Barbell Shrugged - The Bench Press: You've Been Lied To

Episode Date: September 9, 2015

 In a community where the bench press is often overlooked we present you with some good reasons you may want to still include it in your training.

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we talk about some common bench press myths and how you can take your performance up a notch. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. It's about it was kung fu fighting. What? Some of them just went into the generic China song. We didn't quite have our kung fu fighting lyrics all night. All right, here we go. Three, two, one.

Welcome, everybody, to Barbell Shrugged. I am Chris Moore, joined here today by Doug Larson. AJ Roberts looking very meaty and strong. CTP Cam behind Cam number one What's up CTP? Show up Miles, behind camera number two Today we have a very interesting special episode Because we're talking about one of the most interesting

Infamous, loved, hated Whatever you want to say about the bench press Could be true depending on what you know about the bench press We want to break some myths and tell you why this exercise Is actually going to help you be a lot more fit and strong Than you might otherwise believe. Starting with maybe the first biggest myth I can think of, especially in a lot of CrossFit gyms today, and that is that this lift maybe is not all that functional.

Doug, what do you have to say about that? I don't even know what the hell that means. A muscle that can contract harder and stronger is a more functional muscle in most cases. So being stronger is generally better. You try to say your wieners functional, dude. Yes. My wiener is made out of pure muscle.

So it comes to the bench press. What is that exercise best designed to do? What's it going to strengthen? If I'm curious about it, I'm actually going to turn that one over to Mr. AJ Roberts, which he's been on the show many, many times.

But for those of you that don't know him, he is a powerlifting extraordinaire. You benched 910 at one point, and everybody's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, but it's true, right? Yeah. So this show isn't necessarily about that. He's a little bigger.

He's a little bigger. Trying to shorten that range of motion by drawing this out. But you know a hell of a lot about the lift. Is it functional? Every lift is functional unless it becomes like an obsession. So if you just do one lift, and as a powerlifter, you pretty much tend to focus on the big three, squat, bench, deadlift. If you just focus on that lift, then no, it's not functional.

But if it's incorporated into a training regime, then it's absolutely functional. And to not have it, it's ridiculous. It'd be like taking the squat out. I'm not a powerlifter. I don't need a squat. I don't think anyone would agree with you. You get a few people say, oh, yeah, squatting hurts your knees.

Research has proved that that's BS. You cannot train all the planes of motion by just doing overhead. Yeah. Right? That's the common thing in CrossFit, Jim, is just overhead pretty much all the time. Right. And you think of how many lifts use that different range of planes of motion,

how many movements, like not training the barbell. That's the compound lift. Everything else is non-compound. So to take it out, it doesn't make any sense to me. It never has made any sense to me. And I think that that alone, people can just stop and think and be like, why would I not bench press? And there's really not a good reason not to.

A lot of people say some ridiculous things like it's not functional because you're laying on your back. You never just lay on your back in sports. I had a fucking football coach say that one time. He was like, we never lay on our back on a football field. If that happens, you lost. Your ass is out of the game. I'm like, well, that and there's gravity. We have to use gravity to lift the weight. If we're going to train our chest, that's how we do it in the gym.

What does every lineman do? They push. Every lineman shoves. Yeah, you push in front of you. So you can press overhead, but that's not. Do you think of a wrestler or a fighter? They're on the back a lot, and so you might not be bench pressing. But in terms of pushing, there's a lot of sports that include pushing.

And even CrossFit, a push-up, like basic movement, a push-up, like the second part of a muscle-up, like you're using the chest. And in my opinion, it's not just a chest movement, but primarily is the chest. The chest gets activated in a lot of movements. So, like, again, why would you not use it? That might be a point. People say it's an isolating thing.

Like, I don't want to just hit my upper chest or just my shoulders and my chest. I want to make sure I do things that transfer the whole body moves. But your point about the bench press, this really is a full-body exercise. Yeah. If it's done correctly. And I guess that brings us to our next point, which is it's not a cool lift. It's a bro lift. I'm pretty sure Rich Froning fucking bench presses every day of the week.

Sometimes it seems based on something. Every day of the week. It doesn't seem to be hurting his ability to win fucking CrossFit events. I mean, traditionally, a bro lift, yeah. But it's a bro lift because everyone knows that lift. Like, that's the lift that everyone asks you. Like, if you say you work out, they say, well, what do you bench? Right?

And then, of course, they have a cousin who benches, like, more than the world record that's ever been done. Everyone has that. Doug actually can say, like, I have have friends who i got some of those friends but uh you know in general like people think because of that it became the bro lift which i'm not really sure how it got left out of just regular movement for for everything else transfers over but the bench press is the one thing that's like no leave that out and out. And it's like. Yeah, I mean, if having a 400-pound squat makes 95-pound thrusters that much easier, then there's no reason that having a really big bench, maybe 300, 400 pounds for someone who's a really, really good athlete,

someone who's a regionals-level competitor or a games athlete wouldn't be able to crush push-ups because they have such a high bench press. The average person who's not ever going to go to the games or is going to go to, you know, even to regionals as a CrossFit competitor, they're never going to compete in powerlifting as well, they probably want to just put on some muscle mass. They want to be stronger with their upper body. They want to be able to do more push-ups. And the bench presses is one thing that can help you achieve some of those goals. And there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it.

If you do it wrong, just like any movement with bad technique, you're going to get some shoulder problems. If you overhead press incorrectly, if you squat incorrectly wrong way to do it if you do it wrong just like any movement with bad technique you're going to get some shoulder problems if you overhead press incorrectly if you squat incorrectly definitely correctly it doesn't matter if you do it wrong you're going to get some shoulder problems people that bench press since there's so many more people that bench press than probably do squats and deadlifts as far as the general population like in every junior high and high school and global gym in america there's way more people that bench press than would ever do squats and deadlifts and so you're going to have a lot more people that have an opinion on it. And you're gonna have a lot more people that are injured from it. And so just from that, that, that large sample size,

you're going to see people that have problems with it, but there's a lot of people that do it correctly that don't have quite as many problems. Um, with the exception of some of the people that are chasing these enormous numbers, these world record type numbers. And some of those people, yeah, they did, they tore their peck and whatnot but these are small anecdotes by and large if you're a regular person you bench you know you bench 200 pounds or 250 or whatever like a kind of a normal number for a guy who's just getting into weight training you know you can bench press if you do it correctly without very many problems i think we should do it correctly because we go back to you know excuses people make myths are out there it's like oh the bench press is going to injure you,

especially like the shoulders. And in fact, a lot of coaches I know in sports will limit the range of motion of the bench press because of that. And the truth is, it's like overhead squatting or snatching. Like you have to progress to it. So if you have mobility issues,

you're not going to bench press, right? You're going to fix those issues first and then bench press. But it's just like anything. If you can't do a bodyweight push-up right like how would you start doing push-ups well you can do a 45 pound bar well actually you could do a 25 pound bar and then a 35 pound bar then so it's a safer movement than if you can't do a push-up and like a lot of a lot of female athletes when they begin can't do push-ups. So how do you train if you can't do a push-up? I'd say any time I try to get around, shorten the range of motion because something was hurting

or I was afraid of hurting something, in this case doing board presses or partial bench presses because I was afraid of my shoulders, that's when my shoulders start having problems. When I got away from doing full range of motion, proper loading. And then dropping the load to something that I could go to my chest with good form, comfortably with, that way I could actually to my chest with good form comfortably with. That way I could actually rebuild the strength and then have better performance later on.

