2) Get a firm grip
You can increase your bench press simply by improving your
grip strength. Grip the bar tightly; imagine squeezing it
so hard that you leave your handprint in the steel. The
tighter you grip the bar, the more control you’ll
have. Always wrap your thumbs around the bar. There’s
no advantage to a thumbless grip; if the bar slips out of
your hand, you could suffer a serious injury.
The most common grip mistake is holding the bar too high
in the palm near the base of your fingers, which causes
your wrist to bend backward. Instead, grip the bar low in
the palm towards the heel of your hand and keep your wrists
straight. Straight wrists allow you to transfer the power
of your chest, deltoids and arms directly through to the
bar. A locked wrist also helps prevent injury.
3) Maximize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses
with the proper grip width and arm position.
The dreaded "sticking point" is usually caused
by a weakness in one muscle group compared to the other
muscles used in the lift. When the lift approaches the point
where the weak muscle is involved the most, the bar will
stall. For example, the most common sticking point in the
bench press is the mid point where the front deltoids are
involved less and the pecs and triceps take over. If your
pecs and triceps are weaker relative to your front delts,
you’re more likely to get stuck. One remedy is to
take a grip width that minimizes your weak muscles and maximizes
your strong ones.
Because people have different body sizes, limb lengths
and strong points, the ideal grip width and arm position
can vary greatly from one individual to the next. In his
book, The Complete Guide to Powerlifting, Fred Hatfield
identifies several critical anatomical factors that you
must adjust your benching style for:
Long arms - elbows out, wider grip,
Short arms - elbows in, closer grip.
Weak pecs - elbows in, narrower grip
Strong pecs - wider grip, elbows out
Weak front delts - elbows out, wide grip
Strong front delts - narrower grip, elbows close to torso
Weak triceps - elbows out, wider grip
Strong triceps - elbows in, closer grip
4) Use assistance exercises.
Adjusting your form to accommodate a weak muscle group
is important, but in the long run it’s little more
than a band-aid. The ultimate solution is to bring up your
weak areas with assistance exercises. If you want a stronger
bench, you must get strong triceps, deltoids and lats, not
just strong pecs.
Of all the assistance work you could do, developing stronger
triceps will probably have the greatest impact on your bench
press. Work hard on the basics, including various types
of heavy extensions and close-grip bench presses (flat and
incline).
Strengthening your front delts will also bring major improvements
to your bench press. Assistance work for front deltoids
should include military presses and all kinds of front raises
(dumbbell, barbell, with a 45 lb. plate, etc.).
Your lats are involved in the bench press to a greater
degree than you might think. Your lats help you maintain
your arch and stabilize your torso. They also help you lower
the weight by providing a "cushion" to lower against
and push from at the bottom. The best assistance exercises
for lats are rows, rows, and more rows! Barbell and dumbbell
rows are the best assistance exercises for the bench press
because they train the back through the same horizontal
plane as the bench press.
5) Lower and press the bar through the optimal
path.
Always have a spotter lift the bar off for you - it conserves
energy. Once the bar is over your chest, go right into the
lift; don't just lie there holding the bar at arms length
over your chest or you’ll waste energy. Do your psyching
up (more on that later) before you lift off the bar.
Lower the bar to a point even with the nipples or slightly
below them. Touching the bar low on the chest recruits the
triceps and powerful front deltoids to the maximum degree
to assist the pectorals. If you lower the bar too high on
the chest, your arms tend to rotate externally. This puts
more strain on your shoulder joints and reduces your leverage.
You’ll have the best leverage if your hands are directly
above your elbows.
When the bar reaches your chest, pause for about one second.
Never bounce the bar off your chest; not only can this cause
an injury, but it’s also cheating (and it wouldn't
pass in a powerlifting meet). This is not to say you should
never bench quickly with no pause, but training with the
brief pause eliminates the momentum, overloading the target
muscles more effectively.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight
line, so it seems logical to push the bar straight up. Many
great powerlifters such as Louie Simmons, point out that
pressing straight up allows you to lift more by decreasing
the distance the bar has to travel, and it reduces the chance
of injuring your pecs or shoulders. Most people, however,
press the bar in a path that curves slightly back towards
the face. This arc is known as the "J-curve."
This curve occurs because you unconsciously change the path
of the bar to accommodate your weak joint angles (the delts
are usually stronger than the triceps). So what's the ideal
method? Ultimately, you should work on developing the necessary
tricep strength to press straight up, but don't force yourself
to follow any particular path if it feels unnatural.
6) Breathe out on every rep, but hold your breath
briefly at the critical moment
Novice lifters are often afraid to hold their breath at
all because they’ve been warned that this practice
is dangerous. Prolonged breath holding is dangerous (you
could black out and wake up later with a barbell wrapped
around your head). However, you'll never bench anywhere
near what you're capable of without proper breath control.
Breath holding at the right moment is critical because the
increase in intra-abdominal pressure helps get you through
the sticking point. It also gives you a feeling of confidence
and stability during the lift off.
