In the last installment of Fix Your Bench I wrote about upper body cues, as I feel the upper body cues are the first priority in getting a bigger bench and once these are locked in, we can move on to the lower body.
The Bench Press is not an upper body lift, at least in the Powerlifting context.
It is a total body lift.
Think about it like this, your lower body is at least half of your muscle mass, unless you are an 80s Meatheadz comic strip right?
Why would you not use all of the available muscle mass and corresponding force that it can generate to move the most weight?
Over the years through my own training, getting coached on the bench by some of the best in the world and in training zillions of people over the past few decades in seminars, in person and at our Training Days, I have found that the lower body is the part where we see the biggest disconnect on force generation in the bench press.
I am going to try and explain it as simply as I can with a few pictures to make it easier.
Let’s review a few things:
As we go through our set up on the bench, we need to have a mental checklist that is streamlined and efficient.
Something like:
Grip
Lats
Hips
This would mean to establish your grip on the bar, then engage your lats and finally get your hips up high and ready to accept the handoff.
I’ll go over the lower body part as I have already covered the upper body in this article.
The first thing we need to realize is that we need to get our hips as high as we can before we accept the handoff. If your hips are at their highest point now, they cannot come off the bench as you press.
Seems reasonable?
Another thing we need to realize is that we never want to sacrifice arch for hip drive.
Giggie has too much arch here! Her toes are too far back to allow any hip drive.
It is possible to arch so much that you take the ability of the hips to drive the bar.
Giggie has a much better foot placement here. She'll be able to smash more weight by driving her hips.
You need to find a foot position that allows you to have a great arch and still drive your hips at the initiation of the press.
So how do you get your hips to drive?
There are 1000 cues that are used for this and I feel most are misunderstood.
We hear:
Heels Down
Toes Through the Shoes
Drive Your Legs
And more.
The most important thing we are to do here is twofold:
Have downward pressure on the heels and push the toes through the end of the shoes. Of these two, I think toes through shoes is more important because if you are doing this, the heels will have some downward pressure anyway.
To drive your toes through your shoes imagine you were benching in Chucks.
This is a physical cue we use to teach toes though the shoes.
Have your training partners put their feet against your toes as you try and push their feet away.
You want to push your toes all the way to the end of the white rubber cap on the Chucks and make them all squished into the ends of the shoes. Try and push them right through the rubber.
Once we have that done, drive your heel down to the floor. It’s ok if they don’t touch the floor, they aren’t supposed too if you are a tucked in bencher. If you bench with your feet flat, they will touch the floor. Either way, you want to drive through the ends of the shoes and apply downward pressure at the heels through the entire range of the bench, even before you take the handoff.
We will apply this technique as the handoff is accepted, as we lower the bar and meet it, and as we initiate the press all the way until lockout.
Here you can see Giggie is driving her hip up BEFORE she takes the handoff. This sets her up for success!
Here is where it gets importanter (is that a word):
We should be meeting the bar by driving our ribcage up to it as we lower the bar down to touch right?
This is done by driving your toes through your shoes.
Meet that bar.
We also need to associate the press command with an unleashing of the most violence that you are capable of.
This is force production.
When the bar is on your chest and you are waiting for a press command, keep driving your ribs up, your toes through the shoes and your heels down.
When you get the press command, unleash hell by violently pushing harder and harder with your toes and heels in order to get your hips to press the weight before your upper body begins its work.
Another thing to work on is: knees out.
Olivia's knees are not out here. Her glutes will not fire as effectively in this position.
Same angle, same lifter.
Different knee position.
The knees are driven out firing the glutes here.
You need to push your knees out the entire time you are on the bench.
Pushing the knees out helps your hips to stay high and keeps your glutes tight and fired.
Your glutes are very strong muscles and will aid you in the bench press.
Putting it all together.
Have two training partners
put their feet in front of your toes and their knees against yours and PUSH their feet away and FORCE their legs away from your knees from the point that you take the handoff until the lift is finished.
Take a few minutes and look back over this and at the photos and then go and re read my article on Upper Body cues and put all of this together. Your bench will go up!
I was fortunate enough to learn these things from many great benchers including Vincent DiZenzo and Mike Miller. If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.
One more thing, if you want to fix your squat, join us this Saturday April 16th at noon at TPS for Squat Training Day.
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