Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1552: How to Have the Strongest Bench in the Gym

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover six different ways to add substantial weight to the amount you can bench. The gold standard of strength, the bench press. (1:58) Mind Pump’s biggest bench press mistakes. (5:45) The misinformation surrounding the bench press. (8:18) The powerlifter leverage versus the bodybuilder mentality. (10:13) How to Have the Strongest Bench in the Gym.  #1 – Strengthen the muscles that give you better posture. (13:00) #2 – Frequency is king. (18:25) #3 – Practice getting stronger at the overhead press. (25:54) #4 – Improve your shoulder mobility and stability. (29:37) #5 – Master the technique. (35:58) #6 – Advanced ways to increase your bench. (41:30) Related Links/Products Mentioned May Specials: MAPS Aesthetic & the Extreme Fitness Bundle 50% off!  **Promo code “MAYSPECIAL” at checkout** Visit Four Sigmatic for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout How to Fix Rounded Shoulders (GONE IN 4 STEPS!) | MIND PUMP The BEST Bench Press Set Up & Routine | The Muscle Doc – Mind Pump TV How to Bench Press with Proper Form (AVOID MISTAKES!) - Mind Pump TV Stop Working Out And Start Practicing – Mind Pump Blog How to Perform the Overhead Press (the CORRECT way) - Mind Pump TV How To IMPROVE Your Overhead Press | The Muscle Doc – Mind Pump TV The Official Indian Clubs Checklist (AVOID MISTAKES) | MIND PUMP TV Suspension Training Series - 3 Favorite Shoulder Exercises – Mind Pump TV Improve Your Overhead Press & Build Your Shoulders with Unilateral Kettlebell Carries – Mind Pump TV At Home Gym Equipment – Mind Pump Store Rubberbanditz Resistance Band Set Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pumped Right in Today's episode. We talk about the bench press. This is one of the most popular exercises around. And for good reason, it works the upper body

in tremendous ways, of course, develops the chest, shoulders, and the tricep. So in today's episode, we talk about how to have the strongest bench, how to bench press more than you are now, how to make it a big bench press. Now, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, for Sigmatic.

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this one's great for brain health and for cognitive performance. I've even noticed a performance improvement in the gym because I think when your brain is working better, you tend to be able to lift better weights. Anyhow, go check them out, use the Mind Pump Discount. Again, it's four sigmatics, that's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C. Comfort slash Mind Pump and use the code Mind Pump

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Hey, yeah, let's talk about getting the biggest bench in the gym. How to improve your bench. How to get strong as bench. Dude, this was like the test of strength when we were growing up. It was a standard. No, it was like the goal.

It's like nothing else matters. I mean, it's still kind of is. That is much. Not as much. And thank you CrossFit, right? I mean, it's still kind of is. That is much. Not as much and thank you CrossFit, right? I mean, I appreciate the squatting, the overhead pressing and deadlifting that they brought back. Brought back.

So there is a lot more PR talk around squatting and deadlifting than there ever was. They're not big benches, are they? Those Crossfitters. No, not at all. But back in the day, I don't think there's any, is there's no bench programming in CrossFit, is there?

Pushups. Yeah. Just do e-moms or whatever. Yeah. Not at all. But back in the day, I don't think there's no bench programming in CrossFit, is there? Push-ups. They just do e-moms or whatever. Yeah, even though that means. I'm your new e-mom. Every minute on the minute. Okay, yeah, okay. So, when we were younger,

if you were like, if you were talking with a group of guys, right? Let's say I just met you guys. I'm like, you look like you work out. How do you bend? How much do you bench? Nobody gives a shit about deadlift or squat.

In fact, nobody ever asked me that until like, maybe seven years ago. Nobody ever asked me about any of the lift, except for the bench press. I mean, some of those say it is the squat of the upper body, right? That's debatable, right? I know they say that or the overhead press

is arguably the squat of the upper body. I mean, if you think about it, you're obviously pressing with your arms like you're off the legs. A lot involved, for sure. Yeah, but it's a, you know, I trained so different today than, you know, what I trained like as a trainer or obviously

what I trained like when I was competing. I'm starting to notice that I say competing as much as sales as purple, but I gotta watch that. You say it more than I do, I'll start tally you. I know, Jesus. By the way, do you guys know I had a purple bell bell? I apologize, but I feel like I have to reference that time

because I was such an anomaly as far as the volume of training that I was doing. But today, bench press, many times, just did this this weekend. All I did this weekend training wise, I should say over the last four days that we didn't see each other, was a bench and squat. I literally did that twice and two and a half different workouts and that's all I focused on. And what's beautiful about doing

that, upper body exercise like that, a good barbell bench press, you get some shoulder work involved, you get great tricep work involved, obviously the chest. And so you can get a lot of development from one great movement. So getting really strong in the bench press has tremendous carryover to other muscle. It even works, a lot of people realize this, you even strengthen from an isometric standpoint your back. Yeah, yeah. This is actually, like, lots having to stabilize everything.

They do. And now back in the day, like, lots having to stabilize everything. They do. And now back in the day, Benchpress wasn't really an exercise because the original exercise equipment, the benches didn't have a rack. So the way that lifters would lift, they had to clean a way go down and bench. And so you were very limited as to how much you can lift. Then they invented the rack. And then of course, bodybuilders started presenting themselves with these really massive pecs and it became a popular exercise and became a test of strength. But because it was so popular when I was younger, I focused a lot of time and energy on it.

In fact, I would say up until I was in my 30s, it was the exercise I was most concerned with in terms of how strong I was, just because I was conditioned as a kid. I didn't really focus on trying to get super strong and anything else, especially in my toilet. And much like anything else when a girl points something out, like, oh wow, you have a really big developed chest or whatever, that was like, okay, I'm gonna do this forever. Like this is my new thing.

