Men's Muscle Building Resources

Rightly or wrongly the bench press is one of the most popular bodybuilding exercises. It’s certainly a terrific upper body compound movement, but not as important an exercise as the major lower compound movements like the squat, dead lift or leg press, because it doesn’t cover as many large muscle groups as those exercises.

Some would argue that the chin, dip and overhead press are more important exercises than the bench, but it seems to have a sort of mystique about it anyway, so in this article I’m going to talk about how you can improve your bench, and as a result help to transform your body.

There are two ways of looking at the bench;
1. As a muscle building exercise
2. As a power lifting exercise

The difference is that by improving your technique you can become more efficient at the bench press, which will enable you to like heavier weights. Please note however that this may not necessarily mean you’ll build more muscle.

As an example, if you arch your back when you lie on the bench, which you can do by bringing your heels towards your head (if you can visualise this), you provide a more stable pressing base, which will help you to lift more weight.

It’s important not to over exaggerate the arch in your back, or this could lead to injury.

Another tip would be to take a wider grip on the bar – this means that the bar has less distance to travel, which in theory makes the exercise easier.

These are power lifting tips, which is not really the point of this article. The point of this article is to give you some form tips that will help you to bench more and build more muscle as a result of benching more.

The two biggest mistakes I see in gyms when people are benching are;
1.
They bench from too high up their body
2. They train the exercise from the top instead of from the bottom.

Lets look a these two faults, and why they are faults;

1. If you bench from too high up your body you put your shoulders in a very bad position. I see even experienced body builders, sometimes contest winners, pressing from as high up as the neck. This is incredibly dangerous, but the trouble is that because elite bodybuilders have stronger joints than most of us, they can get away with this style, although it will catch up with them eventually.

What really makes my blood boil is that inexperienced bodybuilders see this technique used by well developed weight trainers and they copy it.

The bar should be at nipple level of even an inch or two lower than that.

When you start pressing this way it will feel weird at first, and you’ll need to start with lighter weights and then build back up. As you get used to this, you will have a much more safer and more stable style that keeps you injury free.

2. Unless you’re a power lifter (which this article is not really aimed at) you should train the bench from the bottom, and not the top – here’s why;

Most of the old fashioned bench press units (still on sale unfortunately) make you train the bench from the top because the catches are set about a foot and a half above your head. This means you have to reach up to take the bar before starting the bench press, and you have to return the bar there at the end of it.

This is very bad for a number of safety reasons. If you take a weight that’s too heavy, you’ve got to return it to the catches, which means somehow manhandling it back up. This is a sure route to injury.

In my view, the only way to train the bench is from the bottom. Here’s how it’s done;

You need either a power rack (also called a power cage) or a half rack. Set the pins or catches at chest level, so the bar is only just above chest level when you get under it. Now simply press from there.

This is so much safer than benching from the top. It also gives you more confidence to press heavier weights, because if the weight is too heavy you just can’t move it. If you press from the top with a weight that’s too heavy, you have to find a way of getting the bar back up to the catches to rack it. This is how a lot of injuries occur in the bench.

The other way of getting injured is if the weight just crashes down on your neck – I’ve seen this and it’s horrible to watch, and a really good way to permanently injure yourself.

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