Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2507: Six Steps to a 315 Pound Bench Press

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

 Six Steps to a 315-Pound Bench It’s a pretty awesome goal to go after, but MOST will not hit it. (2:12) The value and history of the bench press. (3:13) Six Steps to a 315-Pound Bench #1 - Master the technique (strong arch, activate lats, squeeze bar, elbows slightly tucked, use leg drive). (5:23) #2 - Bench 2 days a week (heavy and speed days). (14:20) #3 - Do shoulder mobility daily. (17:34) #4 - Eat in a surplus. (23:06) #5 - Don’t neglect back work. (24:05) #6 - Use isometric pauses. (26:03) Questions: How important is including an incline press? (28:37) How can bands and chains be used to improve my bench press? (30:57) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Eight Sleep for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump Listeners! ** Code MINDPUMP to get $350 off Pod 4 Ultra. Currently, it ships to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. ** January Promotion: New Year's Resolutions Special Offers (New to Weightlifting Bundle | Body Transformation Bundle | New Year Extreme Intensity Bundle | Body Transformation Bundle 2.0  ** Savings up to $350! ** Mind Pump #2127: Bench Press Masterclass Fire up your Central Nervous System to maximize Muscular Adaptation – Mind Pump Blog Innovation - David Weck - The Ready State Podcast The Official Indian Clubs Checklist (AVOID MISTAKES) | MIND PUMP Shoulder Health Series- Build More Shoulder Mass!- High Face Pull (Video 3 of 5) Suspension Training Series - 3 Favorite Shoulder Exercises Grow Your Chest with the INCINE DUMBBELL PRESS | Mind Pump Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Kelly Starrett (@thereadystate) Instagram David Weck (@thedavidweck) Instagram  

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Ontario. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind there's only one place to go. Mind pump with your your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we teach you how to get to a 315 pound bench press, bench three plates.

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bundle 2.0. You'll find them all at MAPSJanuary.com. All right, here comes the show. You wanna bench press three plates, 315. This will make you really strong. Today's episode, we're talking about the six steps that should get many of you to be able to bench press 315 pounds. Dude, this is a cool one to school. Because I think this is something I would have searched for

in my early 20s on the chasing this. And I think I would have got there a lot faster if I met a couple of guys like you guys telling me advice like this. So hopefully the young guy that's listening to this that wants to or aspiring to lift 315 pounds takes this advice and really applies it because I don't know, there's a handful of the things that we're going to go that I I don't think that I put a lot of energy and focus in until much later in my career. Same you know first off 315 pound bench press is a lot so I want to be very clear this is not like

hey most of you are gonna be able to do this a lot of you aren't gonna be able to do this even if you follow the six steps that we give you however you'll all get a lot stronger if you follow the six steps that we give you. However, you'll all get a lot stronger if you follow these six steps. And if you are generally pretty healthy, strong young man or male, you should get pretty close. You can get pretty close, but it's a lot. 315 bench, now very many people can do

a real good 315 pound bench press. So this is a pretty awesome goal to go after. But now we've all done that in here. But it took a long time. It took a while to hit that. Yeah, a lot of reps and dedication for sure. And definitely again, and for me it was a lot of the technique that I had to learn over the years that made quite a big impact. Yeah, so I was almost 30. You know how old you were? Yeah. I was almost 30. When you finally hit it? Yeah, I was like 28, 29 28 29. When did I hit it? Same? I want to say you were college. So you were yeah Yeah, I do something. I you know, so it's it's first off bench press is an excellent overall muscle building exercise. It will

Develop the chest shoulders and triceps pretty well. It's up there with some of the best exercises you can do I would definitely put it top ten It's up there with some of the best exercises you can do. I would definitely put it top 10 Top 5 even it's it's a good exercise. It's it's relatively functional It's a favorite It's lost a little bit of popularity over the last decade or so, but when we were younger it was the exercise, right? We're gonna bring it back. I think the only reason why it's lost popularity, and I don't even know if I'd say it's lost popularity, I think exercises that should have been more popular have become more popular.

Yeah, like people are more aware of deadlifts and squatting. Yeah, deadlifts and squatting was not popular when we were kids. Nobody even knew what a deadlift was. Those are the two most important. As it should have been. So it belongs as a more important exercise, and so I don't really know if I think

chest is like falling out of favor per se. I just think that the average consumer lifter, gym bro, has become wiser and more aware of what belongs on the top two exercises, which I think deadlifting and squatting would belong. Now what's interesting about the bench press is when you look at the bronze era of bodybuilding Like turn of the century late 1800s early 1900s

Bench presses didn't exist back then if you wanted to do you to clean it up something like this You'd have to like get the weight up off the ground And try and press it and it wasn't a popular exercise So they didn't do very much of it then somebody invented the bench exercise, so they didn't do very much of it. Then somebody invented the bench with the rack, right? So you could lay down and un-rack it, and you see this change in the physiques of bodybuilders. Once you get into the silver era, this is like when it gets to the 40s, 30s, 40s, 50s,

now bodybuilders have these really well-developed pecs that they didn't have before, and historians will say it was the bench press. This was the exercise that did that. And I think it was a 50s and 60s. Way better look by the way. Yeah, and the 50s and 60s I think is when you got, some of these men were benching 400, 500 pounds

was like the biggest bench press of the day. And then it just quickly became an extremely popular exercise by the 60s and 70s and it became a staple. It's a very, you said this Justin, it is an incredibly technical exercise. I think it has to be one of the most misunderstood exercises. Overlooked. Yes, from a technique standpoint.