Without this tight feeling, you'd feel as if you were being
crushed under a heavy weight (and that could blow the lift
for you mentally before you even started the descent). As
you begin to lower the bar, breathe deeply and inhale all
the way into your belly - not just a shallow breath in your
upper chest. Hold your breath as you change direction and
continue holding until you've pushed upward through the
sticking point. Then breathe out and inhale again as you
start the next rep.
7) Choose the optimal eccentric and concentric
tempos
It’s a general rule in bodybuilding to do your reps
with a two-second concentric (lifting) movement and at least
a three or four second eccentric (lowering) movement. Slowing
down the eccentric part of the movement can increase the
time under tension, decrease the use of momentum and isolate
the target muscle better - all of which help to increase
muscle size.
When you're training purely for strength, doing negatives
too slowly can be counterproductive. Resisting the weight
with a slow negative requires more force, so it actually
reduces the number of reps you can do. For example, if you
can do three reps with 275 lbs. using a five second negative,
you can probably get five or six reps with 275 lbs. using
a one or two second negative.
In his column at Testosterone.net, bodybuilding writer
Doug Santillo explains it like this: "A lot of emphasis
in bodybuilding literature has been placed on lowering the
weight slowly. For the purposes of hypertrophy, the majority
of the time should be spent using slower eccentric speeds.
But there're times when lowering the weight fast can be
advantageous. In training for maximal strength, the primary
goal is to force your nervous system to more efficiently
recruit fast twitch fibers.
With a faster eccentric speed, you give the nervous system
more of a break between each explosion, since the tension
is reduced. By doing this, your muscles must contract from
a more relaxed position, thereby forcing your nervous system
to adapt. For a bodybuilder, since his priority is gaining
muscle mass, not maximal strength, a good choice would be
to alternate between fast and slow eccentrics during his
strength phases."
If you're after size gains, your best bet would be a slow
negative, but if you want more strength, use a faster eccentric
speed - not an uncontrolled, cheating fast, but a "controlled"
fast.
Finally, EXPLODE the weight upward. Apply the maximum force
possible. Fred Hatfield has named this technique "Compensatory
Acceleration." With lighter weights, this means the
bar will travel upward very quickly, so you'll have to "put
on the brakes" at the top of the movement. With heavier
weights, the bar will be moving slowly, but no matter how
slow it seems to creep upward, you should still push as
hard as you can through the entire range of motion.
One reason sticking points are common in the middle or
top part of the bench press is because you don’t have
enough velocity coming out of the bottom. Push up HARD from
the bottom and don’t push less or give up if the bar
starts to slow down or stall. Make a conscious effort to
accelerate and keep pushing hard through the entire lift.
Practiced consistently, this technique can completely obliterate
sticking points.
8) Do the ideal number of sets and reps - not too
many, not too few.
Overtraining is a major cause of bench press plateaus.
When it comes to benching strength, more is not better.
Cutting back on volume doesn’t mean doing one set
to failure, it simply means you should reduce your volume
to a level that allows you to gain strength consistently.
In the tradition of Arnold Schwarzenegger, most people
follow high volume bodybuilding routines that look something
like this:
1. Bench press 4-5 sets 8-12 reps
2. Incline press 4-5 sets 8-12 reps
3. Dumbbell flyes 4-5 sets 8-12 reps
4. Cable crossover 4-5 sets 8-12 reps
With the exception of genetically gifted people (like Arnold),
this is too much even for an advanced bodybuilder, but it’s
way too much for building strength. Most powerlifters and
strength athletes who bench 400 -500 lbs. or more use extremely
simple routines - sometimes only one or two exercises per
body part. Doing too many sets and exercises is a sure-fire
way to hit a plateau. It may seem hard to give up your high
volume workout routines, but you’ll be amazed at how
much stronger you'll get when you cut back.
Six to twelve reps is probably the single best rep range
for muscle size gains (bodybuilding). However, if you want
to get strong, you’re going to have to do a fair share
of your training in the one to five rep range. In his book,
"the Poliquin Principles," strength Coach Charles
Poliquin recommends the following parameters for strength
gains:
1 - 3 exercises per body part
1 - 5 repetitions per set
5 - 12 sets per body part
3 - 5 minutes rest between each set
(Charles should know: he’s trained over 400 Olympic
and professional athletes and his clients are brutishly
strong).
"Rest about one minute between each set." That's
the standard guideline that’s been tossed around in
gyms for years. It’s a good recommendation for bodybuilding
or general fitness, but longer rest intervals are an absolute
must for benching super heavy weights.
To use the maximum weight possible on every set, you must
allow your muscular and nervous systems to fully recover
between each set. The shorter your rest intervals, the less
you will recover. The ideal rest interval for strength development
is four to five minutes. Beyond five minutes is not effective
because you'll start to cool off.
>>
Click here for Tom's Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle program
About the Author
Tom Venuto is an NSCA-certified personal trainer, certified
strength and conditioning specialist, lifetime natural bodybuilder,
and author of the #1 best-selling e-book "Burn the
Fat, Feed The Muscle" (BFFM). Tom has written over
170 articles and has been featured in IRONMAN Magazine,
Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Muscle-Zine,
Olympian’s News (in Italian), Exercise for Men and
Men’s Exercise. For information on Tom's "Burn
The Fa Feed the Musclet" e-book, click
here
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