you'll see what I mean.
So, PLANT your feet hard into the ground, dig them in and get tight. Then DRIVE your knees out and SQUEEZE your glutes as hard as you can - maintain this tension throughout the whole movement.
It doesn't matter whether your main priority is to build strength, pack on muscle or burn fat, the more force you can produce, the more weight you'll lift and the more weight you lift, the greater your potential to fulfill those training goals.
#2 - STRETCH that bar son!
Pull the bar apart. Thats right, I want you to pretend like you're alone on christmas and you've got a christmas cracker, with one end in each hand. Now pull both ends simultaneously.
Now feel what happens to your upper back - feel those rear delts light up and your shoulder blades pinch together?
THAT is the first thing you need to do and I want you to do it BEFORE you unrack the bar - don't attempt to do it after you unrack as you won't be setup in the right position.
Now, maintain that stretch through the whole movement. If you let go of the stretch, your upper back will relax and your shoulder blades will lose their position - POSITION is EVERYTHING!
#3 - PULL, then PUSH.
If you haven't already read my last post about the deadlift, then view that here: 3 Reasons Your Deadlift Sucks And How To Fix Them. The main take away from that post was to re-think the execution of the deadlift by PUSHING, not pulling. I want you to now rethink the bench and PULL, instead of RELAX.
What do I mean by relax?
Well I think it would be fair to say that most people like to let the weight of the bar ride itself down onto your chest before you reverse the movement and push it back up.
Either that or you let the weight dive bomb down and attempt to jack-in-the-box it back up using the momentum of the bounce.
You do that right?
Here's the fix. PULL the bar to your chest, with the STRETCH that you've had applied to the bar since you unracked it. For those who love to know why, here's why.
When you PULL the bar to your chest, it does 2 things.
1. It keeps your scapulae (shoulder blades) set into the bench and your upper back super tight. The tighter your upper back is, the stronger you will be and as we know (or you're about to realise), the upper back plays a HUGE role in the bench press!
2. It enables you to maintain tension through the muscle, which will teach you stability, efficiency and control of the movement.
BONUS TIP: PULL to about nipple line to just below.
NOW, you've PULLED the bar to your chest, now you can reverse the movement and PUSH the bar back up and slightly back towards your head.
The picture to the right demonstrates this perfectly. Photo credit: STRONGLIFTS.
Heres a cue for you : I want you to think about pushing yourself AWAY from the bar using the bench to propel the weight UP and BACK towards eye level.
#4 - Train your LATS and your TRICEPS, whilst varying grip width.
All variations of pull ups, rows, presses and extensions. The closer the movement is mirrored to the bench press itself, the greater the transfer.
Eg - A wide grip pull up is essentially a "bench press pull".
A close grip bench press would be more beneficial than a tricep extension as you train both the pattern of the bench press but incorporate more of the triceps because you've shortened your leverages to place more load on the elbow extensors.
You can't JUST bench press and expect to get good at bench press. You must be constantly varying the grip width and your accessory work to strengthen and hypertrophy the assistance muscles.
The greater the cross sectional area of a muscle, the greater the potential for strength development. Tricep and lat strength should be your number 1 priority in regards to your assistance work. Both low and high rep sets.
#5 - MILITARY PRESS
I put this last because I want you to highlight the importance of this one. In my opinion, the BEST exercise to increase the bench press, hands down.
You can actually NOT bench press and just focus solely on the military press without losing strength in the movement - in fact, I've personally experience and seen BIG bench PR's from focusing on this one movement.
I have never seen anyone increase their strict press and not their bench press - so if you don't know, now you know - get on this movement.
Firstly, I'm going to assume that you have the shoulder mobility to comfortably be able to press above your head - if you don't though, I recommend SMR (Self myofascial release) on your pecs/shoulders/lats together with movements like hanging, shoulder dislocates. Also strengthen your scapula retractors through exercises like banded pull aparts, face pulls, trap-3 raise etc will also help!
Now, for the setup - which is much like the bench press.
1. STRETCH the bar whilst taking a thumbless or regular grip (I actually prefer a thumbless grip as its much more comfortable)
"Pull your shoulder blades into their back pocket" (down and back) and pull your chest to the bar.
Rotate or tuck your elbows underneath the bar and SQUEEZE your lats tight.
Unrack the bar, walk back 1 step and take a big breath into your belly.
FIRE the lats hard to initiate the drive from the bottom and then press the barbell above your head.
BONUS CUE FOR THE FINISH POSITION: "BICEPS SHOULD HUG YOUR EARS"
Editors Note (Keegan): Take this overhead pressing and stabilising to the next level with free standing handstand push-ups. These have been used by 2 of the strongest guys in the RealMOVEMENT Community - Mitch Pike and Nathan Gould with great results.
So there you have it - 5 hacks to supercharge your bench press.
There are some things in life that money can't buy, a good bench press being one of them.
But focusing on these tips will not only equip you with the ammunition needed to blast through your plateaus but it will also lay the foundation for you to transfer this learning onto other movements.
For the above mentioned cues can also be applied to alot of other different exercises.
Always remember, when in doubt, SQUEEZE. Glutes, grip, feet, whatever.