People think, oh, you lay on a bench, you just press the weight up and down. There's not a lot of technique involved. To do a proper bench press is very technical. In fact, it's one of the most technical, traditional strength training exercises. More so than most other exercises, and because a lot of people don't realize that, so many people do it wrong as a result.

But make no mistake, it's very technical, the lift itself is very technical. I think that's the reason why though, is because it's hard to see like what a bad like you could have a a bad bench press technique wise and it not look that far person Yeah, the average person walks by and sees it and goes like oh that looks that's how you do it You know, you know what to look for. Yeah, right

If you obviously if you know what to look for then you can look at very specific things and you know if that's a good technique. But you know, in an obvious like in terms of squat or deadlift, like it shows up right away. Yes. Oh, that's terrible. Yes, you can see, you can see a really bad squat or deadlift. I think even to the average eye, word bench press, sometimes when you're looking at somebody, which I found this, I found, as far as teaching exercises as a trainer, this was one of the most difficult exercises to teach. I actually found it easier to teach squatting and deadlifting than I did bench pressing.

Took me a long time to learn how to cue it to get people to do it properly. And I think it's just because when you lay down flat on the bench, you already start to promote and people are already rounded and forward because of everything they do. And relaxed, cause you're laying down. There's a lot of relaxed muscles that need to be tense already start to promote and people are already rounded and forward because of everything they do. And relaxed because you're laying down.

Yeah. So there's a lot of relaxed muscles that need to be tense that they don't realize. And I hadn't been at that point, I was already teaching, you know, the general pop how to bench press before I had ever been taught by like a real good lifter, somebody who could teach me. Like I was going based off of the pictures and our certifications and what I thought. I didn't understand really, really good technique, which explains why I didn't get to 315 until I was almost 30 years old.

Yeah. Mastering a technique is the first one. This makes such a big difference that if I took somebody that worked out regularly and bench pressed regularly but didn't understand the technique of a bench press, I could probably add 10 to 15 pounds of lift simply by mastering the technique of a lift. Almost the same day. It's actually, I'm going to say something that someone might not understand, but it's a true statement. The bench press when done properly is a full body exercise. It isn't just an upper body exercise.

This is where a lot of people have the misunderstanding. They think it's just upper body. They lay on the bench and it's just their arms moving and the rest of the body is just kind of sitting there because I'm on a bench. No, no, no proper technique of a bench press utilizes the entire body and there is a Proper technique that I and now it took me longer to learn this just like you Adam as a kid I just thought you'd move the weight then I got a power lifting magazine

So when I was a kid, I would subscribe to all these bodybuilding magazines. And once I ran out of bodybuilding magazines to subscribe to, I found a powerlifting magazine and I started reading it and I read an article on bench press technique and they talked about things that nobody ever taught me before. Like first off, you need to have a strong arch in your back. Now that doesn't mean your butt comes off the bench. I think that's what people think an arch is. Yes. Your butt stays on the bench, but you to have a strong arch in your back. Now that doesn't mean your butt comes off the bench. I think that's what people think an arch is. Yes.

Your butt stays on the bench, but you should have a natural arch in your low back. You should not have a flat low back. There was actually a period of time there in the gym where there was this total, I mean, just people were wrong about this. Lots of people thought your back had to be flat. Bro, I was- They put their feet on the bench. I was so ignorant that I taught that.

Wow. I mean, I taught, I used to tell clients that when people would ask about that arch, I would say, oh no, that's purely for sport and they're getting leverage and that is not good. That is not good for you and you shouldn't and you want a flat back. And I would have people literally lift their legs up off the ground so they would flatten their back like it was horrible advice Horrible advice and that I mean that's why I was so wrong about that for so long because I Really did believe at that point that that those massive arches were and it is for leverage and it is to get a bigger bench Press but how stupid am I like one of the best ways to getting a good bench press is also?

