Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2127: Bench Press Masterclass

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover what you need to know to master the bench press. The bench press is the gold standard in the strength world. (1:38) The requirements your body needs to perform a proper bench press. (2:59) “Hot take, there is more shitty bench press happening right now than deadlifting.” (9:33) Priming is key! (10:57) The correct bench press form, proper technique, and sets & reps. (20:24) The best carryover exercises. (27:34) Advanced techniques. (32:17) Related Links/Products Mentioned Limited time offer exclusively for Mind Pump Listeners ONLY: 50% off the Stress, Mood & Metabolism At-Home Lab Test + Health Coaching Call – Reserve yours today here July Promotion: MAPS Starter | MAPS Starter Bundle 50% off! **Code JULY50 at checkout** Do You Have Back Or Shoulder Pain? YOU NEED TO TRY THIS! | Mind Pump THE BEST Exercise For Back Strength, Stability & Posture with Bands Improve Your Shoulder Press with Shoulder Dislocates Prime Your Shoulders with Handcuffs with Rotatation on a Bench Mind Pump #1950: Shoulder Building Masterclass How to Bench Press with Proper Form (AVOID MISTAKES!) Bench Press Properly With Ben Pollack (AVOID MISTAKES!!) | MIND PUMP How to Perform the Overhead Press (the CORRECT way) - YouTube Grow Your Chest with the INCINE DUMBBELL PRESS | Mind Pump The ONLY Way You Should Be Doing Dumbbell Bicep Curls! How To Do Chest Dips For A BIG Chest! Sling Shot Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Mark Bell (@marksmellybell) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode is the Bench Press Masterclass. You're going to love this episode. Now it's brought to you by one of our sponsors,

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All right, this episode is the Bench Press Master Class. Everything you need to know about the Bench Press, how to get a bigger bench, the muscles they develop, why you can't bench very well, why you hurt, what's going on, let's talk about one of the most popular exercises in gyms across the world. The gold standard is whether or not you're stronger or not. That's what it used to be, right? That's cool.

When we were kids. It was all about you. How much you bench? That was terrible, man. This has to be my worst lift of the big ones originally. Yeah, well you tall, long arms, the leverage. You know, it's up there always among the top, like four or five exercises I would say. And I would argue it belongs there.

I don't think it's one or two, but I think it's definitely a good upper body exercise. Yeah. Because it is functional in the strength that it provides and it builds. And it's a phenomenal exercise for developing like the pushing muscles of the upper body. The chest, the shoulders and the triceps,

you get really good at a bench press and all of those muscles are going to get pretty well developed. It's pretty incredible. It's ability to do so. So it's a good exercise. It's part of the big five, but it's the last one of the big five, my opinion. Yeah, I would say so.

Yeah, but I mean, I think tremendous. Do you want to start this by talking about a lot of the issues or things that hold people back from having a successful bench press first before we get into all the techniques and tips. Yeah, I think maybe we should talk about the requirements, right? Like the things that your body needs to be able to perform a bench press well

and then that could lead us directly to kind of what you're talking about. You need to have, I guess the first thing would be like a stable shoulder girdle, right? So the shoulder girdle is the shoulder joint plus the scapula, it's kind of that whole area needs to be pretty stable. If it's not stable and you do a lot of bench press or you start adding weight to the bench press, then you run into a lot of problems. In fact, I would say the bench press

is of all the strength training exercises has to be one of the most likely to cause shoulder injuries in people because they don't necessarily enter into it with good, like shoulder girdle stability. Yeah, it exposes any kind of weak point in terms of like you being able to track and maintain Your shoulder in that position and have it stable while you're loading it so substantially

Okay, so that's gonna go over the head of a lot of people So what what do we mean by how does somebody know that they have a stable shoulder girdle or not? Well, like what what are the key indicators that I need to improve that and what does that even mean? I think the easiest way to communicate that would be to communicate really good bench press form first. So when you're bench pressing in a safe and effective way, which also is the way you'll also be able to lift the most amount of weight by the way, because it allows for the best recruitment pattern and the best leverage. It's a high chest, so you stick out your chest and your shoulder blades are pulled back and down

and locked in that position. So your shoulder blades aren't rolling forward while you're benching and trying to get the weight up. You're in this kind of high type position, shoulders back, but down also not the weight up. You're in this kind of high type position, shoulders back, but down also not hiked up. And this puts you in a very safe type position. But in order to maintain that position

while lifting a bar off your chest, the muscles that hold that position have to be strong. That's what I mean by shoulder girdle, I guess, the ability. Yeah, and really with the bench, we're trying to get as expansive as we can to allow the chest to really work and the pectoralis to be able to contribute as much as possible and not bear the load so much

on the shoulders. And that's a lot of times that's where we get a lot of, potential injury. So it helps to understand why this is such a challenge for most people, right? So like if I were to stand up right now and shove Justin as hard as I could. Ben idea, first of all.