Very simple point to make. Now there's a point to make about the dangers, potential dangers of bench press. It is one of these lifts like Dr. Andy Fry told me years and years ago

who's my mentor at the University of Memphis. A really great sports scientist now at the University of Kansas. If you're around the area go check him out. Learn a thing or two. But when we used to teach

in class like the basics of resistance training, we'd always tell people, you've got to be careful with this lift because this is the one thing that could turn into a potential guillotine for you in a gym. We've all heard about horror stories of people who have potentially gotten hurt in a gym where you've seen a guy drop a bar on his chest. That can happen, right? Go Google bench press fail.

Go to YouTube, bench press fail. You'll see plenty of people dropping,, three, four, five hundred pounds either on their chest, on their neck, or on their face. Obviously, face seems to be the one that is probably the scariest, but really, obviously, the neck's the one that's probably going to kill you. As opposed to squats or deadlifts, nobody dies squatting

or deadlifting. That really doesn't happen. There's some freak accidents that happen on occasion. People pass out. You pass out. If you to drop the weight it's not gonna decapitate you right yeah but bench press seems to be the one that actually is the most dangerous out of all of them because that's the one where systematically people drop the bar right on themselves and there's nowhere for the bar to go yeah you're gonna where's it gonna go especially if you got a big belly it's only gonna hit and go towards your neck yeah right you've

seen that video where the dude is on his neck and he's struggling, he's struggling. It's not funny. I don't know why I'm smiling. He gets the weights to shake off right at the last second. There's another one where the guy's benching and he comes off the bench. He's yelling, Mom. And then he tries to roll it and he's got a fish tank behind

and smashes the head. Those are some great videos. But back to the point, as long as you have a spotter or if you're using a power rack, and I think that's a big thing. Most gyms now have power racks. There's no reason to bench

without a power rack, and you can set the pins up. Something like right behind us here. Yeah, but if you have a set up like this, even if you're on your own, there are ways you can do it where it can be very safe. If you're in,

like I started bench pressing, if you're in on a Sears catalog special where the uprights are right by your ears and they're very tiny and you grab wide and you're by yourself and there's no one there to help you, that's like a standard operating procedure error on your part. So the truth of the lift is that it can be dangerous. But the myth is that it's dangerous if you have a spotter there, if you're loading appropriately, full range of motions. If you're not, the big one is if you're putting your fucking thumb all the way around that barbell and actually properly securing it in your hands you're cutting down the wrist agent why do you think people start doing why do people start doing that shit to begin with the thumbs around we'll talk about technique later but a lot of it's

just injury right it's it so it hurts so they just power lifters are very guilty of that you'll see them like they take their hands out wider and wider and they'll change their grip they'll take their pinkies off and you know they'll do all these things because there's an injury there. But what you should do is recognize that that is actually a mobility test. Boom, I can't bench press with elbow pain or something and go away from that. But I think that it comes down to most people look at the bench press, and it's like that's a power lift. And they look at what is becoming functional fitness now, which is really...

Bench press is not in the CrossFit Games. It's not in the Games. Therefore, I don't get to pay attention to it, right? It's probably not going to put it in a Metcon. Yeah, it doesn't help me with my Olympic lifting. And I'll get confused. If I see a treadmill or a rowing machine in the Games, but not a bench press, I'm like,

what do we fucking define a functional as? I'm confused. Say it to their face, Chris. What do we define a functional as? I'm just pointing at the camera. I'm not making it. I've said this before. What's funny is I'm not making it. I said this before. What's funny is like,

you know, I'm friends with Castro, hung out with Castro. Like, there's no rules on what's in the games and what's not in the games. Like, he said to me, like, he doesn't want it

to go Ninja Warrior style. But in terms of like what he can add in, like, no one has told, like, there's no rules being like, if you're running a CrossFit competition

or, you know, a games competition, this is what you can, there there is no rule he could put a bench press in if he wanted to he could put anything in he wanted he could all of a sudden say sumo deadlifts let's go and everyone be like sumo deadlifts i thought we had to do conventional like that's another thing you should do by the way i'll see that for another show yeah but it comes back to this as like just like you like you know you do kipping pull-ups and you know whatnot but you still do regular pull-ups like you don't ignore the benefit of a pull-up just because you're allowed to do something there's there's training um for competition and then there's training to get stronger and i think the biggest thing is you got to understand that the the game

of of fitness is is the game like a football game but training is still training and so just like football players go to the gym and train and then go and compete and they do their skill work, that's how you should view your training. So if you want to get better at being a competitive athlete, then you have to have the foundations that you build upon. And to me, the bench press should be amongst your foundational lifts. I think it's a fundamental lift that feeds into it. If you build a base of strength on that fundamental barbell lift, because if you hate it or love it, it is a fundamental, simple lift, and it has crossover to other things where you'll be extending your arms under load, dips and other kinds of presses overhead. Making sure you don't suck at the bench press will make sure you have a

better performance in other lifts. And Charlotte, do chicks like big chests? Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, that's another thing. If you're going to have a big, small chest, maybe your chances of getting lucky in all kinds of ways in the gym are improved. I want to bring up a big one that comes to my mind in terms of myths. I remember going to a weightlifting meet one time

and seeing a weightlifter. He had a shirt on that says, do not fucking ask me how much I bench press. Something to that effect, as if it was, like, offensive. Why do you guys think that weightlifters maybe have shied away from it? At least maybe people who are new to weightlifting. Olympic weightlifters at least maybe people who are new Olympic weightlifters or maybe people who are new to weightlifting and CrossFit gyms why do you think they shy away from this I don't know if Olympic lifters have more so it's like the what people think like I was having this conversation with

Kurt and Alex who are our flight coaches and I I was saying how, like, for me, I've studied Olympic weightlifting, and it seems like the majority of the world outside the U.S. do compound movements first, then Olympic lifts. But over here, it's like the first thing they do is the Olympic lifts. And I'm like, wait, wait. They jump right in. I'm like, oh. And the reason they do that overseas, from what I've heard,

is that they train the olympic lifts in a fatigued state to perfect technique because you can't perfect technique fresh because you won't make a mistake so you you you train strength first and then you practice technique um and so i'm like oh that makes total sense to me over here they don't do this and they bench press and they do overhead variations they do all sorts of stuff their programs are very and they do overhead variations. They do all sorts of stuff. Their programs are very inclusive. They do jumps. They do all this stuff. Over here, it seems like most Olympic lifters think you have to Olympic lift nonstop every single day.

