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Bench Press Chest Press

Develop a stronger, more powerful chest with Bench Press Chest Press. This challenging workout uses the bench press to tone and strengthen your chest muscles while providing a full-body strength workout. Quick and effective!

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Transcript

00:02 - 00:07This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, and today we're doing one of my favorite
00:07 - 00:12strength training exercises, the bench press. That's right, we're here in the
00:12 - 00:18studio doing chest on a Sunday, knowing full and well that Monday is National
00:18 - 00:23Chest Day. Anyway, this is one of our relatively stable chest exercises. Now,
00:23 - 00:27I'm not talking for necessarily a novice individual. A novice individual is still
00:27 - 00:31going to find the bench press to be fairly unstable, but for most of us this
00:31 - 00:35is going to be in that strength or max strength portion of our periodized
00:35 - 00:39program, and we're going to use a slightly lower rep range. I'm going to have my
00:39 - 00:44friend Laura come out to help me demonstrate some of the cueing and some
00:44 - 00:48little pointers to help you improve upon your bench press. Now, first things
00:48 - 00:56first, the most awkward part of the bench is actually the lift off. That puts the
00:56 - 01:00shoulder in kind of a weird position, where we have a fairly large amount of load
01:00 - 01:07over the face, it's not directly over the shoulder, scapula, thoracic region, so it's
01:07 - 01:12a little harder to stabilize. It is always a good idea to have a spotter. We
01:12 - 01:16want to make sure that when she sets herself up, she doesn't send her chest
01:16 - 01:21under the bar because that might lead to us tagging these hooks that are holding
01:21 - 01:25this bench up. So usually I tell people to get their eyes level with the bar so
01:25 - 01:28that when they pull the bar over their chest they have plenty of clearance room
01:28 - 01:32here. So, I'm going to have Laura go ahead and set up, grab the bar where
01:32 - 01:36she's comfortable. Comfortable should be a place where when you're at the
01:36 - 01:41bottom, throughout the majority of your motion, your forearm is perpendicular,
01:41 - 01:46straight up and down to the floor. Alright, so I'm going to help Laura off.
01:46 - 01:51I'm going to give her a little count off, so one-two-three. I'll have you push off, good.
01:51 - 01:55I'm then going to make sure that I align her so that she is over her chest. This is
01:55 - 01:59particularly important for people who haven't done bench before. I don't want
01:59 - 02:04her directly over her shoulder, I want more, not to be vulgar, but
02:04 - 02:09across the nipple line. So just a little lower than chest height, that will help
02:09 - 02:14keep us from any sort of impingement that may occur in the shoulder. She's
02:14 - 02:18going to go ahead and lower down to wherever she's comfortable, and then
02:18 - 02:21press right back up. I hear a lot of people talk about range of motion with
02:21 - 02:25the bench. Your range of motion is the largest range of motion that you can
02:25 - 02:30keep optimal form, and that is pain-free. So Laura, let's go ahead and show them
02:30 - 02:36that one more time. Good. Now let's talk about stabilization. I want her
02:36 - 02:41protracting as far as she can at the top, alright, so she's really pushing off.
02:41 - 02:45What protracting does is allows your scapula to tip up this way, and that
02:45 - 02:50gives some bony support to the humerus which is applying pressure this way. I
02:50 - 02:56know some people have cued retraction in a bench that allows for no bony support
02:56 - 03:00from the humerus that is pushing straight down. Alright so once again, go
03:00 - 03:07ahead and drop down, push up, protract all of the way in. Now, I have some people talk
03:07 - 03:10about stability progression where they put their feet up on the bench, or they
03:10 - 03:14put their feet up on the bench to try to protect their back. If you find that you
03:14 - 03:17feel more comfortable putting your feet up on the bench it is probably a good
03:17 - 03:21idea to stretch your hip flexors and start working on some glute activation.
