To unrack the bar, start with a strong lock-out where the bar is directly above your shoulders. “Initiate each rep by bending your elbows to lower the bar slowly and under control until it touches your chest near the nipples,” says McKenzie. You won’t see a small chest on someone who can bench 300 pounds. These have personally worked wonders for me. Again, just think about bringing point A to point B to fully shorten that pec without letting your shoulder takeover.
Your ideal grip depends on your goals, body structure, and personal preferences. Well, because to place most of the tension onto the chest when benching, you need to be able to do two things: Once you’ve accomplished those two, you’ll naturally create a slight arch in your upper back with space between your back and the bench. Your email address will not be published. Swiss bars provide a better wrist position and help in superior muscle activation. Depending on the weight you are using the bar may move faster or slower, make sure by checking the speed reading that you are moving at the correct speed for the trait you want to develop by looking at bar colours and velocity and power outputs. We don’t really care if you’re cheating on your lifts, we just care about helping you gain more muscle and strength. If you’re too front-heavy, focus on your back until it’s even.”, Level up: “Lowering the bar to nipple level allows you to lift the heaviest weight because it keeps your shoulder and elbow joints in their strongest and most stable position.”, Get engaged: “Bracing your core, tensing your lats and glutes, and arching your lower back will increase how much weight you can put on the bar by keeping your body as stable as possible.”, Breathe easy: “Inhaling deeply as you lower the bar then exhaling forcefully as you press it back up will keep your torso stable, so lifting a heavy weight feels slightly easier.”. We even have an entire program dedicated to bringing up stubborn chests: But the very first place to look is at your bench press technique. Micro-loading is not possible in most other non-barbell exercises. But you should no longer be thinking about just pressing the weight up.
The trick is to feel it as evenly as possible in all three muscle groups, ideally while still having our chests be the limiting factor. It’s possible that benching this deep is going to either force this guy to use much lighter weights or, worse, cause shoulder pain. Review of Starting Strength for Gaining Muscle Size, Optimizing Training Volume for Hypertrophy, The Five Big Compound Bodybuilding & Hypertrophy Lifts.
And you know what that means: better growth!