Bench Press
Bench press tends to be the weakness in the armour of a lot of powerlifters. As a coach, I tend to try to focus on this lift to try to help people excel in it, as it can make a massive difference to a total.
For example, if you can bench 120kg and you want to total 600kg, you need to squat around 240kg and deadlift around 240kg to total 600kg. However, if we can find a way to increase your bench press to 140kg it takes the pressure off driving your squat and deadlift numbers up too fast.
What makes up a bench press?
Lets focus on the anatomy of a bench press.
Firstly, its about trying to put your shoulder joint and scapula in the BEST position possible for your body shape to press the biggest weight. This is the MOST important part of injury prevention in bench press.
The main muscles involved in a bench press are:
- Pectorals
- Deltoids
- Triceps
These are the most dominant muscles in a press.
There are a lot of supporting muscles that help stabilise the scapula to help you be able to press effectively.
What exercises help bench press?
The specific injury prevention work that is generally prescribed individually to lifters depending on the weaknesses we find. I will provide an example:
EXAMPLE
If you arch in your bench press already, then you need to try to video and still shot your arch position before you take off the bar, as you hold the bar before lowering it, and then at the bottom of the press. Then video the arch specifically as you are pressing. The arch should not visibly change shape as you lower the bar or press the bar. The arch should hopefully be as even as possible. Where I see people get into trouble bench pressing is when their arch is driven through their lower back, rather than through your whole back.
So, if you arch through your lower back, we work on your upper back mobility to try to make your arch more even, look at the position of your legs and then also look at whether your hips are mobile enough to create the extension pattern you need to drive with your legs.
If you get back pain when you bench press, you need to work on your position, and to do that you need to know what is wrong. A good powerlifting coach should be able to work with you to improve that.
Auxillary exercises to help bench press function
These are 5 of the most common exercises I prescribe to help increase bench press:
Push Up
Push ups seem so simple however I use them in bench press programming to add volume to push volume, with the added benefit of working on core stability in a press motion.
With Push ups, some great variations to mimic bench press position are to use a weighted vest, to improve core stability and then to work in a squat rack or power rack by holding a bar, at the bottom of a rack. I personally find this improves the way that I can get someone to “push through” the movement, increasing tricep workload. Changing grip width is another way to challenge someone as well.
I generally set a total volume count when doing these of 20-50 repetitions dependent on how strong someone is. If you can do 20 reps without stopping then we might set the total count at 60 and aim to try to get to the point where you can push your bodyweight 60 times without stopping.
I find the benefit of push ups generally disappears once you can do 30-40 in a row without stopping. Then, you need to be careful on how many you are actually doing in a session if you are also bench pressing multiple times in a week or trying to work into heavier bench press ranges.
We generally use these exercises at the end due to the lower risk factor when doing these exercises.
Landmine Press
A landmine press can be done two arms or one handed. If you have a torsonator at your gym, then you can use one of these, otherwise you can jam a barbell into a corner, maybe against a bench or squat rack to do this exercise.
I can find no specific research based evidence to state that this exercise improves bench press, however I am using a significant amount of experience from watching people in programs I have written and seeing the benefits of these exercises on a maximal bench press.
In the single arm landmine press, either standing or kneeling, the hand position on the barbell matches closely the tricep activation you achieve in a bench press and I find them valuable at developing lock out strength, scapula stability and deltoid strength for the bench press. The real functional gain I believe is also held in the cross-chain or cross body stability/strength that is worked on in this particular exercise.
The two arm version I personally do not utilise often as I generally use push ups for these or stick with the single arm version due to the cross over effects of the single arm version. However I accept the two arm version definitely has its place!
The key with this exercise is the technique. There is no point doing it to improve bench press by doing this with leg drive, or any rotation. You need to do it with strict form. I like these better than strict presses overhead for powerlifting, due to the likely shoulder and thoracic mobility issues that many powerlifters have when trying to press overhead. I generally do these in sets of 4 to 8 repetitions depending on the goal and the training cycle I am prescribing. I find the set volume of these need to be high to be effective, so at least 4 sets if working on hypertrophy and 2-5 sets if strength is the goal.
Skull Crushers
These exercises are brutal, hence the name! For some people if they have wrist or elbow issues, they can find these exercises can be really tough, so you can do these with an Ezy Bar or Dumbbells.