He's tried once, yeah. This biggest thing. What would happen? Naturally, you would see yourself do this. Yeah, real one. You would just roll everything forward. So it's natural for us to kind of roll the shoulders forward in this pushing motion. But for a more optimal bench press for building your packs, for building your chest, you got

to be able to keep your shoulders in that retracted position. Anchored. Yes. Anchored down. And it's just, it's unnatural. Because like I said, if you were to get up and just push somebody You wouldn't do that it would flop forward yet When you teach somebody a proper bench press

They're in that role present then you add the problem that we have is that not a problem But just what we do all day long is everything is in front of us right? So when we you drive you brush your teeth you eat everything, everything we're doing, yeah, nobody does anything back here, right? So you're constantly tightening and shortening all these muscles up here that force you to already be in this round of position. So not only is it natural for you to roll forward when you were to shove or push something, but then you're already in that advantageous position for rounding, okay? So we have to find a way to teach somebody to get in that position and then be able to hold that position and then be stable

and strong in it. And it's just, it's probably, in my opinion, I know a lot of people think that like the deadlift is like one of the hardest things to teach a client, teaching a lot of clients to bench press really well. Very technical exercise. I'm so glad you said that. Very, very technical. Everything's basic. Yeah. It's very technical movement. Your low back is off, not your butt.

Your low back is arched. Your shoulders are pinned down and back and stable. And there's a technique to the... You have to have, first of all, you have to have a strong mid back in order to have a safe, strong bench press. You think, what does the back have to have, first of all, you have to have a strong mid back in order to have a safe, strong bench press. You think, what does the back have to do with anything? The back is what's stabilizing your shoulder girdle, your scapula.

It's what keeps you in that safe position because the shoulder joint is very complex. It's a very complex joint. It's not just the arm that's moving up and down. The shoulder blade also moves along with us. And the humorous is like floating. Right, right. It could twist and do. And now, evolutionary speaking, they think that the reason why we have such,

I guess, technical or advanced or complex shoulder joints is because we throw with accuracy, right? It's this really amazing joint that allows us to throw with accuracy. But in a bench press, you don't want 50 million moving parts floating around. You want anything stable as possible, and you want to generate power and kind of this, you know, almost straightener. Not quite straight line, but in this, you know, linear fashion to keep everything really stable. You need to have a strong stable mid back for some

fact. Oftentimes, people's bench press suffer because they're back as weak, they're mid back as weak. They don't have a good, you know, rhomboid strength and lower trapezius strength. Then you have the muscles that rotate the upper arm, the ones that cause you to be able to rotate the arm and stabilize the humerus. Those are smaller muscles, you know, like you're super spinatus, infersp spinatus, the terras minor, sub scapularis, like all these muscles that are on the, you know, when you hear someone say they injured the rotator cuff, the rotator cuff literally is like the part of the shoulder blade that all these muscles attach to. So when someone says, oh, I tore my rotator cuff, you can actually ask the question, which muscle, which

one got injured because there's so many that attach there. So you need those strong stabilizers to keep your upper arm from twisting and doing weird things when you're trying to bench press. Here's a hot take for you. There's more shitty bench pressing happening right now than deadlifting. Probably. And I'll tell you the reason why.

One, most people that are afraid of doing a deadlift are afraid of doing it so they have way more cautious They're way more cautious. They avoid it in the first place if you have shitty deadlift form It is very obvious right like which is why a lot of people won't do it unless they feel confident I remember being a trainer and not deadlifting because I was self conscious of not doing it well So I avoided but bench press is actually really difficult to see somebody who's bench pressing bad. If you don't know what you're looking for, I can totally get on board with that

because it's not as respected. And that's one of those things. You'll get from your doctor, your physician, like, oh boy, deadlift, so I'll call it hurt your back. Like, there's all this misinformation, deadlift-wise, where I think two people are a bit apprehensive towards that, but nobody considers that technique is crucial

for bench pressing, especially when you start getting into maximum load. Yeah, it's, again, it's a technical exercise. It's a very effective exercise though, when you do it right, if you treat it with respect, it can be incredible. And a lot of that has to do with making sure your mid back is strong, your positioning is good, and you've got healthy stabilizers.