I like the way you're talking, British boy. Hey, man. So it's interesting because I look at it and I'm like, okay, well, I would never recommend someone to bench press every day. We can talk programming all day long. We will, so you can have a show. That's not what we're saying. It's like you shouldn't avoid something because you have a reason that's not here or it's not there.

Training, you should be doing everything. To be a great human and be able to move, you should be able to run, you should be able to swim, you should be able to do all those things. Like we saw, when they added swimming into the games people were like like fish out of water like they didn't know what to do and then they start training swimming and now they can swim so it's like at first you might not be out of bench press but you know you progress you go slowly and now you've added a movement in that's made you better as a human right it seems like

people used to value the bench press way more than they currently do. Like 40 years ago when bodybuilding was in its prime and really physique was the thing, having big shoulders, big triceps, big pecs, and just everything on the front of you, especially since people are looking themselves in the mirror. Being 70s big.

70s big is a great way of putting that. Is that website still around, by the way? I think it is. Those guys are great, man. Yeah, that was a good site. If you're going to look one way, that 70s big is a great way of putting that is that website still around by the way? I think it is, those guys are great man that was a good site, if you're going to look one way that 70s big look, big hairy chest burly chest, Charlotte will be over the 70s big type guy why are people shaving their chest? Come on boys

let's get the chest hair back in the game so aesthetics really was the thing unless you were a football player or something like that everyone else was doing it just to look good but the progression since then has been that bench press has almost been undervalued in the last 10 years but while it was overvalued maybe 30 or 40 years ago the pendulum has swung right and what once was probably emphasized too much is now completely de-emphasized right um and a little bit comes down to people's equipment. Like a lot of gyms now cater to large groups training versus individuals.

And so they might not have enough benches, so to speak. Right. They can't just be like, get a partner. And now they've got 15 groups of people that all need a bench press. It just doesn't happen. Usually most typical CrossFit gyms, they might have one or two or three maybe benches, but they typically don't have six or 10. There's variations you can do. We made a point

about covering this, but if you don't have a bunch of benches in your gym and you do want to do it, you can still do things like floor presses, which are pretty common at CrossFit gyms because if you have a big row of rogue racks, you can set up ten bars across the front and actually do that lift and get probably 99% of all the characteristics of the bench press while having the bench

lined up in each rack. You cheap motherfuckers. Cheap motherfuckers. Yeah, I mean, it limits range of motion, but there's other ways around it too, you know, to go full range of motion.

There's the things you can come up with and benches aren't that expensive of an investment to be honest. If you're looking at everything you can use

a bench for, it's not just for bench pressing. I want to say this, this bench right here, this Rogue assembled one, they will ship this to you. It comes unbolted.

This is my favorite bench I've ever used. I've been benching since I was in middle school and then had a lot of competitive years benching all kinds. This rack, this thing is cheap and awesome. Not a lot of people know. Bill spent a lot of time at Westside with Louie going over equipment and how to build.

So a lot of the Rogue equipment is built off of Westside specs. So that's why their racks have the same hole spacing and even their rigs have the same hole spacing. It's because Bill really spent a lot of time figuring out like for, for, for the CrossFit athlete, like how do we take the very best strength equipment in the world and make sure we,

we produce that. So our equipment is not only more affordable, but it's superior. And that's something, you know, we see over and over again. But, but the bench press, you know, from, from using a bench press, you can do so many other exercises with it,

you know, rows and chest stuff, like you can use that. So, you know, I always look at investments and look at what can be used. And not only does it give you access to one of what I believe is, it should be a fundamental component of your training program. It also gives you access to a number of accessory movements and different things you can play in. And so you just, as a coach, it's like that one thing that gives you, you know, a hundred more variations of different exercises to change up the training. And that's really what it's about is having lots of variations so that you're a balanced

athlete from head to toe. And if you can't afford a bench press, go over to our other podcast, Barbell Business, with this guy right here. And get your shit together. Get some money right here people can bench people can floor press and also say if you can figure out a way get a bench that's just more incline bench presses sure are also a very effective version i say between those three variations you've got a lot of core movements that really should probably be in the program essentially we want to go from from full range of motion for all of our presses from overhead to straight ahead to decline to incline

and i know that julian had talked to you guys about a decline presses and the benefits of that to avoid uh pec minor issues if you have them yes it's interesting with the bench press it tends to be out of all the different pressing variations incline decline or a regular flat bench it tends to be the one that gives people the most problems and it doesn't mean it's necessarily unsafe it just means it's the one that that causes kind of the most stress on your shoulders the one that gives people the most problems. And that doesn't mean it's necessarily unsafe. It just means it's the one that causes kind of the most stress on your shoulders. The one where you would go into, if you're watching the video right now, it's the one where your shoulder would go into the most extension. If I'm inclining, I would only go to here probably. If I'm declining, I'm only going to go to here. And so the regular bench press, I'm just going

through a much larger range of motion. And if don't have uh the the actual range of motion extension wise and or internal rotation wise then you're going to compensate in some way and you're going to end up with some shoulder problems so even though the bench press we're going to talk about more about technique on part two after the break but uh even though it looks like it's a very a very easy very anyone could do it type exercise which is probably why it's so popular in a lot of ways. It doesn't look complicated. You lay on the ground, you go like that, and then you're done. But really, once you get into it,

there are some finer points to distinguish a good bench press from a bad bench press. It's like running. It looks simple but can cause problems if you don't know what the fuck you're doing. How'd y'all lose y'all's beach? Bench press virginity. Bench press virginity.

My bench press virginity. How'd you break a cherry, AJ? So I grew up playing basketball and and that's fucking hard to believe for some people watching the show this motherfucker can hoop man a lot of a lot of american players would come over to coach us and they would always talk about training and so it was really unknown in england to train for a sport um so i went out and bought a york don't you just drink a cup pints of beer go out there and get it and punch a guy? So you're either skilled or you're not skilled.

That's pretty much how it was growing up. So like at 10 or 12 years of age, if you haven't made it yet in your sport, like you're not going to. But I went out and bought a York barbell, you know, the plastic weights that stand inside some men or whatever. I had those too. The little leg extension. I busted my cherry in my buddy's backyard on a Sears Roebuck bench. Gross. My buddy's backyard.

My buddy's backyard. Those narrow uprights with little pipe. The hands were on the outside of the uprights. That fucking thing is a little bit of a death trap. And then stacked. I remember I stacked out so many of those concrete weights all the way to the end, like duct tape the end, So it got to 135. I go, holy shit, I just benched a plate.

