Everyone loves to get a few quick tips to make their lifts better right?
I am going to give you the tips that we give you our lifters, our new clients and anyone who wants to bench. I like to make it simple and I think this will help you to understand how to bench a lot better.
In this post I am only going over upper body cues.
I have 5 Tips for a Bigger Bench for you today and here they are in order:
Drag It
The first thing we want to do when accepting the handoff is to Drag It.
Think about dragging the bar out of the handoff person’s hands-drag your palms to your hips.
This forces you to lock the lats in and keep them engaged in the handoff.
Keeping the lats engaged makes you tighter and gives you a better and stronger platform to press from.
Stretch It
Once we have the bar in place for the press we need to stretch it.
Think about stretching a mini band out by puling your shoulder blades together and down.
Look at the photos.
Shoulder blades too far apart.
Better, but we need to pull them down. Shoulders in the back pocket.
Perfect. Note the shoulder blades are pulled down low.
Here is a quick drill you can do to Stretch It.
Hold a band at arms length as if you were lying on the bench and just took the handoff.
Stretch the band (bar) apart and put your shoulder blades in your back pocket.
Shorten It
Once we have the bar stretched we will continue to stretch it as we shorten it.
You need to squeeze your shoulder blades together and drive your ribs up as high as you can to make your bench stroke shorter.
You can see in the pictures that the stroke can be shortened by about an inch or more depending on how long your limbs are and how well you can engage your lats.
Note the distance of the bar from Kevin's hand.
Follow the tips and shorten it.
You can see here, Justine has used her lats to shorten the stroke and the bar is touching Kevin's hand.
Meet It
Meeting it means that you need to drive your body up to meet the bar. This is a huge piece of a big bench.
Make note of the position of the upper body and ribcage. Justine is not meeting it here.
This subtle difference is a big deal. She is driving her body up to meet the bar here.
The idea is to press the weight as short of a distance as possible. If you drive your body (rib cage) up to meet the bar and hit your high point (the highest point on your body, usually your bottom rib) you will lift more weight!
Smash It
The final piece of the puzzle is to smash it.
Smash Weight.
All of the tips being followed here!
This is where you press it.
When you initiate your press off the chest, SMASH it!
Fast.
The weight has been smashed.
SFW
Applying these tips to your bench should increase your bench in only one session.
Work at these and let me know how it goes.
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Vincere vel mori