And you're, like I said, the ones that attach to the rotator cuff, how do we do that? Well, you could prime properly, we can get into that. And then there's exercises you could do that help with that. But priming is a way to wake these muscles up and also allow yourself to connect to the muscles that you need to to provide you with a kind of stable position. A very, this is funny because it sounds like, you know, one about to say everybody's like, well, I know that exercise. One of the best ways to prime your bench press is to do some rows before you bench press.

Band rows are my favorite for this. Band rows they emphasize the squeeze because the band gets harder as you stretch it out. It's not so heavy to where you might have bad technique. But doing some band rows where you squeeze the shoulder blades back and down, doing a couple sets of that before you bench press, I say it with almost all my clients because it would almost always improve their technique and that before we bench press, Isaiah with almost all my clients because it would almost always improve their technique and form when they bench press. What are my favorites?

I like isometric stuff too for that, right? So like zone one, the isometric hold against the wall, or what I'll do like if I don't have a band, because I think bands are phenomenal too. I would like, I would carry bands with me normally and have them in my bag. If I don't have that, I'll actually get over in a bit over row position and hold an isometric hold in the in the row position for my mid back So I'll just bring the bar. That's really light for me to do that right?

Yeah, it's not a workout by the way. Yeah, yeah, you're just trying to activate. That's right You don't want to get fatigue. You don't want to fatigue you or else that will hinder how much you can lift on the bench The idea is just to prime, wake all those muscles up because you're trying to help them stay active when you are getting into the bench. Yeah, you know what's funny is, you know, talk about like a old wisdom or a bro science. I remember learning, it's like bench press technique

for some older lifters. And now they didn't communicate it like we are, right? Cause they don't think they understood why it worked. They just showed me one of the ways that they set their bench press up. And what they would do is they would get under the bar of the bench press. And they would use, they would do like an inverted row with the bar from the bench press. So they get underneath it and then they pull their chest up to the bar and do some reps squeezing back. And then they'd get into position and bench.

And I remember not understanding like why he did it, but he's like, oh, when I do this I could bench more. He was literally priming his mid-back. It was intuitive. It was intuitive. It's one of those. I do the same thing, not knowing what I know now in terms of the significance of that,

but it's really to activate those muscles that are gonna keep you anchored there to the bench, to keep everything in contrast to what you're doing in terms of pressing outward. We want to stay stable. The thing about physics and leverage and all this kind of stuff, it's like, if you think about a less stable body in this position, if I have any kind of movement left to right, if I'm loose at all. If you're in a water bed. Yeah, exactly. How efficient are you going to be you're in a water bed. Yeah, exactly. How efficient are you gonna be lifting something

in a water bed, right? That's a great example. It's all about efficiency and effectiveness. So the more tense and rigid I could make my body and create that sort of like anchoring all the way from my shoulders all the way down, even through my feet, which is something I learned later on in terms of leg drive, incorporating that into the bench, you get so

much more output. I love when we talk about things that take me back and remind me of a moment that there was this moment in my training career where this this light ball really went off from me. So for, we've talked about this. For many years, most of us, definitely me, maybe not just as much, but for sure, sound, I did a lot of the bro, single body part stuff. For example, like arm day, chest day, back day, leg day,

and the theory then is that like, if I'm just focusing on one muscle, I can give it all to that. I'll get the most out of that muscle because I'm focused just on that muscle, I can give it all to that. I'll get the most out of that muscle because I'm focused just on that muscle. And so I always thought that there was a superior way of training. And I remember this is years into already being a trainer.

And I have still training this way. And my buddy who is doing a push pull type of routine and he's doing a back routine first fall by chest. And I remember thinking like, that's a stupid idea. You're gonna be so exhausted from your back exercises. By the time you get to chest, you're gonna be so weak. And I followed it with him. I hit a PR.