I was like 13 years old. It fucking made my day, man. That was like a big pinnacle in my young life. I definitely remember that. I remember the first time I put the big plates on the bar. I was like, this is the best day of my life. And then one day you get to 225. I was like, what?

I'm a god. 225, bitch. When you're like 10th grade, gym class, testing your bench press. That's what it really is for the bench press. One plate, two plate, three. Everything in between doesn't count, right? So that's why you learn like 315 and 405. You learn to count on 45s.

It's the only like on the Olympic lifts, they count on like fractional kilos. That's right. Half a kilo. But in the bench press, it's like 25s and 45s. That's all that exists in the gym. From that west side, then you put plates or 25s or nothing else on the bar. No one's adding change to the bar. All right, let's take a quick break.

When we get back, we're going to share some specific things you can do to make sure you are programming the bench press effectively so you can take your gains and also your fitness goals in the right direction. See you soon. This is Tim Ferriss, and you are listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show,

go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter. And we're back. We are talking about the bench press and myths and truths of their end. One of the big points we made on the first half is that really with this lift, you can get in trouble in kind of two basic ways. If you just totally don't pay attention to it all and totally under-train this lift, that's a big no-no, even if you're a weightlifter, crossfitter, whatever. It has its place.

The other thing that can go wrong is if you put all your eggs in that basket, do nothing but specialize in the bench press. Well, that's obviously a problem too. Like cheeseburgers. And that's where your training focus can get a little distracted, and that's also inappropriate. So what we're suggesting right off the bat in part two is that there is a sweet spot in the benchmark.

Doug, what are your thoughts about what is strong enough for most people for the bench press? I think if you're kind of a regular guy, you just started training six months ago, a year ago, maybe even two years ago, the first milestone is just bench and body weight. If you're not a naturally, just freakishly strong person, bench and body weight is getting you kind of off the ground, so to that means you're not weak if you do that you're that's a

great foundation right you don't have this like glaring problem you're certainly not like freakishly strong at that point but you are you are on your way to to trying to get strong so be proud of that yeah yeah you should be proud of that that's like your first milestone okay like i'm not i'm not a total weakling anymore so that's that's kind of beginner um for the next the next milestone for being pretty strong like mildly strong i'd say his body weight and then kind of expert level strong like you are you are a legit bench presser you'd be benching double body weight certainly there are there are the world-class people out there that bench much heavier than that but i think those are easy to define standards to go by body weight body weight

and a half and then double body weight Most people probably won't get to double body weight You might not ever be an advanced bench presser But but most guys with a little bit of effort they can get to body weight in half in my opinion Especially if you weigh less than 200 pounds Like getting the body weight half is not that big of a deal if you're over 200 pounds that becomes a little bit harder But but getting to a 300 pound bench press for someone who's 200 pounds or heavier is not insurmountable. It's a very doable thing.

Is that for the senoritas as well? No, it'd probably be a little bit less for ladies, I'd say. Looking out for you girls. That's right. I'd say take like a quarter off of that. So you could say instead of benching body weight, you bench like 75% body weight, just tack off a quarter.

And then body weight in a quarter, body weight, you bench like 75% body weight, just tack off a quarter. And then body weight in a quarter, body weight in three quarters would be probably good for an advanced lady. If you're benching body weight, for most females, body weight is very good, relative strength-wise. Let me beg the question,

just for the chance of the audience to learn, why is that so that women would have a lower percentage for these benchmarks on the bench press? They just don't carry as much muscle. That's very true. Why are you laughing? I mean, I'm laughing because there's all this argument.

What's funny about that? About equality. What's up with you and women, AJ? But at a fundamental level, just like hormonally, we're totally different. And men are mostly testosterone, which allows us to add more muscle mass. And in any sport, you don't see at the elite level the equal numbers between genders.

So, you know, going off of that, and it's the same as scaling. Well, to be fair, they have to bring the bar not as far down, you know, some ladies more than others. Oh, God, here we go. That's true. Elaborate on that point. I'd love to hear it. I don't know. I would just say this.

If you can out-squat your bench, if you can out-bench your squat, you probably shouldn't bench press. That's bad. Also, if you can lie on the floor and for a floor press and you touch your chest before you hit the floor, you probably don't need to focus too much on the bench press. There's other things you should be focusing on. And so as long as the bench press doesn't come a focal point of your training that you're measuring your success on, you know, there's no such thing as too strong as long as it's relative, right? So it's only too strong as if you're squat 600 and you're benching five. You probably should work more on the lower body strength and you probably look like one of those

physique guys in the shorts, pencil legs. It's not like you're challenging a whole lot of frat boys out there. I had a frat guy tell me one time that he didn't feel the need to squat because he did a lot of benching in the gym, whatever the university students were training at. And he said, I do a lot of walking between classes, so I think I've got my bases covered. I don't know if that's true. Our flight coaches were frat boys, so I'm not really sure that applies.

Not to all of them, but there's a lot of jacked benches and some frats. Ripping on me for gender. Do some more dead squats. Stereotypical over here. We're frat do some more dead squats. It's stereotypical over here. We're frat boys. I'm running numbers in my head over here. So that was just an estimation. But now that I'm thinking about it, I feel like that's very high,

what I said for females. A better easy number would be maybe like two-thirds body weight, body weight and body weight and a third would be a good kind of beginner, intermediate, and closer to advanced. That won't be perfect either, but I think it's a good, easy baseline to think about that won't be easily forgotten. So two-thirds of body weight or body weight in a third.

The most impressive part of that advice, Doug, you said you're running numbers in your head. I'm like, how does he do that? I can run some things in my head, numbers aren't one of them. Adrian, you mentioned before, one of the most important things you can do in the bench press is ensure that you're not just doing this elbows out, isolation-type bodybuilding style movement for the chest,

that you're actually using your whole body that you're lowering and utilizing your lats to help, that you're using your legs to help produce force. Do you know some of the basic points people can take away for a technique that will help them get their head around how they can do that better? Yeah, if you're not understanding what Chris is saying, basically the bench press is a push press, right? And when you begin your bench press you you you're squeezing the bar pulling the bar apart which activates the latch you pull the barbell down so it's a row on the way down so it's the upper back uh back movement on the way down you initiate the drive the hip drive through the legs by pushing the floor away from you not down

into the ground because that will cause your butt to pop up anytime your butt comes off the bench you the transfer of strength basically is now lost. So you're pushing the ground away from you with your feet. That will transfer through the hips, up the body, initiate the movement off the chest. The chest is obviously a part of that movement. It will start to transfer to the shoulders and the triceps and you'll lock the weight out. If you're doing the movement correctly, you'll be pulling the barbell apart, which will allow your elbows to snap, keeping the shoulders and everything safe. If you're doing the movement incorrectly, which is how most bodybuilders bench, they squeeze the barbell together to isolate the chest more. You squeeze the barbell together.