So I got all into bench pressing mainly because of that. That was the spark. Yeah, and of course because of that, I think we spark. Yeah, and of course, because of that, I think we've all made a lot of mistakes around the bench press. I mean, I could recall one where I was, I worked out with too much weight. In fact, there's one story in particular where I was working out with too much weight

and didn't put callers on. I was a kid. Yeah, was that the way I'm seeing it? One side dumps. One side, it started, it's guys. Who hasn't done that though? I mean, I've done that. Dude, I was like, pro shaking and then one side started to slide

and then because I'm fatigued, as it slides, of course, the weight gets down the lever so it starts to get heavier. And then as soon as it came off, fling and I just right into the window. Now here's one for like the at homework out thing. Back when they had the sand filled weights. And so I had like buckets and things that I would hang off of the sides.

I had to get inventive to add more weight. And I was by myself and I decided to bench and I'm like, I'm really, you know, I was comfortable benching. I had been doing it for a while, but I had loaded, I tried to max out, because I thought every work I had to max out. And the last one, I'm like,

I have to really grind my way through it. I got stuck, you know, and then there's nobody to help me. And I went down to my chest all the way and I was like what do I do? What do I do? And so I had to actually like roll it back you went wait hold on you rolled it back back I didn't go forward over which you gotta go this way I was still again. I was a kid. I was thinking about a smart. Yeah, exactly I don't see where you're going there. You're gonna crush me. Yeah, I. I don't want to see where he's going. He's like, I want to crush the, I'll good.

Yeah, go over my neck, but not my nuts. The nose was a little problematic, but yeah, it was bad. Yeah, cause I've done it many times where I, I'm stuck and then I have to roll it down and then you sit up with the weight and do the whole thing. But I've never, I've never brought it to my neck. That's very scary.

That was dumb. I had, so it was, I had the worst bench ever. So I imagine like in high school, right? I was 135 pounds and this Linky six foot tall kid Big Bird totally right that's what I looked like and I used to have to and I think I think I told this long time ago in the podcast I used to have to have a buddy who would stand behind me right for where the where the barbell is at right on the bench and His job was to hold my shoulders down in place.

And then the other two guys, then there was two guys on the outside spotting each side of the bar. And then I literally could only do the bar. Like I could not. That was that week. It's ever it was such an accomplishment to get to the wheels.

Like 45. Oh, the big plates. Yeah, that was a big day. That was a big milestone. It came in like my 20s, dude. Yeah. I was like big plates. Yeah, that was a big day. That was a big milestone. It came in like my 20s. I was like most kids, most guys get to that like in their early teens. Like, he came for me like, what else? That's how bad my bench was. But for the longest time, though, I didn't, I didn't understand the mechanics of the bench, right? Like, understand like exactly what was going on.

When you, when you see it, you just see someone lay down and they just push the bar off the chest. It's very technical. It's actually one of the more technical exercises, but it doesn't seem like it's technical. That's right, it looks so basic when you look at someone else do it, and if you don't have an eye for biomechanics, you go like, oh, okay, I get it, I just push the bar up off of me.

I wonder too, because I see a lot of guys, and when I'm able to go back into the gym setting, just using machines and these peck decks, and I don't see a lot of people using the actual benches, benches, and do it, and I would be curious to see some of the technique if they were to then jump over there and see how many guys would have a real problem, because it is a skill, it's something you have to acquire. There was even a lot of missing from, even today, there's a lot of missing

formation around the bench press. I remember people saying you should not have an arch when you bench press, but that's in fact what you're supposed to have. I, when you bench press, everybody's like, I'll keep your back flat, which is actually terrible advice. I mean, I perpetuated that myth for a long time as a trainer. You know, because all of our certifications, when we would go through them and they talk, bench technique, neutral back foot,

that's right, they neutral back, flat back. So, you know, like an idiot, I was telling, I had clients putting their feet up on the bench, I had clients telling them to press their back flat, like total terrible. But again, this is early years as a trainer, I don't really, I'm still learning biomechanics. I'm really, I really am not there yet

on understanding mechanically how the chest works. Like you're, when I, 20 years old, I've got the basic certification at this point, and I have my experience. That's like, that's all of my knowledge. And so I don't fully grasp like the position your shoulder girl needs to be in why the arch is good and supports like I think you understand that as long as it's within reason because this can get extreme as well but as long as it's within reason the best people to look for for bench

Advice and technical power lifters. Yeah, and mainly because power lifters, obviously their goal is to move as much weight as possible. And it definitely can get a little extreme, okay? But what we're talking about raw benching, meaning there's no bench shirt, there's no assistance, I'm just, you know, my t-shirt, I get down and I'm doing my press, they have to maximize leverage and technique to prevent injury and lift as much as possible.

So they're the most amount of force possible. Right, in a safe way, right? Because they're lifting so much weight. So those are the people you typically want to look at when you're looking at advice, you know, technique and whatnot when it comes to bench press. And one of the first things that you'll notice is that there's a heavy emphasis on posture for proper bench. Poor posture will take away your biomechanical advantage right away when you bench.

Now, there's one thing that I will challenge about that that is that I think is not true. And this is and this is to credit, I think bodybuilders do a better job here is if you watch a power lifter lift, he's lifting for power. And so he trains in the one one one most of time. It is about getting the most to wait up, which getting good at getting the most to wait up, okay, if you're a young kid who wants to have a great chest and have a strong bench is okay. But if you are really looking to develop the chest, then learning to train with other tempos is extremely important. And so that was where I saw, I may not have

had my best bench as far as the amount of weight I was putting up, but the best development in my chest came from understanding the importance of manipulating tempos, and if you watch just power lifters, you're just... Yeah, because we're gonna talk about how to lift the most weight, but I think we'll also talk about hypertrophy, which contributes to lifting the most weight.