And that was the moment for me that went holy shit. I know I'm tired from all those back exercises we did, but I just hit a PR on chest from doing that. And I realized how important it was for me to get in that stable, rigid, get those muscles all activated so that when I went into the bench press, I could get everything out of that movement. And that was like such an aha moment for me

that I could exhaust myself in these other back exercises and be stronger going, it just didn't be going fresh into my chest. Like that was so mind-blowing. So people might argue, like what are you talking about? Like you made your back tired. How are you able to use your mid-back muscles

to stabilize you better? It's not that he, they were dead before and he had to wake them up. What happens is he's able to feel those muscles because he just worked them out. So now when he gets in the bench press, he can put himself. what happens is he's able to feel those muscles because he just worked them out. So now when he gets in the bench press, he can put himself.

He's very blonde better. So as trainers, we used to do this with clients where if I was trying to get them to activate a muscle, sometimes what all I would have to do is touch it. I put my finger on it and be like, right here, squeeze right here and then, oh, there it is. Now I can feel it. And that's hard to do with the back for a lot of people,

especially when you're pushing. How to activate my back while I push? Doesn't my back want to pull? So that's exactly what you notice. So even though you were more tired, you were able to activate those muscles and give yourself a more solid stable base. Another priming movement I love that primes

the rotator muscles really well, without you having to focus on exactly what you're doing necessarily, or shoulder dislocates. Shoulder dislocates are excellent. All you need is a stick, a broomstick would work, or a PVC pipe, or a lot of gems now have them, just a stick. And that allows your rotator muscles to kind of warm up and activate, and you can feel how you need to move your shoulder.

And it's a great way to quote unquote warm up before a bench press, especially if you tend to have shoulder pain in the back of the shoulder or the top of the shoulder when you're bench pressing. It's one of my favorite videos for that. Obviously, there's techniques to consider while doing that, grabbing it as wide as you can to start pulling outward to create tension. So this is all important things and also not allowing your back to arch substantially, just to make sure that you're performing that at a high level. But yes,

it's going to go ahead and wake up and prime and activate a lot of those rotational muscles that are there around the shoulder that will help to contribute, keeping it in place, keeping it in that track, the more we can keep it in place, the more effective lifts can be. Yeah, you mentioned earlier too, leg drive, Adam, you're talking about a hot moment. Boy, that was out of huge room for me. I always heard power lifters talk about leg drive when they would bench press, And it never made any sense to me. What the hell do the legs have to do with the bench press? They don't do anything.

I could push all I want off the floor, as I lift the bar, I have to use my arms. It made no sense to me whatsoever. Then I had this guy working out who explained it to me. And he said, look, and this is example I've used on the show. He said, squeeze your right hand as hard you can, but relax every muscle in your body, including your face. Not allowed to tense any of the muscle He said, squeeze your right hand as hard as you can, but relax every muscle in your body, including your face. You're not allowed to tense any of the muscle,

but just squeeze your right hand as hard as you could. And then he said, now squeeze your right hand and squeeze the rest of your body, which one are you able to generate more force with? And I was like, oh, that's what's happening. Why does that happen? The central nervous system can fire more effectively when it's firing throughout the body

versus just in an isolated place. So if I bench press and my legs are just hanging off the bench and my feet are on the floor, I can't press as hard as when I'm driving my legs into the floor, tightening my glutes and literally activating the lower half of my body. Powerlifter's known this for decades. So leg drive, it's what they call it,

is very important in creating an effective bench press. So not only that, but then you also get the other factor because you're so locked in tight and everything's firing, you're rigid, and there's no leak in power. And back to like, you're just in love to talk about this with like the shoulders. You know, that was another big aha moment for me

was learning how to prime my shoulders and get them very all the muscles around the shoulder to be primed warmed up and and stable so that when I go to press there's not any of this you know, floppyness or movement in the shoulder. If you're going to lift really heavy weight you're braced with your legs or brace with your core you're in that. And then there's this movement in the shoulder. It's not stable and locked in and rigid. You're leaking power. And when you're doing a movement, that big with that much potential weight on it, it could be the difference of like 25, 50 plus pounds

that your body can load more, just by being able to be primed, warmed up and stable in order to do that lift. That was a huge one for me was piecing that together and really noticing that like, wow, when I do all these rotator cuffs or wall circles or zone one, really give, I love W's on the suspension trainer, like that movement,

just kind of primes and wakes all those up. I'm so rigid and stable to bench press. One more thing with technique is a good, there's now, there's different bench press forms and techniques and yes, they all have some value but generally speaking for most people, you want to have a form where your elbows are not completely flared out and also not completely by your sides.