That's why they don't lock it out. Totally different goal in mind. It's a whole different goal, and it doesn't serve purpose. I think most people make the mistake that they come in, they don't have their shoulders set, squeezed together down and back, which opens the ribcage, opens the chest. They're flat, so not only do they have an angle here, range of motion is greater, plus now the elbows are more likely to flare out. When you come here, the elbow's going to stay nice and close to the body, and by pulling out, keeps the elbows in.

You don't want to be too far in, but you don't want to be too far out. And the angle you're going for on the bench is basically wrist and forearm are vertical with the ground. So straight down, straight up. And basically, your movement is straight. And obviously, that straight line is going to be dependent on how good your setup is. The more correct your setup, which you'll see the arch. The arch is really in the upper back, not the lower back.

A lot of people try to get their lower back arched. You're not benching to your belly button, so it doesn't make a difference there. Yeah, that's the only really important. If you're doing the lift to compete in a piloting event where you're trying to maximize every variable, you're not going to worry about excessive arch if you're training just to be strong in upper body.

And your spine naturally curves. So when you just lie down flat, you should have an arch. Like, if you have a flat back, be strong in the body and your spine naturally curves so when you just lie down flat you should have an arch like if you have a flat back you probably have a problem with your spine

and you're going to be great if you just lay down on a fucking bench like a dead fish you're going to have a lot of stability problems it's going to make it a lot less safe

that's how most people do it arching will make it safer not necessarily more dangerous when you get set up put it this way it's not comfortable

if you're doing it right because when you start a lift and any lift I talk about this in the squat as well when you start a lift, and any lift, I talk about this in the squat as well, when you start a lift, everything is tight. Everything is braced.

Everything is squeezing. You're activating as much muscle. Yeah, coil tension. But you're trying to activate as much muscle as possible. If you just lay down and you're just going to let the barbell move, fall down, and then you're going to try to press against it, now you are going to cause injury. So it's very key that you understand how to get set up for every lift.

I think that's a key mistake a lot of people make in most lifts is that they're loosey-goosey. They're not tight. And if you're laying down and I can walk up to you and shake your leg, you're not ready to bench press. So you've got to get set up right. Because you're going to shake when you're trying to press. And when you get set up right, and this is how you hear a lot of powerlifting coaches say, I can add 50 pounds to your bench press. It's not strength that we're adding.

It's just the technique. And once we get you set up right, you'll be able to lift more weight, which is obviously safer because you're in a better position that leverages your levers. Well, as Bubba Sparks says, get it right, get it tight. Get it right. Bubba Sparks is your wise man. You can see that really easy with oftentimes women who they'll go down.

Well, they'll usually be really wide like this almost touching like up by their collarbones but then if they can't get it their legs kick off the ground it happens it happens all the time improve your chances of getting the lift we say that right and for some reason well usually they're laughing when that happens like they'll they won't be able to press it they'll start laughing and their leg will kick off the ground like they're they're very loose and they're not used to being in that tucked, arched, elbows in type position where they're activated as much muscle mass as possible.

And then you can see it by the fact that when they can't get the lift, like all of a sudden a leg is kicking off the ground. You wouldn't be able to do that if you were tight at all. The feet move at all, that's the first thing I would fix. If your base is not there, how the hell are you going to be strong and push a barbell? That's right. All right, so if you are brand new say say you're a guy and you you're not quite benching body weight yet you've only been lifting for like a year you want to add some upper body mass you want to add some strength you're not necessarily looking to to

compete in power lifting how would you go by about starting to implement more benching into your quote-unquote program well i mean it really depends on how you program um obviously i'm a big fan of conjugate which you would be going heavy twice a week on the upper body and so i would just add it into your variations if you're doing overhead variations throw the bench press in there once maybe twice a month depending on if you if you're a great overhead and very weak then you would put more bench press in but if you're if you're balanced and you know the focus is there put more bench press in. But if you're balanced and the focus is there, putting in bench press or just different bench presses, not necessarily

the regular bench press, but declines and inclines as well as overhead, changing your overhead to seated overhead as well as standing and things like that, mixing that variation in. And if you're a beginner and you're not very strong,'m still a fan of going to to max effort first um but to me max effort as soon as technique breaks you you stop versus like a technical max technical max and then drop the weight um to about 80 and perform you know three sets of five or something like that you can use prillipin's chart if you want to play with those variables on a weekly basis but i love it's a great But I love for beginners doing drop sets versus changing that first movement.

I still believe that you have to learn to strain to recruit more muscle, to get used to moving, handling heavier weights. You have to go there. You can't build maximal strength, true maximal strength through repetitions. You will get stronger. I wouldn't say we'll get stronger,

but you can't build the top end strength the way you can. And haven't seen a reason to change it singles is the safest thing due to a max Because as soon as technique breaks you stop whereas with repetitions oftentimes you do one or two reps with bad technique to finish the three Rep or five rep max that's the only reason I recommend that but I do know lots of people who get success with with rep Maxes so I wouldn't say then can't be used. But I prefer to do sub-maximal weight post-max effort to increase that base strength. You should be aware of technique on those heavy attempts. That's an interesting thing that people don't really know

that's counterintuitive is that you're absolutely right. Three rep maxes have been shown to be more dangerous than one rep maxes because of the fatigue that accumulates over those two or three reps. So if I heard you correctly, you said two times a week, some variation of heavy pressing. You didn't say that you had to do a flat barbell bench press every time. You said some type of horizontal press. It could be decline, could be incline, it could be dumbbells, it could be weighted pushups potentially, but heavy pressing

at least twice a week is what you said for beginners? Well, once would be the heavy press, the pushing movement. And then the second day is usually what we use as a dynamic or speed day which is technique day um what what i did was heavy like dumbbell stuff and shoulder work on those days um but uh i would i would avoid just bench pressing twice a week unless it was a severe weakness and you wanted to bring it up quickly and then kind of go back to more adding in the rotation of the overheads so if you're a crosser one day a week you're doing overhead stuff maybe have a jerk day it's fast maybe some push presses on a day maybe three days later you could choose the bench press you can work up to one to potentially five rm if you are doing everything

we said having good form having good spotters and you're not going to lose your technique then drop the load to like 90 of that and do some downsets three to five downsets of five reps or so just to get some practice in. And that's probably a pretty good starting point to get you going. Yeah. It depends on how often you're training. You know, if you're, if you're just training a regular hour, like, you know, four times, four times a week, um, then you're in Olympic lifts are going to be incorporated in there. And I consider Olympic lifts power movements being a lot of speed is involved in it. So I put those on technique days um versus like strength days and then the strength days i would have the bench press heavy push presses and