Yeah, and I think that's important, because most kids are young guys that are wanting to get a big bench, they're wanting to get a bench because they actually want a big chest, right? It's like because at the end of the day if I told you, hey, I could give you an Arnold chest, but you only bench 185. Would you rather have that or would you rather have a bird chest and be able to bench 300? What do you really care about? I would guess that most guys would say I'd want the developed chest.

That's really what I'm going to have. Yeah, and I think too, in terms of of the power lifters technique and maximizing leverage, you could utilize that, but also do it in a bodybuilding type of a setting where you manipulate the tempo and really work on that mind-muscle connection of feeling your way through it. But definitely, there's lots of value in understanding why they set themselves up the way they're doing. That's where my best bench came from. When I finally took my bodybuilding type style of training and then figured out the

mechanics of a chest press, then saw power lifters and how they created leverage, married the two of them together. That gave me the best chest that I ever got. That's the best. Right. So let's go back to posture. Why is posture something that's so important that you need to work on in order to have a good bench press? So I think number one, the technique of benching

to really maximize leverage means you actually need to have a strong stable upper and mid back because you're anchoring your shoulder girl, you're pulling your shoulders down and back and you're holding them in position while pressing up. And now why is this important? Well, number one, if the shoulder blades roll forward as you press, especially if you're pressing a lot of weight,

it does place your shoulder in a more risky position. And it reduces leverage. When you keep the shoulder blades pinned back and anchored and strong and tight, which requires good, strong upper mid back muscles. Now you have more leverage and you can activate the pecs more. So it's good for both hypertrophy and for some reason. Well, I find posture to me, and I'm glad it's the first point

that we're bringing up, I think, is the most important thing. When I think back to the client's I train, this was one of those major hurdles, or pivotal moments as a trainer for me, was I remember scratching my head for at least a year, which would be hundreds of training sessions that I trained for these clients, teaching the bench press and just man failing and getting my clients to feel it in their chest.

Again, not understanding pile mechanics very well and the importance of posture. And the bench press is in direct conflict with your most common postural deviations. So what I mean by that is most people have this rounded shoulders forward head. Everybody does it really. I mean, everybody's got it. It's a matter of how excessive or how bad it is. So if you already have forward shoulders and forward head, and then you go to do something that's pressing forward, what's going to take over are your delts and your triceps in

that movement. But what we know in order to activate and really work the chest, you need to be in that retracted position, right? We need to be able to roll the shoulders back and down and lock them into a position, right? Stabilize with the mid back like you were saying in order to press with a chest. And if you don't address that first, you're gonna have a hell of a time teaching

someone how to bend. Yeah, if you bench a lot, you should also be able to row a lot with good form. In fact, I've seen people's bench press go up because they've strengthened their rows because they can anchor themselves. Yes. I mean, you need to be able to anchor yourself

into the bench in order to support yourself. Well, that was a thing. It's like, first of all, you want to have the safety of like safely being able to distribute that force throughout your body and then, you know, have that escape. So it has a way that you're protecting those joints that are most susceptible.

So now I have to like build this protective sort of tightening of the muscles around those joints. But then also you look at a performance loss. Like you get a leak of performance when there's any inkling of instability or any bit where your body is not purely anchored to where you have like some type of movement that at any moment like maybe maybe the bar moves

Travels a little faster one side versus the other and you know now we have to compensate so the body's got to compensate We'll work extra hard to just make this and you know We'll get into technique and all that stuff But if you have bad posture to begin with it can be very hard to bench with optimal technique I think we all do I mean even, even trainers, I would like to think that we have better posture than the average person. And I would tell you- So we spend way more time in this forward position.

Yeah. And okay, so, and I don't know about you guys, but when I think of the two exercises that are most benefited by my priming work that I do, squat and bench press are one and two. Like, if I neglect to prime before I squat or neglect to prime before I bench, it is noticeably different. I mean noticeably, I'm way weaker or I, my shoulder hurts.

I'm just, you notice a huge, you're combating repetitive patterns throughout your day, all day long. Yeah, you know what's funny is the bench press is where I figured out priming before I knew their exercise. In fact, before priming became a thing, back in the day you would see guys actually,

without realizing they would be priming and you know what they would do, there's two things that guys would do, either one, they'd get under the bar like they're gonna bench and they do some body rows, you see this all the time. They do body rows before they would bench and they'd say, oh, it helps me bench more. Or you'd see guys who are actually a little bit more,

you know, in the know, would actually do some rows next to the bench before they do their bench. You know, it's funny about that, that just reminded me when I skipped many fun of a lot, because it was just something like, naturally, just I would do before I would bench heavy, I would kind of take my arms, I'd grip, and make a tight fist, and then I would do before I would bench heavy. I would kind of take my arms, I'd grip and make a tight fist and then I would do this.

Like a total dynamic type of a warmup before that. Not just because I knew it just helped me kind of get in good position, but my friend would always, he called it chicken-winging or something like before it, and would make fun of me. And I'm like, yeah, it works for me. But it's along that same kind of a thought process.

Of course, now like proper priming I've learned how to set myself up better with that. Yeah, so like if you have issues with your bench press, what you might wanna do in your routine is just place a focus on strengthening the muscles that give you better posture. And then oftentimes you'll notice an improvement in your bench press just from doing that.

Well, and that brings me to the next point that I think is so important, which is the frequency of it, right? And when we talk about priming, especially when you're priming to combat a postural deviation, the frequency is so important. Like, if you recognize that you have forward shoulder, then you priming your mid back and getting yourself

in that neutral or more optimal position, you can't do enough of it. I mean, you should be trying to do it all the time and frequently getting yourself in that better posture so that when you do go to bed. Yeah, well, speaking of frequency, this was a big eye opener for me back in the day was, you know, because when we were, you know, working out as kids, we got our information for bodybuilding magazines. And all of them promoted this kind of hit each body part once a week, body parts split types workout, right? So Monday would be chest, and Tuesday would be back, and then shoulders, and so on. And we were told, hit it hard, leave it

alone, let it rest and recover, rebuild, and then hit it again a week later, and you'll be bigger, stronger, and have better performance. So I thought that's it, that's it. I never want to work out my body parts more than that because I don't want to over train them, or it's not going to allow them to grow on whatever. And I remember managing this gym once, I've told the story so many times,

this guy worked for me, and I would notice that, first off, this guy was very muscular, he was a trainer, and I noticed in between clients, he would walk over to the bench, he'd load it up and do five or six reps with some heavy weight, but for him it seemed like it was moderate, it didn't seem like it was too heavy. And he would do this throughout the whole day.