You want them slightly tucked. Okay. So you've got this kind of slightly tucked shoulder position as you're pressing that maximizes leverage and it minimizes risk of injury. Elbows flared way out. Sometimes you'll see bodybuilders do this. That can maximize maybe chest involvement, but the risk of injury goes through the roof with that position. And I would say until you are a master at bench press, you've got good stable shoulders,

you know how to perform it really well, I would not mess with those different varieties and versions. Like if I take somebody who's really learning technique on the bench press and then I have them flare their elbows out, I've just increased the risk of potential injury by twice, by double, right? So you want that kind of slightly elbow tuck position. People always ask to hand, like grip positioning. You want your hands outside your shoulders.

You don't want them super wide and you also don't want them too close together. That's a different exercise. I think an easy way to teach it is that when you bring your elbows down, you've made a 90 degree angle. Yeah, this is the position where your hands should be. I think an easy way to teach it is that when you bring your elbows down, you've made a 90 degree angle. Yeah, this is the position where you're answering. You should have this nice in your elbow, you should have this nice 90 degree. And by the way, that doesn't mean that you can't ever do a bench press like this.

You can't ever do a bench press like there's like put for a standard like teaching consistency. Yeah, basic bench press, what does it look like to get ready for? If I take the bar, take no weight on it or stick just so you can see it and I bring it down You know if my hands are out here. I got that huge angle my hands are way in here I want to be right at 90 degrees when I'm looking at it Yeah, and I mean the barbells have Definitely designed these like neural and this etching in there for you to kind of line up your hands And to make sure that your thumb is sort of outside.

And, you know, it's somewhat of a generalized starting point, at least, for you to experiment with, you know, widen it out a little bit. But again, it's not going to be too far away from what that's already designed for. Yeah, I like the standardized lines because most barbells will have a line right around the same place. Once you kind of figure out your grip, what finger goes on that. Yeah, so like if it's taller guy, it's going to be a different than a shorter guy, but you kind of know where your hand goes and you know your hands are even on the bar. This is important because, by the way, the reason why those lines exist in the first place is because if you're too far to the right of the left, obviously the leverage changes

and you made it here in trouble. Yeah, you made it a dangerous exercise. You also want your wraps to be controlled with the bench press. There is a tendency with the bench press to do, to wanna do two things. Either one, rebound off the chest a little bit. So come down to the chest, bounce and come up. Or two, not completely finish the rep at the top

and you kinda see these these half like not full extension type reps. If you want a really good bench press, that's really effective across the board. You want to come all the way down to the chest, touch the chest, but don't rest on the chest, then press all the way up to your arms are fully extended in a controlled fashion, meaning there's no bouncing or jerking, it's a very controlled type of rest. This is the must way. If you're coach and trainer, it's the must way to teach first. It doesn't mean that those two other ways that you just suggested or talked about, doesn't

have value or you can't do an explosive, but it's like ignore any coaches or trainers that are suggesting that as a way for you to get good at the bench press, taking it through its full controlled range of motion, get very good at that bench press, taking it through its full controlled range of motion, get very good at that, get very strong at that. And then when you get into advanced techniques, you can start to play with shortening reps up to increase the tension on the chest. Yeah, explosive stuff where you're using momentum to help you out. But when you're learning that movement, doing advanced techniques that somebody might

have taught you or showed you to me has little to no value and or carries a lot of risk with it. Yeah, you know, here's an area people never talk about, is the grip on the bar when you're bench pressing because you're a false grip. Yeah, because you're pushing the bar, people tend to not focus on the grip. You want the bar to sit in the palm of your hand here,

not too far up on your hand, because that'll cause wrist issues, but you want to also be able to do so with your thumb wrapped around the bar. This is the best way to learn how to bench press and trust me when you get good at it with this, you're gonna be totally fine. Some people will do what's called a false grip.

I don't ever teach that. Now, if you're super advanced, then you know how to do it right and whatever fine, but I've seen way too many people start to lose it on a bench press and lose the bar and you're under the bar. That's just loose. Not a good idea. And it doesn't make you bench more by having a false grip. It doesn't really contribute to anything other than maybe someone learned that way and that's how they felt most comfortable. So thumb around the bar and squeeze the bar. Yeah. And you know,

to your point of like going full range of motion and making sure like, you know, you teach that technique first, like we can get to all these other nuances of like how to, you know, address some of those things, but like, yeah, you'll see, see guys where the wrists are broken and they're doing the false grip.