declines and inclines and things like that and that's how i would separate it now if you are able to train more than that you can have olympic days and if you're an athlete then you're going to be training multiple times a day and so you're going to have your base strength program which could be the the traditional conjugate style and then you're going to have your olympic stuff in there you're going to have gymnastic stuff in there as well so you can have sessions kind of like an mma fighter has where in the morning they do their strength and conditioning and then the rest of the day they go boxing coach here they roll jiu jitsu over there and then they come back together and bring it all together in a spa which as a crossfit you come in you do wads so you would have a session

where you do wads so depending on your ability to train is really going to depend on how frequent you can do it to have the balance. But if you just look at time in the gym, percentage of time doing it, if the bench press outweighs everything else, it's too much. And then if it's significantly less than everything else, it's probably too little. So at least one day a week where you're building up to a technical max, and then you're taking off maybe 20% doing three sets of five with that same weight on that same movement. And then the other day, two or three days later,

maybe like a Monday, Thursday type split, you would do some type of speed work. So you'd be looking at something that's lighter, maybe 60%, maybe 70% if you're an absolute beginner. If you do know your max, you're doing what, eight sets of doubles, something along those lines, and then a little volume after that. Yeah, I always like the Lewis protocol. But if you just look at prillipin's chart you could go off of that basically

um for for submaximal work as well to get a second session in what is that by the way just roughly you said you said it twice so you got to say it who the hell is prillipin um so it's just a it was based off of olympic weightlifting basically, it's the optimal. Depending on what shot you get, most of them have minimal amount of work that will induce a response. Minimal amount of reps? Yeah, reps and sets. And then optimal amount,

so the perfect amount that's going to really, and then maximal amount for your extreme. So based on your level, most beginners would be the minimal amount would get results. As you progress, if you're a high-level athlete, the optimal is going to work. And then if you're superior, i.e., like you're a Rich Fronin, then the maximal you can get away with, you recover, you do all those things.

And so that chart basically will tell you at this percentage, so at 60%, this is the sets and reps you should do. It gives you a dose for that load. Yeah, yeah. It keeps you in a safe zone. And if you look at most programming, like 531 and programs like that, they base a lot of their rep work and their assistant work off of that chart. So you're able to use that to program pretty much anything.

And if I could just offer a little personal segue to that, I use Prolipin's chart as no matter what crazy idea I would try when I was piloting, I told myself, let me stay within these boundaries just to see what would happen. And every time I stayed within there, I never had a problem with overreaching, trying to do too much. If I said today's a light day, I know 60 to 7% is a light day.

And here's the dose. I tried to just hit optimal and then go from there. If I was going to really heavy, it says don't exceed three repetitions at 90% of your max or more. I said, well, I'll take one, two,

maybe attempts and I won't go for a third or fourth. That kept me away from getting injured. It's a very simple way to draw a box around what's safe. If you look at the reason we do doubles, it's just because of time under tension for a maximal effort in competition. So the only reason we do like 12 sets of doubles for squatting and then eight to nine sets of triples for upper body work. Like if you look at the percentage of what number that equals,

it's 24 and 18, which fit right in the range for the 50 to 65% percentages that are on Priller Prince charts. So you can play basically on upper body day, you're looking around 18 repetitions total. You can break that up however you want. You can do three sets of six. You can do four sets of five. And you're a little bit over, but it's right in that range.

And you're in the ballpark for what's going to be optimal for building strength and mass and speed and performance. Right. So that's awesome advice probably for some of the coaches out there, because that was kind of a little more technical, a little more advanced than some of the beginners

might want to, might be ready to hear, rather, and be able to implement. So if you're a beginner and you want to know what the hell we just said, because that was a lot of information, go back and rewind and listen to it maybe two or three times. So that way it can all soak in. But right now I believe CTP has some questions from Instagram.

Hit us up. What do we got? What do we got? What do we got on this out? Don't see on the discovery channel the other day, they found a like Prilla Prince chart. Came out of the stone tablet. They dug up.

Let me say one thing about that chart. If you go to barbellshrug.com at this episode post, go to the post. I'll do two things in the show notes. I will put up a video from AJ. He gives a breakdown of just how you can make sure your technique is on point. AJ, we can include that in the show notes. We'll do that. That'll be very high value

for you, so check that out. Also, I will take that chart and put it down in the show notes with some examples of how you would apply this to your training that might help clarify some questions go to barbellstroke.com and you'll get that choice um choice bits of information i got a question that i think might help a lot of people homeboy i'm looking for a good one on instagrams at barbellstroke podcast on instagram um tell the good folks at home what might make a good spotter because i feel like a lot of people don't bench because they don't trust or no one's there to spot them,

and I've seen a ton of bad bench spotting that just makes me cringe. So for me, I was one of the better spotters at Westside because I didn't mind spotting. But for me, what makes a good spotter is it allows you to stay in the right position. So the spotter for the liftoff needs to understand that they're doing the majority of the work. And so whether you need to stand on a plate or something to be able to get the leverage to kind of lift the weight up, you want to lift the weight up, lift it out to the right position, and then release so that they can pretty much go right into the bench press.

Now, depending on the federation, you might have to hold it or whatnot, but you don't want to be, as a lifter, you don't want to have to lift it yourself. You don't want to have to pull the weights out. You don't want to untuck your shoulder blades. You don't want somebody dropping it on you, pulling up with all the effort, then just letting go all at once. Yeah, because that's what most people do. They'll set up, and then as they go to pull it out, because of where the rack is, they push, and now they're pulling out, and then they're in that bad position. So a good spotter will allow you to stay in that position, and

if you get loose, a good spotter will keep their hands on the bar until you're set and then release and and you want to be careful as a spotter to uh to not hold the bar or guide the bar because it will give people a false sense of security um and also uh just guiding the bar will allow them to lift more but at the same time you don't want to just walk away uh if you're able to have a rotation and there's four of you lifting you have two people on the side as well and they're the ones who would spot but in general to me a good spotter handoff man is someone who allow you to stay in that position as long as you're in the right position the risk of injury is going to be relatively low someone would say i say the vast majority of the time you actually shouldn't need a spotter you should just need

someone to give you a handoff yes that makes sense you shouldn't need someone to save you the vast vast vast majority of time if you're on your third attempt in a competition maybe there's people there to potentially save you you're really pushing the limits in the gym most of the time you just need someone to give you a good handoff put you in a good position but it should be a weight that you can hit most of the time that's why i'm a fan of the technical max as you as you framed it because um the minute technique breaks down now now we're in an unknown on how much more you can lift plus injury risk goes through that's how people tear their pack yeah i think that's the thing people make they you hear max effort they think until i fail it's not until you fail you should actually fail very almost never in a gym

i don't believe in fucking failing on a gym yeah no way no way i don't believe in failure i don't believe in failure first place your last place it's a point good spotter will be somebody who just listens to the show. And also who has a smaller package, so it's not just like dangling in your face. You got to make sure you got the shorts like hiked all the way up. Tuck the t-shirt in. Let me just say this real quick, because you just remind me.