And then when he would do his workout and push himself, this guy had a tremendous bench press. And I remember asking, like, why are you, like, are you just bored? Like, why are you doing this? He goes, oh, no, he goes, when I practice often, he goes, I get really, really strong at the lifts. And I remember thinking, like, that's so opposite

from what I've always learned. But I saw how effective it was for him. And then that led me to research Olympic lifters. And Olympic lifters train very frequently. Now, what they do is they modify the intensity. So this is the key. He didn't go out and bench every day heavy. He went out and practiced very often.

He benched heavy, I don't know, once a week. And so I practiced this, and this is the first time in my life that I was able to bench press over 300 pounds. I was stuck forever at whatever it was. Then I started increasing my bench frequency where I was bench pressing three days a week or more. Maybe one of them was hard, but the other days were relatively easy, where I'm practicing on form or whatever, some days were low reps, some days were higher reps.

But when I bumped the frequency, my strength went through the roof. Yeah, I was interesting. That's when I really started to kind of peer into and understand more of how the central nervous system works. And it made so much sense that just if I think about sports and how to get better at certain movements and certain things, I have to practice them all the time and I have to do them not necessarily at full blast. I want to do them just so I'm perfecting each part of the movement. I have never applied that to working out, but once I started to understand that, it made a massive difference in my strength.

Well, this is when I really started to learn about how power lifters and Olympic lifters train. Up into this point, I was really kind of oblivious to that. I had no idea what they were doing to get this strong, and I assumed that they were maxing out all the time. That's how they got there. And then I remember meeting somebody that was a power lifter and seeing his programming and realizing like, dude, this dude doesn't lift heavy at all.

I can do that. Yeah, I'm like, when I watched his workouts, many times he was working out with weight that was lighter than what I could press. Yeah, this is pressin' all the time. That's right. But then when he would go to a meet, he would lift two, three times what I could lift.

And it was like, I'm scratching my head going like, this doesn't make sense to me. But in order to lift bench, you know, three times a week, you can't be lifting 80 plus percent of your max load every single time or else you do so much damage your body's constantly trying to repair. That was the first time that kind of light bulb went off from me about frequency when I saw that and realized how strong they were was a huge. Yeah. And then you have like the popular powerlifting clubs, like the Westside Barbell Club, and so on. I think the way that they would organize it, they had like a dynamic day, and then like a max effort day, or something like that, where the dynamic day, you had lighter weight,

and you would lift for speed, then you had the heavy day where you're grinding out as much as you can lift. So frequency is huge. And by the way, this works for any lift. So with any lift you wanna increase in weight, practice it more often. You will be surprised, you actually, you'll be, I've never done this before, it'll shock you at how effective it is

at improving your strength. You just had to modify the intensity. You're not going super hard each time. You're practicing maybe one of those days a week you're going kinda hard. Especially with the compound lifts. That's where this really makes a big difference. There's so much detail in a compound lift. And I mean, you guys know this for sure,

like how many times have you done a bench as squatting in these compound lifts, and you're just slightly off. You're just slightly, it's like swinging a batter or a golf club, like when you're mechanics are just, and the way you get good mechanics at swinging a golf club or a bat is you practice and you do it all the time.

You don't swing it. It makes it swing to your subconscious. That's right, you get so good at it. And then there's those times when you're fully rested, you're fully fed, you've been consistent with your lifting and then you go hit that thing and you're twice as strong and the ball goes twice as strong. You're right, because you have the central nervous system

adapting and the way it's adapting is because of the frequent practice your body's getting really good at that movement. By the way, this makes a huge, huge difference. You can have somebody who's got massive pecs and shoulders and triceps that by themselves are very, very strong. But if they never practice the bench press, they're not going to be able to do nearly as much as they could if they practiced just that lift.

So there's that central nervous system adaptation that gets you good at the skill of that particular lift. In other words, the muscles are firing in unison. You've got your technique, you're feeling very stable, your body feels safe. Therefore, it outputs more juice to get you to lift more weight. But then you also have the muscle building effects. And here's what ends up happening, especially for natural lifters. When you work out, you get this spike in muscle protein synthesis that lasts for about 24 to 48 hours in some advanced lifters, maybe as long as 72 hours.

But after that, it dips down quickly. And it doesn't matter if you're still recovering. So here's a thing like recovery and adaptation can be two separate things. So you can still be sore for five days later, but that muscle building signal is gone. It was gone two days ago. So what the frequent lifting does is it maintains this kind of high muscle building signal throughout the week. And you can do this even with a moderate intensity, even light intensity somewhat sends a

muscle building signal, maybe not as loud as a heavy signal, but it's still there. So the frequency just benefits all of these things. By the way, studies support this. You'll see when they'll control for volume. In other words, same volume throughout the week, but one group worked out three days a week, each body part, other group did it once a week. The three-day a week tends to perform better, both in strength and in muscle. So if you only bench once a week and you want your bench press to go up, sometimes just benching twice a week,

again, modify the intensity, right? So it's not hard each time. Just doing that alone oftentimes, you'll see an increase in your bench press. And by the way, you tend to see it within the first week. This is the crazy thing. You'll see it within like one or two weeks. And that's what happened to me.