Like I've, I've just always, whenever you're grabbing a barbell, you wanna make a nice tight fist so it's supporting your wrists. And so to be able to wrap that thumb all the way around to grip it really tight, and create, even create a little bit more force intention through the muscles by squeezing a little bit harder, maven contribute

towards your overall performance, but it's protective for the wrist. The wrists are very exposed in the bench press. Yeah, absolutely. All right, now there are exercises that, oh, by the way, I want to go over this as well. Frequency, bench press is an awesome exercise because it's one of those that you could do quite frequently.

You could bench press, I mean, three days a week, you could bench press and get phenomenal results. Now, I wouldn't say you bench press heavy mean, three days a week, you could bench press and get phenomenal results. Now, I wouldn't say you bench press heavy and hard three days a week, but you could bench press three days a week. You can't really say that about every exercise, but with the bench press, it seems to be true. Most people in my experience do better with the bench press if they do it more frequently than they do it less frequently. Now, what does that look like? There's typically one heavy day in there. There's typically not maxing out every single time. Yeah, there's another day where you may be higher reps

and maybe another day where you're just perfecting technique, but the practice of the bench press, the frequency seems to work very well. Yeah, I like having a day that is really heavy, a day that is really light and speed, and then another day that's kind of like mild hypertrophy pump type of like day.

Like those three I think work really well. And then again, spread them out based off of how your body feels, but that's kind of a good standard way to like increase your bench press is lifting three times a week, modifying the intensity. One of the ways to modify the intensity is by lightening the load, doing one day that's like speed technique day, and then another day that's more of like feeling

the muscle and pumping, and then one day of the getting after it, trying to really load it. Yeah, I agree. Now, there's, there's, there's, lots of different exercises will help contribute to the strength of the bench press, but there's a, there's a few that seem to have the most carryover with most, for most people. One of them is the overhead press, but there's a there's a few that seem to have the most carryover with most for most people. One of them is the overhead press. So this is more true for someone.

Let's say when bench pressing for a couple of years, they kind of get stuck. Sometimes getting better at other exercises will get the bench press better. And overhead press is one of those movements where if my overhead press goes up, my bench press almost always also goes up. It's almost never the case where my overhead press goes up, my bench press almost always also goes up. It's almost never the case where my overhead press goes up, but my bench press doesn't see an improvement. In that same kind of vein, I would say, because people think the bench press and they think flat barbell bench press, that's what they think.

And I think that one of the most neglected exercises in client bench press, I just think that I did for years and so did all my friends. Like, because we were weaker at the in client press. And nobody asked you how much you can in client. Yeah, nobody asked how much you can in client press. It was all about how much you could barbell bench press. And so, and we know the loss specificity, the more I'm practicing barbell bench press, I'm going to get better and better at that.

So I'm just going to focus on getting better at that. Meanwhile ignoring the incline. And there was a time when I had a massive discrepancy. I mean, I could barely do 135 on the incline, but I'm pushing over 250 on the bench press. I had that much of a discrepancy between my incline and my flat bench. And then I went on a kick of just focusing

on getting that incline up and it shot up my bench press. So there's huge value in focusing on the end climb bench and don't avoid it or make it like the, oh, every once in a while I do it because you're not good at it, like get good at it. Same thing with the dumbbell varieties, right? Dumbbell chest presses. Obviously carry over.

Yes. That's the bench press. And then another one is dips, heavy dips. I know Justin, you talk about this. Yeah. This was very enlightening for me and too. And I was taking a year of just focused training body weight. I tried everything I could with gravitational forces with instability.

So I was working with suspension trainer and with Olympic rings. And I started to try to work on dips, which is very difficult to do dips with the rings. There's just so many factors of like having to stabilize myself in space. And then also working on getting depth with that. And then once I start working on getting depth and really being able to generate force

at the very bottom position and drive my way back out. It was amazing how that transferred over to my bench press in terms of where that sticking point is for the most part where you don't have a lot of ability to generate forces at the very bottom. And this is why you want to bounce off your chest. And this is why a lot of people get stuck down there at the very bottom. But if you can grind and generate more force, the really low dips, it's great exercise to work on that.