There have been studies that have shown that this exercise does activate triceps the same way that a bench press does. They are great exercises, not necessarily done with a ton of weight at the start but with a rep range of between 8-15 to condition the triceps tendons.
You can also do other triceps exercises for variation, however this one is one of the stable exercises that we try to get people to do due to its effectiveness.
Lat Pulldowns
These have been around forever! Critical part of bench pressing is how strong your upper back is as it is the one part that “holds” your bench position together!
The most important part of the Lat Pulldown for me teaching people is the start and finish position. Too often I see that people try to to start the exercise with the biceps, rather than a retraction movement of the Lats. Its really important to know how to protract and retract your scapulas, to utilise your Lats to do this. This is so important because this movement is the movement that determines what sort of position you can get your shoulder joint or more specifically your head of humerus into for a bench press.
The second really important part is the finish position. The finish position should be “tight.” This means you pull the bar into your chin or your collarbone, depending on what position you can get into still “pulling” the bar down. You do not want to finish too low down on your chest when you are starting to turn the movement into a “push” movement. This means you lose your “tightness” a term used to describe the position you can stay in.
Set volume and repetitions tend to vary with these exercises dependent on the level of the lifter. I find that novices cannot hold a good position for a lot of repetitions to start with, so I tend to go from 6 t0 10 repetitions but do more sets initially. Then I want to lift repetitions to 12 to 20 repetitions in pure hypertrophy phases and vary the grip width and positions that we work on to try to not over work forearm and bicep muscles especially if deadlifting a higher volume as well. I tend to try to work on some tempo work to vary the load that can be utilised and also to work on isometric upper back strength, which is important for a bigger bench press. Trying to pause the weight for between 1 and 4 seconds at the bottom of the pulldown.
The key with this exercise is position and control to get the best activation of all the RIGHT muscles, rather than just heaving a heavy weight with a whole bunch of movement that is unnecessary and unlikely to cause change when it comes to bench press.
Wide Grip Seated Row
I have been using these to improve bench position. For these you are working on a cable tower with two handles where you are sitting on the ground, legs in front. You pull from a wide angle, creating a different leverage point on this exercise. I have found, and people who use this exercise have found it really good for targeting the whole upper back and Lats especially with this movement pattern. You can work really hard on protraction and retraction of the scapula into this movement, with long holds, to stimulate your upper back in a bench press similar position.
We vary hand position, hand and forearm angle and torso lean (angle) to vary the forces placed on the body.
Reps in this exercise we tend to vary depending on the angles that we place on the body. Rep ranges are from 6 to 20 repetitions generally and we tend to place a higher set volume on these exercises especially in hypertrophy phases.
Bench Press for Powerlifting
So, the question is always asked about why people arch in the bench press.
Two reasons:
- I will never forget Dan Baker, one of my role models in Strength and Conditioning explaining the specific angles placed when a bench press is done where there is an arch present and the pressure is forced “back” where the head of humerus is driven back into the back of the shoulder socket, where you try to purposely retract your scapulas, and push your chest up to meet the bar. It was in a strength and conditioning course and he talked about the benefits of this way of bench pressing, compared to laying flat on a bench, where its almost impossible to get a full range of motion without your shoulder internally rotating, therefore placing more pressure on your anterior (front) rotator cuff capsule.
- To try to reduce the range of motion to push the bar to full extension. This is a sport specific adaptation, just the same as a football player wears shoulder pads, or shin pads in soccer or a racing car driver gets a rollcage. Its a protection measure and a performance measure. The argument here is the less far you have to press, the easier it is to press heavy. For most cases in my experiences if you can shorten the bar path, then you can build a bigger bench around this. For some with long arms though, like myself, its a case of just getting stronger and doing whatever we can to decrease the range of motion by becoming more mobile through our thoracic spines.
The main reason that I personally do not use bench press in a lot of athlete programs is because whilst I accept that it is a useful testing tool, for upper body push absolute strength, it is not useful in a sports specific context, just because of the risk of injuries. The landmine press in a single arm format is in my opinion a much more functional exercise, due to the cross body effects it creates, which mimics many sports actions such as throwing, hitting, absorption of force and contact creation.
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