I was bench pressing 225 rep tests at the University of Memphis when I was playing football my freshman year during freshman camp. It was whole intense. I was sucking myself up, taking this very seriously. And the assistant strength coach had a big dip in his mouth. He's like, come on, Morris, go. Let's go. He's spotting me.

I'm getting ready. He's like, three, two, teabag. And he puts his crossbar in my face. Not what you want in a good spotter. Not what you want in a good spotter. Definitely not. Next question. We got a lot of people chiming in about elbows out versus elbows in.

So Dustin3095, not to be confused with 3094, wants to know elbows out versus tight and parallel with the body. And again, lots of people were saying that. So what do you guys think? Well, I got to say what I think first thing. I think I cringe when I see people obviously chicken-winging to have their elbows way out. And then I see them over-tucking where their elbows are touching their sides. Both are very weak positions.

AJ, you want to say more about that? Yeah, I think it's about a 45-degree angle from the body. If you're 90, you're in trouble. If you're below 45, you're in trouble. About a 45-degree angle. And again, it comes to what you do with that barbell. If you're just grabbing the barbell and not actively pulling it apart, those elbows will flare out.

And a lot of the times it's because just like the squat, you know, you transfer the weight to the quads. In the bench press, the first place the body goes is the shoulders to protect the pec, right? So obviously, what you want to do is make sure you pull it apart and make sure you're at that 45 degree angle and you won't have a problem. Now, if you're extremely long limb, Doug mentioned earlier, your range of motion, so maybe doing declines or maybe shortening your range of motion with a board press or even a half a foam roll is going to be fine

until you can go through full range of motion. For our basketball players that we used to coach in college, we would use a two-board press. Each board is two inches, so that's four inches off the chest, but that was because they had seven and a half foot width. The range of motion is always so fucking long. So it's dependent on that. And so if you're a very tall athlete, superior limbs,

you don't have to go full range of motion to get the benefits. So you just want to always be aware that, like, you know, making sure you're moving safely. Right, and very similar to squatting, you want to be able to go up and go down with the exact same ortho mechanics. So you want to, if you are watching the video right now, if your elbows go down in this position, they should come up in that position. If you go down like this, and then as you come up, your elbows fly out like that. It's just like your knees wobbling in when you're

squatting. That means for some reason you don't have the ability. It's too heavy or you just lack strength or you just don't know how to have good technique or whatever there's something going wrong where your technique has broken down because you should be able to come up the exact same way that you went down so if your elbows are wobbling it's just like your knees wobbling you're probably going to have some type of shoulder injury in this case just like you would probably have some type of knee injury when you're squatting and that's why the band pull-pots is a very good exercise you can use to help with that. I would do that before I bench press every time, even if you're a beginner or you're for advanced. Face pulls and band pull-a-pots, I never will bench without doing that first.

Nailed it. All right, so let's see. We also got Dave Whitcomb says, how wide should your grip be? Are your arms at your side, elbows out or in? Well, you touched on that, but how wide is the grip? Well, again, the implication with most of these questions that is running through our head is how wide should your grip be when you're trying to hit a max attempt,

when you're trying to bench the most weight possible should you have your elbows in, should you have a certain grip on the bar. So in that case, kind of like elbow, or elbow, kind of like AJ. Hey, elbow. Kind of like AJ just said, if you are shoulder blades together and your elbows are 45 degrees off your body and you have a vertical shin, this is how wide your grip should be. In this case, you would be touching probably right at the very bottom of your sternum and your hands would be just slightly outside of your shoulders. That's where most people are going to have the most strength and the most stability where they can bench a lot of weight and they can do it without having a very high risk of injury.

That said, if you're just doing some volume work, it's actually okay to widen your grip a little bit and do some reps out here. When you do your speed work, it's okay to have a close grip bench or a wide grip bench. It's okay to have that variety. It's not necessarily bad for you, but when you actually are trying to bench the most possible to hit a PR or you're in a competition, then you want to have that optimum grip, which again is the same grip that I just laid out. Yeah. I always say train where you're weak and compete where you're strong. So I've

never heard you say that. Come on. I always say it. You're absolutely right in terms of like that forearm position, straight up, straight down. If we're inside the elbow, it's going to be more of a tricep movement and it's going to add a degree of difficulty. And if we're outside, it's going to add more shoulder and it's going to add a degree of difficulty. Now you'll see in competitive lifters, you'll see them with the widest grip possible.

Again, that's to limit range of motion. But also if you're wearing a bench press shirt, the bench press shirt adds a lot of compression and helps with the lift. So it takes a lot of pressure off as you're coming down. Imagine using a reverse band bench where the weight gets lighter on the way down. That's what the bench shirt allows it to do. So you actually don't have as much pressure on the shoulder as you would if you were raw. So you typically don't see raw lifters unless they've been lifting a long time and they've trained specifically to go wide. Most raw lifters are not very wide.

And one of the guys that comes to mind is Jeremy Hornstra. He was more of a close grip bencher because he had such huge triceps. So you definitely want to figure out what's best for you but but in terms of mechanics again yeah when that is straight basically wrist and elbow are in line you're in the strongest position mechanically boom boom uh let's see i'm gonna butcher this cow fan underscore als says does benching affect olympic weightlifting does it affect it no i'd say not directly so obviously bench press you're pushing straight forward out in front of you it's a horizontal press olympic weightlifting for the most part everything is overhead as far as your arms are concerned they're either down at your

sides or straight up overhead so you know if you if you clean 250 and then then you don't uh worry about and you don't worry about um hitting higher numbers on things that would normally improve your clean. You focus exclusively on bench press and your bench went from 200 to 250. Would your clean go up? Probably not really. So it's not a direct correlation, but that doesn't necessarily mean that if you're an Olympic weightlifter, you still shouldn't bench press or do any horizontal pressing. You still want to have balance within your training program where you have, um, you know, an equal number of sets and reps of horizontal pressing and pulling and overhead pressing and pulling for the most part that can skew a little bit. Um, if you are someone who again is specializing in something like Olympic weightlifting,

but you don't want to totally neglect it a hundred percent. So it's not something you need to focus on, but for just kind of your overall athleticism and for balance and for injury prevention, you still need to do some type of horizontal pressing. Especially, I would say, catching on the snatch position, that aggressive stop that happens with that snatch as you come up, boom, you have to hold in stability. The stronger your chest is, especially your upper chest.