The first time I benched, you know, three days a week, it was like, by the third time, I felt stronger. And I was like, what the hell is going on? This is absolutely insane. Now the next one, this one's actually quite important. I don't learn this one until later on, but all compound lifts, all the big lifts, they all have another lift

that tends to have a lot of carry over to it, right? So like, for example, if my squat goes up, my deadlift usually goes up. It's like so much carryover from my squat to my deadlift, right? So if I want my deadlift to go up, if I just work on my squat, it tends to boost it as well. Where there is a lift for the bench press that's got a tremendous amount of carryover, and that's the overhead press. If your overhead press goes up 50 pounds, you can pretty much bet that you're gonna see

a pretty decent increase in your bench press. So if you're not practicing getting strong at the overhead press, you're probably missing out on that bench press. Now, I didn't see this until I actually got into full range of motion overhead pressing. So for the longest time, I did the bodybuilder shoulder press,

sitting down in the military press and the shortened reps only going down to 90 degrees. Oh yeah, you got to go all the way down. Yeah, and I just didn't- So was the lockout the hard part for you when you went to bench? Yeah, I don't remember what was the hardest, the whole part of the bench. Yeah, what's considered this, in that it's you're not you're not only are you not going all the way down, but you're not going all the way. Yeah, so you're not you're not it's either one.

Yeah, so I mean the whole and what my point of bringing this up or telling the story is that I was doing overhead press for a long time and and I didn't feel the carryover, but the reason why I didn't was because I was, you know, overhead pressing or shoulder pressing, military pressing, like a bodybuilder. This whole time and attention, stopping at 90 degrees, keeping a slight bend in the elbow is not locking out, coming down at 90 degrees, getting this massive pump on my delts, but then I go to do shoulder stuff, not Army and go to do bench press, don't really see a big difference. It wasn't until I started to do a full range of motion shoulder press and full lockout extension

and stabilize the top. Did I really feel the carry over that and that wasn't until way later on in my career. Yeah, you show me a guy with a good bench, a guy or girl with a good bench press. You typically have someone with a pretty damn good overhead press. It's just one of those exercises that and that's the thing. Sometimes you're stuck in your bench and it's hard to work it out with your bench. So sometimes it's like, okay, I'm going to keep doing my normal bench stuff. I can't figure out how to get that to go up. Let me see if I can make my overhead press go up instead. And then that'll give me that carry on. Well, and you think about that too, how much more that puts pressure on you being able to stabilize your shoulder joint in itself,

more emphasis on that. And so I could see how that would translate really well. And the range of motion point which you brought up, but also taking those different degrees and angles of pressing. So even like an incline bench, it's got value. So it's like it's this whole gradual, you know, different angles of force that you account for with your shoulders and chest. Yeah. It helped me, it helped me dig out the bottom big time, right? Because when you think about, when you're, when you're on a, on a deep bench press, I mean, and you're pulling those shoulders are rolled all the way back. Those, those triceps that upper back, also how stable your core

has to be to use that to push yourself out. When you benched like how I used to bench as a kid, which was only coming down to 90 degrees, I could have this flimsy core and benched the same amount. I could have my feet up on the bench and basically benched the same amount. I didn't have to brace very much because it was all here.

It was all in this 90 degrees coming down and pressing up. I wasn't getting my entire body involved. The overhead press, a full range of motion standing overhead press, taught me to connect everything. That is what carried over into that like better bench. Which brings us to the next point, which I think is connected to this, which is improving your shoulder mobility and stability.

This one I figured out relatively early on, just because I saw an ad in a bodybuilding magazine for something called a shoulder horn. It was just this plastic thing that you went over your shoulders and you did rotate or cuff exercises. And I mimic the exercise at the gym. And I couldn't believe that I added five pounds

of my bench press almost right away just from doing that. Now people think, well, why does that help? Well, here's why your body will not allow you to put out as much strength as it can if it thinks it's going to get hurt. Your body just won't do that. If your shoulders are not stable, you might be able to lift another 20 pounds, but your body's not going to let you push 20 more pounds because things aren't feeling very stable.

I had the same sort of epiphany mainly on the rotational end of it, so I hit a wall. I would always get to a good amount of weight on bench, but then my shoulder was the limiting factor where I would start to get pain or there'd be some kind of an impingement that inevitably would occur. So I started to get into more unconventional type of tools. And I researched and found these Indian clubs and started out with lightweight. So it was like one pound.

But really just taking it through all those ranges of motion that the shoulder joint is capable of. And really like re-teaching it to be able to respond properly helped that added element of stability that was lacking in my shoulder joint. I didn't even realize it was lacking, and then I started to kind of load it, and you can strengthen those muscles just like the rest. Well, one of my favorite, and I think I did this on my Instagram, probably like six months

ago, which is the suspension trainer warm-up, where you do W's. And it's basically like your shoehorn type exercise. I'm using my body weight matter rubber bands. Yeah, that's yeah. It is. And to me, it was, uh, it was very logical, right? Like that, that this would make a big difference. You figure the, the, you know, the humerus goes in, well, you have this ball and socket

joint, right? That's the shoulder, right? So it's like floating. And if you don't wake up all the muscles that are supporting and stabilizing that floating joint, then what do you expect when you load it, you know, and you go to press? I mean, it's not gonna be-

It's gonna get off track. It's gonna get off track. It's gonna float around. It's gonna move around. It's gonna be unstable. And that means that's energy that you're going to lose in that area right there. And a major area that's taking on a lot of direct force.

So waking that up and stabilizing that really good, you know, another good one that Justin, you do all the time that I know, Sal, you talk about after Justin, you know, got you doing it, just the overhead carries. Oh yeah. You know, doing something like that before you,

sorry, I was just talking to my brother-in-law yesterday about this because he's, you know, he's, oh man, I always got shoulder issues before. I bench press. And I was telling him, I was like, dude, get some kettlebells. And I was showing him, get yourself in the right posture, all the way above your head, pack the shoulder, stabilize there, tighten the core,

and walk with all your joints stacked, and just stabilize and hold. You're gonna wake up all those muscles that are supporting that shoulder. And then when you go into bench, watch how much, because you don't lose that energy. Whereas if you don't, you go right into bench pressing, and a lot of people think, I'll just warm up by doing more benches, well that's great, you're warming up and getting some blood flowing, but you're not really reinforcing the stability in that joint the same way as you are if you're doing something.

