Activate The Chest When You Bench Press | NattyOrNot.com

Activate The Chest When You Bench Press | NattyOrNot.com

On paper the bench press is supposed to
be a chest, triceps and shoulder exercise. However, since it’s a
compound movement that involves many muscle group, sometimes one of the
muscles will be lagging and performing less work. Often that’s the
chest. Many people develop bigger arms
and shoulders from bench presses alone, but there chests remain flat
and underdeveloped. In this article we will show you how to activate
your chest when doing the bench press.

1.Lower the amount of weight you are lifting

You ego may hate it, but in order to
learn proper technique you need to lower the weight. If the weight is
too heavy, chances are you will focus mainly on lifting the barbell in
anyway possible. This is called ego lifting and is the reason why your dominant body parts take over. Lower the weight and start working on your bench press technique.

Pectoralis major muscle

2.Grab the bar really hard

When you hold the bar as hard as you can
you are forming a strong base and increase the muscle tension. In this
case that’s good because unlike sports such as swimming lifting weights
is about strength, and tension is required. When you hold the bar harder
you immediately improve your strength because less of it is lost in the
nothingness when you push-up. You will feel tension going down from
your forearms, into your biceps and even in your chest by just holding
the bar tight.

Squeeze!

3.Lower the bar under control

Don’t just let the bar crash on your
chest. Hold it tight and lower it under control. A great deal of people
only care about the lifting part but the negative (lowering) is just as
important since it prepares you for the actual pushing phase. If you are
not tight and don’t lower the weight under control, you are losing
strength. Your joints are also compromised. Be in control of the weight
as much as it allows you.

4.Stick your chest out, arch your back

Excessive arching of your spine is
counter productive. However, you need some of it to stretch your chest
and sort of pre-load it. Stick your chest out, keep your shoulders
pressing against the bench and flex your lats in order to stabilize the
shoulder blades in place. Keep your shoulders tight all the time. If you
let your shoulder lose its tightness, you are putting it in a
compromised position where it’s separated from your torso. That’s
weakness and possible injury may occur. If you do the bench press
correctly, you will feel your lats working really hard to stabilize the
weight, keep the arch and reduce the unnecessary mobility of the
shoulder joint.

5.Don’t keep your elbows too close to your body

You shouldn’t keep your elbows your
elbows too close to your body. Flare your elbows to the sides a little.
This will keep the stretch of the pectoral muscles. If your elbows are
tucked too close to your body, you are sort of reducing the tension on
your chest muscles and placing more of the load on the front deltoids
and upper arms. However, don’t flare your arms too much either because
flared elbows and wide grip will kill your shoulders in a heartbeat. Somewhere in the middle is the best.

6.On the way up imagine that you are trying to bring your arms together

While all other points are important,
this one makes all the difference. When you are pushing the weight up
imagine that you are trying you bring your hands together. DON’T
ACTUALLY DO IT! Just imagine it. It helps if you visualize a spring
being squeezed between your hands. If you do this technique correctly,
it will give you a great chest pump. You can even do it when you are
performing other exercises such as push-ups and dumbbell bench presses.

Safer "BENCHLESS" Bench Press! - YouTube

Published on 15 Dec 2012

Build more than just a bigger chest - http://athleanx.com/x/bigchestandmore

Want to build a bigger chest and you know you should be doing lots of bench presses to get it? The only problem is that you don't have a bench. That could be a problem. Not necessarily. In this video, I'll show you how to build a bigger chest without needing a space eating bench press.


Again, the best part about this bench press exercise is that it can protect your shoulders by not putting your AC joint under too much stress and still allow you to build a big chest! Who doesn't want a bigger chest after all? And now you can do it from anywhere with limited equipment.

Lots of guys, despite not having a lot of weights or equipment, will have an old set of olympic weights and a bar that they may have picked up at a tag sale, online or that a friend or father gave them or handed down to them. If you're one of those guys, then all you'll need is this video and a little practice to nail this technique for doing the bench press in your home workout (all without a spotter!)

To perform this benchless bench press variation, just position yourself on the floor underneath the bar (it helps to put at least 45 pounds on the bar to give you enough room to get under). Put the bar just in the crease of your hips and grip the barbell so that your elbows are positioned in 90 degree angles. Thrust up with the hips into a bridge to put the bar in position to do the bench press.

For more innovative workout ideas and a step by step workout program to build a bigger chest with bench press and more, head to http://athleanx.com and get the proven pro athlete training system ATHLEAN-X.

5 Advanced Push-Up Exercises for Chest

Uploaded on 19 May 2011

http://www.sixpackfactory.com brings you this 5 advanced push-up exercises to make your home workouts a lot more effective and harder. If you want to build a big chest at home then these push-ups is what you shoudl do instead of the normal push-ups.

My Bench Press Sucks and I Don’t Care | Critical MAS

My Bench Press Sucks and I Don’t Care | Critical MAS

My Bench Press Sucks and I Don’t Care

Nov 10th, 2011

by MAS.