03:21 - 03:25Putting your feet up on the bench is not necessarily a fix-all for somebody
03:25 - 03:29with lower back discomfort. Besides, there's another benefit to keeping your
03:29 - 03:34feet on the floor. If Laura has her feet on the floor I can make her kinetic
03:34 - 03:40chain far more stable which should contribute to better bench performance.
03:40 - 03:44I'm going to have her push her feet through the ground. By pushing her feet
03:44 - 03:49through the ground, this is going to activate her glute max which is a hip
03:49 - 03:54extensor, but also one of the primary stabilizers for the lumbo-pelvic hip
03:54 - 04:00complex. If she has her glutes tight and I then asked her to draw-in, her lumbar
04:00 - 04:09spine now has something stable, being her pelvis, to rely on. If her spine is stable
04:09 - 04:14her scapula will be more stable. So now we have glute lumbo public
04:14 - 04:21hip complex to spine to scpular thoracic stability, to hopefully - go ahead
04:21 - 04:29show us one more time - a nice strong bench. I know, like I said, some
04:29 - 04:32people feel more comfortable with their feet up. Have them stretch their hip
04:32 - 04:36flexors and activate their glutes and see if you can't turn that around. I have also
04:36 - 04:40seen this as a stability progression. It is more unstable to put your feet up. I
04:40 - 04:44have personally backed away from that because I would rather reinforce
04:44 - 04:50optimal stabilization mechanics throughout my kinetic chain. Now, the last
04:50 - 04:56thing I might hint on is breathing. This is one of those exercises where people
04:56 - 05:01hold their breath and that's not totally inappropriate, as long as they don't hold
05:01 - 05:07their breath for an entire set. So what I usually have people do is
05:07 - 05:12breathe in on the way down, if they need to hold their breath as they're turning
05:12 - 05:16force around, so they went from eccentric and now they're going to concentric, that's
05:16 - 05:21the hard part, that's okay, but then breathe out either on the way up, or at the top
05:21 - 05:28of the movement. So have them breathe in, get nice and stable, hold, push. Good. If that's
05:28 - 05:33comfortable, great. What I do see more often than not is people tend to over
05:33 - 05:37cue breathing. You don't need to get into all of those breathing mechanics if
05:37 - 05:40somebody's breathing naturally. Only cue those mechanics if you
05:40 - 05:44see somebody who's turning red, and holding their breath for an entire set.
05:44 - 05:50Now, I hope you can also see this nice line that she's got going on here. Go
05:50 - 05:57ahead and drop down, and back up, and then when we rack it, once again, you want a
05:57 - 06:01nice spotter there to make sure that she doesn't miss the rack and catch her face
06:01 - 06:06on the way down. I'm going to just have her put this back, I'm going to help her through it.
06:06 - 06:13Now, last but not least, this is a dangerous exercise to do without a
06:13 - 06:18spotter if you're going to risk and do heavier weights. Obviously this is a
06:18 - 06:22weight that Laura is very comfortable with which allowed me to walk
06:22 - 06:26around, which allowed me to cue her through all of this movement, which
06:26 - 06:31allowed me to create this educational video. If we were doing, let's say, a heavy
06:31 - 06:37day, I would not be standing over here. I would be cueing her between sets,
06:37 - 06:41giving her verbal cues from this position, and let's just show them one
06:41 - 06:47more time, I would make sure that she is one-two-three, that I have my hands
06:47 - 06:51underneath this bar, and that I am
06:51 - 06:55following her through a good squat, so that if she gets in trouble I could lift this
06:55 - 06:59bar, or at least help her lift this bar off her chest. The problem with bench, unlike a lot of other
06:59 - 07:04exercises, you can't drop the weight and get it out of your way. So there you go,
07:04 - 07:10stable kinetic chain, make sure you watch your line, protract through the top,
07:10 - 07:15safety first, make sure you get a spotter when you need one. I hope you
07:15 - 07:20enjoy this chest exercise, even though we did this video on a Sunday, we had a lot of
07:20 - 07:24fun making it! Talk with you soon.

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