No, the stability, the shoulder joint has to match the strength. Otherwise you're going to hurt yourself or the risk of injuries quite high. And again, the body senses this. In fact, there have been studies that have been done on this where people will try to exert Max Force, and then there'll be some kind of an emergency, and you'll see them exert even more force on that

because their body overrides, the, you know, let's take the story of the mom, you know, moving the car, lifting the car to save their kid. And later they realize they're like ripped, they're muscle off the bone. Correct, like your body won't let you. And there's also just a logical component,

like imagine if you're pushing a heavy cart with a stick, but the stick has got like, it's like half of the stick is a spring. Like, you're not gonna be able to push it very far because you can't push the force all the way through. It would be much more effective if the stick was strong, stable, and rigid. And rigid, now I can push the cart with a lot more force.

So strengthening your, just the muscles around the shoulder joint that stabilize it, the scapula. So there's other parts of the shoulder joint, right? You have the shoulder, the humerus, but you also have the scapula that needs to be very stable and strong as well. This is where some people have issues with like winging. You see this when they bench press

and their shoulder blade will pop out and that could be an issue with maybe their serratus muscle or anterior. It's just all shoulder stability issues. And this was one of my favorite things to do whenever I would get a lifter who hired me, somebody who's already worked out. And I'd say to them, you know, I'd watch some bench, I'd say, I bet I could add 10 pounds through bench press in, you know, the next three weeks, which they'd be like,

I dare you, let me see what you can do. I'd work on the shoulder mobility and stability and boom, there goes another 10 pounds on the bench press. I made that big. This is why the suspension trainer W's are my favorite because you get, you, the way the W works is you're kind of like, it's kind of a row with an external rotation. By the way, I want to, I want to just caution everybody, if you do that, start very easy because it's a very difficult exercise. It looks easy, but it's not, especially when you get to the top. It's great about that as you can kind of walk close to the anchor for intensity and back. Yes. You know, for less, so it's very manageable.

Yeah, and the idea is to get controlled in it, not see how hard you can make it, right? Thank you, yes. Establishation exercises are like that. Yeah, it's not like you're maxing out. Yeah, I'm not gonna get good at it. Yeah, exactly. I'm doing 15 reps slow, control, pausing at the end.

Like that, I mean, you're're trying to wake all of that up. And then I'll go right to that, so I'll do that for like two sets, right, I'll do two sets of 15 of that. And then I'll go right into deep pushups on the suspension trainer. So I'll go into that, really, just kind of solidifies it.

And again, not going hard, I'm not trying to make it the hardest pushup ever. It's a real basic thing. All I'm doing is taking it through its full range motion, right after I woke up those shoulder, stabilized it, a little instability on the suspension trainer, then go over to a barbell press. Oh, I feel so good.

Yeah, that's excellent. We still have suspension training. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was at mindpumpstore.com, so people can get those. All right, now let's talk about the technique. Let's get down to the technique of the bench press because it is a very technical lift. It's actually one of the more technical

lifts that you can do. It's not just pushing up a bar off your chest. So the first thing that's important is to have an arch in your low back. You want your hips on the bench, but your butt is on the bench, but you want an arch in your low back so you can almost put your arm underneath it. Now in extreme cases, power lifters will exaggerate the shit out of this. We're not talking about these extreme exaggerations, but you definitely want to have an arch in your back because what it does that allows you to pull the shoulders blades back and anchor your upper back on the bench to provide a nice stable base for that bench press. You don't want a flat back.

Flat back can cause the shoulders to roll forward and it can cause problems with the shoulders. You also talk about why that's not dangerous for a bench press where we know that's dangerous when you talk about other exercises, right? So you're talking about vertical forces versus horizontal forces. So when you put yourself in that position,

the horizontal forces of the load is gonna go direct, right? There towards the chest and then the extension of the arms. So really like the lower is gonna go direct, right? There towards the chest and then the extension of the arms. So really like the lower half of your body, you have to be concerned with stabilizing and generating that anchoring effect. Yeah, I know that the weight is anchored and up on your upper back.

So my low back can be arched, but I'm not putting weight on my low back. The weight is on my upper back, that's supporting. So you have that strong arch. It also lifts the chest and allows you to really activate the chest more as well. Because if you roll the shoulders forward, you're gonna find that you're gonna just feel it

more in your front delts. And maybe even cause problems with your bicep tendon. In fact, sometimes people will feel pain in the front of their shoulder, but my shoulder, it's the bicep tendon that's inflamed from oftentimes poor technique. Here's another one, activate your lats. I remember when I first heard this, I'm like, shoulder, it's the bicep tendon that's inflamed from oftentimes poor, poor technique. Here's another one, activate your lats.

I remember when I first heard this, I'm like, what? Like why would I want to activate my lats? I'm trying to push the weight away. This is just extra stress. Yeah, now bring it in. But then I remember when I first tried it, you know, I gripped the bar real tight and then I activated my lats and kept them tight and then I dropped, bring the bar down and it was like, I felt way more stable with the lift, way more stable.

You feel all this control that you didn't have that was sort of like the weight was moving you versus you're, you know, allowing it to move. And I love that, I love gripping the bar now. Yes. And then also like just trying to, you know, bend the bar apart, like I'm literally trying to like bend the bar and that helps me to activate

those lats more effectively. Yeah, staying tight is very important, which brings me to like the leg drive. I remember hearing people say this, like put your feet in the floor and drive with your legs. I remember as a trainer thinking, well, that's stupid, what the hell my legs are doing. What do the legs of the dude think?