Or if you're shaking at the top of your jerks, I mean, triceps matter. Yeah, the more stability you're going to have. Strong triceps are a good idea for everybody. And then, of course, with that press, really, if you get a good hip thrust, like it's only a tricep movement because if you can get it past your shoulders and into the triceps, so the bench press is going to develop the triceps a lot better than overhead pressing will because you can hit the

different heads and then that's all going to transfer over. So like you said, not directly, but indirectly, I would put money on that. If we continue to train your Olympic lifts added in the bench press and got you strong on the bench press, you would PR on your Olympic lifts. Very similar to, I think that Olympic weightlifters need to bench press. They need to also do strict pull-ups and they need to also do deadlifts. There's a bunch of debate about that and why that's important. But as far as just having stronger muscles from these core movements, I think stronger muscles are more functional muscles,

and they will help you in a strength sport, even if it's not the exact same movement pattern as the competitive lifts in that sport. Strong is strong. Strong is strong. That's right. Strong is strong. Two more questions, and let's wrap this up. Two more questions. Make it good, dude. Strong and strong. Strong and strong. That's right. Strong and strong. Two more questions and let's wrap this up.

Two more questions. Make it good, dude. Middleton B41 wants to know what variations to do when you live with shoulder pain when benching? I'm looking at you. I have had the,

you're looking at me because you know I've overcome the trials and tribulations of somebody with bicep tendonitis and sore chest. One thing I did lately, I did switch to decline for a little while.

That helped. Coupling that with a lot of pec minor work to loosen this up and stretch this out, that was money. It instantly went away. You can do, like AJ said, you can press to a little piece of foam or one board or two board to limit that as that heals. That just makes it so you don't have to come down as far.

Yeah, or you can use a great device. If you're a little short on your shoulders, I would also recommend a Mark Bell slingshot device. You can try that. Because just like a bench shirt but less so, it's going to stretch a little bit and give you a little bit of support at the bottom. Kind of protects you where you might be sore and help you at the bottom. So as you're doing soft tissue work, as you're maybe upping your high-quality fish oil, giving yourself some TLC, 10 or 11 care, doing your mobility work, because that's as important as all this work you're doing in the gym.

If you do those things, you should be able to get back to full range of motion pretty quick. Football bar is another one. Football bar, which is basically a neutral grip barbell. Chris is going to grab it while I'm explaining it. Are you saying football? Football. Sounds like you're saying foobabow. Foosball. Foobabow. Chris is showing it over here. Shendoyo.

Those bars have a neutral grip. It allows you to be in a neutral grip. That really helps, especially keeping the elbows closer to the body. And then, surprisingly enough, fat grips. If you have an axle or a thicker barbell, some gyms have a squat bar that's a lot thicker than a bench bar, but using a thicker barbell, it spreads the weight out differently, takes some pressure off the shoulders.

And then lastly, for rehab, if you just can't bench, the hanging kettlebells from the barbell and benching with that crazy if you can get a bamboo bar it will take it to the next level but that oscillation movement in the barbell creates vibration which basically flushes blood through the inflamed area and that's going to help you speed up recovery so i would add those three as well the instability probably activates rotator cuff a little bit more which adds stability to your shoulder as well. Doing something on the rings would be very similar

and probably easier to find. It must cross with gyms too. One more thing about fat grips. If you can press for a little while with a fat grip or a fat barbell, going back to a regular bar, it just feels like a toy in your hand. Just one easy, cheap way, a hack if you will, of improving performance really quickly. Improving performance. Alright, last one. Last one. How to get women while working out from john zoltan actually women i've heard i've heard before

that women when they see me bench and want to straddle i got a story for this is probably the best story so i was with ryan cannelli in vegas ryan cannelli for those don't know used to have the world record bench press uh he's now back again i'm trying to reclaim that he took some time off he went to jail. He went to jail. But he just came back. He benched 900 in competition. But I was with him in Vegas. And at the time, I was 16.

It was my first world champ. 18. It was my first world championship. And I idolized this guy. He's the biggest dude you've ever seen. This is a video of him doing like 405 for 25. So I says to him, I says, we're walking together. And there's all these hot chicks around.

It's his first time to Vegas, right? And so there's all these girls around. I'm like, dude, you must just get hell of women like you know i was naive kid right and he just looks at me he goes dude girls don't give crap about this it doesn't get me any girls and i'm like he's like watch and he these these uh girls are walking towards and he's like hi i'm ryan cannelli world record bench press holder puts his hand out and they're like uh and they walk away we don't walk but probably 20 feet and like three dudes come over to him they're like dude like what do you do you're huge and that

was the moment i realized that only dudes are the ones who come up the big dudes so like when you go to the bar when you just ruin the show it's like a guy coming up to you being like man what do you do i hardly like hardly any women will do that to you because they're like looking at you being like is he a nice guy is he a meathead like there's so much going through their mind from from from my experience and it's not probably not true for everyone like nothing's ever true for everyone but just in general there'll be more men interested in talking to you than women and uh but if you do find a woman who likes the muscles she's's a keeper. Never mind. Never mind. Don't bench press. Nothing like it.

It's a show and it's sad. Here's your barbell. We're in this show. Let's ask Charlotte. Charlotte, bench press? Is it a panty dropper? Just say yes. It's a panty dropper?

Some girls love it. There we go. Our official sanctioned barbell show advice, but if you see an attractive woman at a bar you want to potentially get to know them, go up and say, hi, my name is so-and-so. Nice to meet you. Start there. You know how fucking awesome my friend time is come on

anything like that anything else I think we've crushed all the potential given some awesome information I want to say thanks to everyone who did ask questions

we'll probably go on Instagram and answer the ones that were unanswered sure I would say just throw some bench press into your training

track the progress you make and let us know if we're right or if we're wrong if we're wrong fuck we apologize we don't know if we're right or if we're wrong. If we're wrong, fuck, we apologize. We don't know what we're talking about. But something tells me

we got some tips in here for you. Ladies and gentlemen, that's all we have for this episode of the Barbell Shrug Podcast. Go over to barbellshrug.com. Sign up for the newsletter if you haven't done that already. We send you great stuff. Also, you can go on to Stitcher, iTunes, wherever it is you listen to the show. Leave us a comment if you think we deserve it.

Of course we do. Look how handsome and awesome we are. And if you're on YouTube, click like, share. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to the channel. Click like, share. Share it with somebody. Share with somebody. If you want some merch, go to merch.barbershop.com.

We're starting to make more and more shirts, like Chris's cool hip extension shirt and this sweet D shirt. Ooh, let me model it. You look really good. You look really good behind the camera. Give the bar a baby. Ooh, my leg. That's all right. Not fit for modeling. See, look, I made it match my shoes, see? What else we got? We got Nutrition for Weightlifters coming out

here very soon. This is true. And Movement Specific Mobility. That podcast is going to be the shit. It's going to tell you exactly what you need to stretch and how to figure out what you need to stretch for squats and deadlifts. I'm really excited about that. It's probably going to come out in early October. If I, yep in early October. If you're on the newsletter, you'll be the first to know. Laser Gem, with that, get your ass to the gym and get some benching done. Get some benching done. See you next time.