I’m going to share my dark embarrassing secret. My bench press sucks!
Since I started lifting weights in 1994, there have only been three periods where I could bench more than my weight. And then I could only muster up an extra 10 or so more pounds. Until recently this has always bothered me a little. How much a man can bench press has for longest time been one of the three metrics for success in the gym. The other two being the squat and dead lift.

In the article Are You Strong? author and fitness professional Tim Henriques makes the case that a decent bench press is 225 pounds or 1.25 times body weight. Achieving a good bench press requires 315 pounds or 1.5 times body weight. This means that for vast majority of the time I’ve been lifting weights, I’ve been less than decent. This used to bother me. Not anymore.

Why I No Longer Care About the Bench Press

#1 Accepting my Somatype

I am 6 foot and 2.5 inches tall (189 cm). My arms are long and my wrists are small. I am an ectomorph. Ectomorphs across the board suck at the bench press. We have greater weak points in the movement. Shorter guys excel at this movement, as do men with thick wrists.

Back when I was a member of a hard core gym in South Tampa, the guys that could bench 400+ pounds were all under 5′ 10 and had stocky builds. Seeing a true ectomorph bench more than his weight after college is a rare site.

#2 Understanding that the Bench Press is a Technical Move

The bench press isn’t just a way to develop strength. It is a technical movement. The goal is to lower and lift as much weight as possible without hurting yourself. Although the primary muscle being targeted is the pectoralis major, the bench press will also target the anterior deltoids, serratus anterior, coracobrachialis, scapulae fixers, trapezii, and the triceps. Each muscle has a limiting factor. Getting them all to work together to share the load via form and timing isn’t just about having more strength. Like any sport, one needs to train the movement itself.

That may all seem like common sense, but the reason many men go to the gym in the first place is to build muscle, not have a better bench press. We later – falsely – draw the conclusion that in order to have more chest muscle we need to have a greater bench press. I care about muscle, not bragging rights to some number.

#3 Embracing The Negative

One of the aspects of High Intensity Training that I’ve learned to love is the focus on negatives. By slowing down the lowering of the weight, you will recruit more muscle and fatigue much faster. From Negative Training for Positive Results by Dave Durell:

During the negative, or lowering, phase of a repetition, the muscle fibers involved are lengthening under tension. Your muscles are much stronger during this phase than during the positive, or lifting phase. Even when you reach positive failure during an exercise, and can no longer lift a certain weight with good form, the truth is there is still a lot of strength left in that muscle. Negative training allows you to tap into that unused strength, overloading the muscle at a much deeper level, and stimulating it to respond by growing bigger and stronger.

This type of overload has tremendous strength and muscle building properties. It is possible to get VERY big and strong VERY quickly with negative only training.

In order to get a higher bench press number, you’ll want to avoid negative fatigue so you have enough strength to safely complete the positive portion. So if my choice is to slow the negative portion of the lift using a lower weight or having a higher bench press number with less muscle recruitment, I’ll take the lower number.

#4 Avoiding Injury

To get good at the bench press, you need to bench press a lot. This brings us back to our old friend survivorship bias. I see lots of guys in the 20s slamming serious weights. I see a few guys doing it in their 30s. Where are the 40-60 year old guys at? Occasionally I’ll see one, but it is a rare site. Where did all those guys that had amazing bench press numbers 10-20 years ago go? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: People do not en masse voluntarily quit participating in something for which they are highly skilled doing. What happened?

The fitness websites are filled with reports if injuries related to bench pressing. The body doesn’t have an unlimited capacity for recovery. And because the bench press is a technical move, being off a few inches or a second in timing can result in injury.

#5 The Modern Gym

Assume that I changed my opinion about the bench press and my goal was to get decent or even good at it. To be safe, I would need to have a spotter. Back in the pre-iPod days, guys in the free weight room acknowledged each other. Sometimes they even spoke to one another. Real conservation! We asked for spots and we offered them. Not anymore. I haven’t been asked for a spot in over 5 years now.
Gym walls today have flat screen TVs showing sports highlights and MSNBC. Back in the day, the walls displayed photos of Frank Zane and Arnold. The free weight rooms went from a group of fellow lifters helping each other out to a room full of iPod wearing, TV watching zombies. Even if asking for a spot wasn’t considered old timey 20th century behavior, I wouldn’t trust anyone in the modern gym for a safe spot and that includes the staff.

Life After The Bench Press

I’ve done thousands bench press repetitions. Although it did help me gain some muscle, it also resulted in a rounded mid back and contributed to my wrist surgery. Was there a better, safer way to develop chest muscles? I now think so.

In the past year, I have done High Intensity Training using Super Slow and static hold movements with machines. No more free weights. No more bench presses. For the first time in years, I actually gained new muscle. And I didn’t have to beat my body senseless to earn it.
How much can I bench press? I don’t know and I don’t care.