Yeah, I'm not squatting, like I'm just bench pressing. And then I remember I tried it and I felt so much stronger and it didn't make sense to me and still I just, until I learned about how the central nervous system fires. And really it's about this. Look, if I act, if I'm trying to lift something, and let's say I'm trying to do something

with my right arm and I keep the rest of my body relaxed, my CNS is not gonna fire as forcefully as when I tighten everything up. By the way, this is a natural thing. Like when you go open a tight jar or go do something that's very challenging, you'll find everything in your body tends to naturally, including your face. This is because the central nervous system fires

with more force when it's activated at a mass versus when it's isolated. It's a much louder, more powerful signal when you get more muscles involved in that actually helps you to generate more force overall. And so to get your legs involved is actually a massive advantage in generating more force, which helps you

then propel the weight away. This is a hard one for me. It took me a long time to figure this out. I still don't think I'm good at this. Like I think that it's definitely a technique and a practicing. And I think a lot's definitely a technique and a practice thing. And I think a lot of it is because of how I bench pressed like a bodybuilder for so long

where I wasn't thinking about my core and the rest of my body. And so here I am in the back half of my training career still trying to piece this together. And I catch myself with bad habits. I catch myself, get under there, I go through like all my cues, roll in the shoulders back and get bent in the bar,, doing stuff, and then I forget the lower body. It's just, it's so

hard for me to remember to do that. Where I find, I'm better at it is when I go through the checks, I actually do that arch, and then I brace the core, and then I grip the floor. So it's like, the core braces, and I even like squeeze my glutes in that art position. And then that's that's what kind of lights up my. Yeah, you should feel your glutes should be turned on. Yeah, it should not be off and just relax on it. You should be pushing almost like you're going to push your butt up off the bench. You can't do that. Obviously that makes you unstable, but you want to feel that. And there's a couple of different ways to do this. Now, the one, the way to teach it to most people is feed or flat on the floor. And you're driving with the legs, keeping everything tight while you're doing it.

The other way to do it, which is a little more advanced, is you bring the feet back so that your toes are in the floor. And this is how I like to do it because it keeps me really, really tight. But it's more of an advanced way of lifting. You're really at your quads to scream. Yeah, so I'm just, my feet are back here and I'm squeezing. Now, if you're a competitor, if if you're gonna compete in the bench press Some organizations don't allow you to yet some organizations require you to keep it to keep your feet flat

I didn't know that yeah, so but but some of them will allow you to pull the toes back But for me when I bring the feet back like that because my quads are tight tight anyway It's like everything feels very tight and then when I drive my body doesn't budge But I'm driving everything feels real turned on and of course and then when I drive, my body doesn't budge, but I'm driving. Everything feels real turned on and of course, and then I can lift more weight. All right, let's talk about advanced techniques, right? Advanced ways of getting yourself to lift. How do we add in variable resistance? Yeah, change, bands, all the toys.

Yeah, yeah. So the first one, this is the easiest one, doesn't require any additional equipment, is to focus on pausing your bench press repetition and then strengthening your areas of weakness. For most people, the area of weakness is at the bottom, other people it's at the top. But let's say it's at the bottom, right? Let's say when you notice when you bench that the hardest part is that first five inches right off the bench. How can I get, but then after that it gets much easier. How can I improve upon that? Well, one thing you can do is you can bench press, bring the bar down to your chest, stay

tight, don't lose connection, hold it at your chest for three to five seconds, and then pressing. That isometric in that portion of the rep will get you stronger in that portion of the repetition. Actually, I did this for so long get you stronger in that portion of the repetition. Actually, I did this for so long that I made that weakness one of my strengths. Now, my strength is at the bottom part. Well, this is another great way to build in that frequency that we talked about, right? So this is how I would do something like this.

I would have a day where, you know, I'm messing with, you know, isometric stuff and tempo stuff for a whole workout. So like, I'll do a bench, bench, this is something I just recently did. So I had one of the days, this last four or five days that we had seen each other. I told you I did all benching and squatting basically. Well, one of the days I was benching, I was going heavy, another day was all tempo stuff.

Super light, like I'm working with 135, which is really, really lightweight for bench press for me. But then I'm doing like the pausing at the bottom, or I'm doing like an eight second negative. It's really slow, negative, just tears me up. I love it. Yeah, real so many, or I was doing, I did an alternate incline dumbbell press

where I come down, and then I actually don't walk out. I keep a slight bend, so my chest is at the almost like the contracted position, and it's stabilizing where the other one goes down, and then I press up. And I have to, I'm working with 50 pound dumbbells, 135. So I'm not gonna do a lot of damage like I did on the previous workout where I was lifting like 215 for reps.

That's really gonna do a lot of damage to me. So this is how you build in the frequency, I think is you use tools like these to be able to do another day of work, but then you do lighter work. Another advanced technique is just to literally unwrap a very heavy bench press, hold it for about five to 10 seconds, and then rack it back up,

just that stabilizing at the top. Boy, it is that turn everything on, especially if your lockout is where you have an issue where you'll find that as you bench, once you get past halfway, you get kind of stuck, try just un-racking a heavy weight and just holding it for five to 10 seconds, and doing that for the spotter for those kinds of things. That's why it's advanced.

Yeah, but yeah, I love doing that because it's too acclimating towards familiarizing yourself with heavier weight. I think it's just an important thing to do. If that's like your goal is really to start moving weight and getting stronger. I think it's important to also kind of fuel your way up. And so there's another fractional weight plates too. Is another kind of a technique where you can add in. Like one pound of it.

Yeah, it's like you barely feel it. It's one of the things you just slowly gradually add load, but in a very, very small amount, it's definitely like one of those it's's gonna take a bit of time to get you through, but a lot of times it helps you get past some plateaus where you got stuff. I've always wanted to try that.