It's also good for shoulder health. Yeah, as an intro. That's the best. You know, if you go back to the things that we pointed out, right? Being able to have a stable shoulder girdle, having a primed, warmed, stable shoulder, being able to take something through full range of motion. The dip really, a loaded dip really addresses all those things. It really does a really good job

of getting you strong at all those positions. And definitely, this was a later one for me, right? So again, you're thinking back of like those a-ha moments or like when this a later one for me, right? So again, thinking back of those aha moments or when this really came together for me, I never really did heavy loaded dips. If I ever did dips, it was like a bodyweight thing that we would throw in there as a superset or just an exercise I would do ever once.

So I would get a pump or if I was limited to equipment, never did I ever try and get how strong could I I get at dips and actually doing two to three reps? Like that just seems silly to me like why would I ever do two to three reps for dips? But boy, if you've never trained yourself like that before like manage, let's see how much I can load and how much I can dip dip with even to the point where I'm starting to train three, four reps at a time, just continuing pushing the load. Man, that carryover into digging out of a bench press, huge, huge difference. Totally, dips are interesting because they help you

at the bottom of your bench. They also help you at the lockout. Yeah, the lockout. Yeah, you do really good with dips at top. You have to really lock your arms out and stay strong. You'll see that lockout because that's the other area. I'd say most common sticking point on a bench press is the bottom.

Second would be lockout. And more advanced lifters tend to get messed up with the lockout. So why you see a lot of power lifters training that lockout portion. Dips tend to help that pretty well. Advanced techniques, let's talk about maybe some advanced ways of getting your bench press to go up higher.

Bands on the bar made a huge difference. Now Mark Bell has a slingshot, which is very similar to what a band will do, so people will use a slingshot. But man, I saw, I was so stuck for so long, and just adding bands to the bar. And bands what they do is, when you feel like a band properly on a bench press, the bottom part of the bench press, you don't feel much resistance, but as you stretch the band out, the resistance gets harder,

well, I'm also getting stronger as the bar moves up. So I'm getting resistance that's kind of matching my strength curve. Oh my God, I added like 20 pounds of my bench press in such a short period of time from using bands. It gives you help at just the right portions of the left, which is, it's an amazing tool,

especially if you start hitting those sticking points in plateau a little bit, to be able to increase weight, but give yourself just enough help where your body just isn't producing that amount of force, because there are those portions of the rep, you do increase your strength and so then it challenges that you know portion of the rep

very effectively with the bands. So I like using chains for how you guys are explaining around. Chains are my favorite to increase load as I get through the top of the bench press. I love bands for the speed training that you can get with bench press. So I think there's that's a lot of flop around. Yeah, you go fast. Yeah, so typically if I'm chains, I'm going to load, right? So I'm going to put, I'm lifting heavy that day and I want to progressively get heavier and heavier through that lift. So it's more like that.

And then if it's a day where I'm like, I want to do speed, I'm going to put really, really lightweight, but then I'm gonna add bands to it and I like doing speeds. Yeah, because then the bar doesn't fly at your hands. Yes. Speed work with bench is really good. What does it look like, by the way, speed work with a bench?

You're not going down and up real fast. I've seen people do this before. They're like, oh, I gotta practice speed. And they're like, no, no, no, no, really what you wanna do is you wanna go down control, get tight. And then come up. And now with the speed press, it's important to maintain that stable shoulder girdle because

what you're going to want to do is roll your shoulders forward. And if you're doing that with the speed bench, you're going to hurt yourself. So it's be able to stay stable with the shoulder girdle and then push it up. Stable anchored and controlled. So you start to maintain control as you're moving fast. You only want certain parts of your body to move like that. And then one that requires no additional equipment is just pausing the wrap at different parts of the bench press,

like pausing it at the bottom where it's like barely touching your chest or pressing up halfway, pausing for three seconds, and then pressing all the way up. Like paus reps are awesome because you don't need any additional equipment to make a rep more challenging in the points that you need it to be more challenging with. So, it's the same.

In that same space, like floor presses or like that, or like pause reps, only you're using the feedback from the floor that's actually supporting it. Kind of like where you take bottoms up type of squats. I think there's a lot of value in that. especially if you have that sticking point, right? Digging out the hole. You can control the weight down really well, but then from that coming out, like if you come from a dead stop, it's really tough to do that. You have to learn to really put yourself in a really good position to be able to get out. Also switch over to kilograms.

So you don't really know what weight it is. Just gonna throw that one in there as a sidebar. That's a good one. So there you have it. There's your bench press, masterclass. Look, if you want more free information from MindPump, go to MindPumpFree.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram.

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