I've always wanted to do where I work out modern intensity. I would love to see how this works, right? Modern intensity, so I'm not going to failure, but I'm going kind of hard. And then all I do is every week I add a total of one pound to the lift. Every single week, non-stop, moderate intensity, half a pound on each side, and just see what ends up happening in terms of my progress. I have a feeling that I'd probably progress pretty well for a while before my body would start to be.

Have you done that before Justin? I've never done that before. I've done it before. Yeah, and it was great because I was in a gym where that was like, it was a lot of Olympic lifters and people that had diffractional plates and they didn't even have magnets that they would put onto the side. And I never had thought about that, but it just, it makes total logical sense. And you really don't necessarily feel it right away,

but once you start building up the volume, that's where you really start to start. Yeah, wasn't that fable or whatever he carries the bull up the hill? Oh, right, my low. It's the whole progressive overload sort of, yeah. Yeah, what's it, what is that, wasn't that fable or whatever? He carries the bull up the hill. Oh, my low. It's the whole progressive overload sort of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He lifts up a baby, you know, calf every single day

until it grows up. And of course, he gets stronger. Right. That's the, that's progressive overload, right? Right. Bands have to be my favorite. They feel the most smooth. I love just a very, very smooth.

I can also do speed with bands, which you can't really do with a lot of other things. So, what I'll do is, and this is for power. Power definitely contributes to, and I mean, when I say power, I mean the speed at which you lift, I would take, let's say my max bench was 300 pounds. I'd put maybe 135 pounds on, but then I'd put heavy bands on. And then my goal is to lower the weight down on my chest real controlled and then push it up as fast as I could, almost like I'm trying to throw the weight out of my hands and just practice speed. And I'm not even going anywhere close to failure. I'm just like one or two of those. And man, I would notice a huge carryover on the speed of my heavy bench. Like my heavy bench would move faster because

of that. Well, it's another great example, Tom, going back to the frequency topic, right? Here's another tool that you use for a great frequency day. Not going to do a lot of damage, right? Doing band work, speed work like that. Where you're going really, really lightweight. Or doing just bands by themselves, like doing speed work. You're not going to do a lot of damage, but a great way to build frequency for this. I would throw in like even body weight stuff here, or suspension trainer type work here,

too. I think that's an underrated tool for building your bench, especially when we talk about building frequency. You don't want, if you build frequency and you lift your chest three days a week, you do not want it to be barbells and dumbbells every single lift or else you're gonna end up probably overturning. What I love about the suspension trainer,

like doing just like some presses and, you know, putting more intensity on that. Right away, just holding yourself in place in that plank position really exposes any little weakness and instability. It's glaring at that point and too. And even every incremental angle of the way down to and then the way up, it's a struggle. And so it's a very valuable exercise then that applies and translates nicely. Yeah, we know one thing I like to do with the for speed with the suspension trainer. And I won't set this very low because we're looking for speed as I'll do the deep push-up, right, go all the way down the bottom. And then from there, and again, this is an advanced technique, you have to have good stability.

My goal is to press myself up to a standing position with speed, right? So I'm focusing on speed with this really nice range of motion, and I do notice a good carryover. One time, and I haven't done this in a long time, I use the device that hooked on the barbell so you can put plates on it, and when you lower the weight, the device hits the floor, unhooks from the bench, and then you lift. So you like overloads and negative, which is actually quite interesting. It's actually a very interesting feeling to do a heavy negative then with the normal

thing. Well, I mean, that's awesome, right? If you don't have a spotter, right? Because that's what I remember as a kid, we used to love negatives. We used to love putting, when back when I couldn't even bench 225 throwing 315 on the bar, having your friends help you. Yeah, having your friends help you down like that. There's some tremendous value to that.

My point is a record. It does, I mean, I'm careful with teaching techniques like that because one, I think we ordered this correctly with the posture being your number one thing too, frequency, man, I cannot stress that that will be the biggest game changer for most people. Most people are not training their chest three days a week just doing that. But if you do that, you can't have heavy bench and dumbbell day and then

followed by heavy negatives the next day in the gym. You'll just trash your chest and you won't give it, you won't give it the recovery that it needs. And so, you know, that heavy negatives would replace like a heavy bench press day for me. Now, chains is another easy way to do this kind of progressive resistance. You can buy these at your hardware store, and essentially what you're doing

is you're hanging the chain off the bar as you lower the weight, the chain hits the ground, thus making the weight lighter. So the weight is heaviest at the top, lightest at the bottom, which kind of matches your typical strength curve when you bench, right? Because your weakest at the bottom, strongest at of matches your typical strength curve when you bench, right? Because your weakest at the bottom, strongest at the top.

You gotta get a long enough chain to pull it off. Yeah. Because you wanted to coil down on the ground as you're coming down, so that way, yeah, you do lose some weight, and then you gain weight as you can then press in your strongest part of the strength curve. Yeah, and one thing you can also do with the chain is you hang the chain, and at the bottom, you put a lot of chain so that the top it's real heavy. And as soon as you go down, it gets much lighter

because most of the weight is on the bottom of the chain. But again, that progressive resistance, and you know it's funny, this was, again, this was, I think the Soviets were the ones to really figure this out. Power lift, they started doing this kind of stuff. And what I love now is you're now starting to see like bodybuilders and stuff,

utilizing progressive resistance because it's not just gonna make you stronger, it makes you build. I'm sure they're not just putting on their chest for pictures. Yeah, no, no. Or they'll attach it to machines, which drives me crazy. I guess it was those photos.

Well, there you go. I do too. I do too. Look, if you like our information, head over to MindPumpFree.com and check out all of our guides and books, totally free, lots of great information. You can also find all of us on Instagram so you can find Justin at MindPump Justin, me and MindP RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes MAPSANABOLIC, MAPSTERFORMENT and MAPSISTEDIC.

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