Being able to lift more weights right and bench press more weight and so that Like one of the best ways to getting a good bench press is also being able to lift more weight, right? And bench press more weight. And so that's part of the benefit of it. Simultaneously the technique that tends to allow you to lift the most weight when you, especially when you take it from experts, is also the safest. Yeah. That's why it's the one that allows you to lift the most. So that natural arch in the bench puts your your upper body in a better position, in particularly your shoulders in a better position. So you need to have that nice natural chest out arched back position because it actually

prevents a lot of the injury or issues that people develop in their shoulders from bench pressing. Bench press probably is responsible for more shoulder injuries than almost any other exercise because of poor technique. Good technique is actually a very safe exercise. So you wanna have a strong arch in your back. You also wanna learn how to activate your lats when you're bench pressing.

Now, when I first read this as a kid, I remember this made no sense to me. Why would I activate my lats? My lats pull the bar down. Yeah. I'm trying to press the bar up. Why, what does this mean by activating lats? And through practice, what I understood was when I activate my lats, I anchor, embrace. Shoulder girl is stable.

Stable. And that's really, I mean, I guess once you start to really think about all these cues and everything in terms of the technique, what it's really allowing is your body to become way more stable and you're not allowing any sort of swing or any kind of lateral twisting force to impede on your performance. So there's the less like performance leaks that you can create by tensifying your body in certain areas, especially lats and between the shoulder blades, legs, which we'll get to, but all of that stuff, it just adds into more weight you can put up.

Yep. So you activate your lats, you pull your shoulder blades back and down. So you have what's called a retracted and depressed shoulder girdle with active lats, which creates this incredibly strong, stable base underneath your body to support this bar. So it doesn't, like you said, move side to side, feel shaky. It is solid. Then you squeeze the bar real tight. You slightly tuck your elbows and you also use this, also confused me as a kid, leg drive. I thought, what do the legs have to do?

That's a hard concept. With a bench press, your central nervous system, which is what is telling your muscles to contract and fire your central nervous system, which is just as responsible for the force and strength that you produce, probably even more responsible than actual muscles themselves, activates and turns on better when it's fully turned on. Okay. And the example I like to use, I always use this example, is if you were to squeeze as hard as you could with your right hand but keep everything relaxed including your face and then repeat it but allow

yourself to tense up your entire body including gritting your teeth, you would see a improvement in strength production. Significant. By tensing everything up. You can feel it. I love that example too, is what I used to teach clients, because it's like, you can feel it right away. Right now, people listening can squeeze your fist as hard as you can, but relax the rest of your body and your face, and then do a, and you can feel how much tenser you can do.

We actually do it naturally. Whenever you exert force, you tend to grit your teeth and tense up your entire body. That's your body generating more force by activating the entire central nervous system. And so the leg drive literally just means you get your feet underneath you without lifting your butt up, you drive into the floor, intense your lower body, maintain tight shoulder blades down and back, activate your lats, squeeze the bar, come down controlled

and pressed up. Master this technique. The way you master is you practice it often with weight that is not heavy. So lightweight practice this, by the way, if you've never done this before, go do your bench press like you normally do, then practice the technique that we just said, we just talked about and watch how you feel. You'll immediately radiating effect. Yeah. You'll immediately feel like, Oh my gosh. I just picture myself as like, uh, you know, if I can become literally an anchor. So if I anchor,

my feet are anchored to the ground. And that's the thing about ground forces that you learn later about lifting heavy objects is the more that I can really anchor myself to the earth, you know, the more likely I'm going to be able to create and generate more force. And so if I can do that, even laying down, you know, that's where you see this in crazy increase in performance. I like the way we've laid out these tips because as we go through them, I remember the times in my journey where like that light bulb went off. And the next one that you've listed was really like the first, like that was the first first thing and so even before I had like master technique the first like increase in bench press for me was simply moving away from the One chest, you know one muscle group a day or week and blasting it really hard to just increasing the frequency

Which probably also helped with a little bit of technique You know just practicing it more and so I think bench pressing twice a week it more and so I think bench pressing twice a week became a huge like shift in like my ability to bench press more than just Monday. Yeah, yes, huge by the way. Now you're not just benching and bodybuilding twice a week. One day is heavy. In other words, one day you're training in the five rep range, six rep, by the way you're not going to failure. You're stopping about two reps short of failure. That's, that's the right intensity for most people, but it's a heavy day. So when you're doing your traditional heavy bench, good technique, the next

day is what's known as a speed day. Now this was borrowed from Westside Barbell and the way that they train, but it's through just trial and error. This is, and it's lasted as long as it has, it's produced some of the biggest bench presses of all time Because it works the next time you bench press during the week is not a heavy day. It's called a speed day What does that look like lightweight? Explosive right rations, right? So if you're bench pressing with 225 on your heavy day your light day is 135 It's even lower intensity. In other words, I'm not going to rep short of failure

What I am trying to do though is see how fast I can move the bar So I lower it and I explode up lower and explode I'm trying to move the bar very quickly when I feel the speed start to slow down I stopped the set so what that may look like is six seven eight reps something like that stop the set That's the second bench press day Speed powers the greatest expression of strength and it also does less damage than the heavy load. So it's like this perfect way to express this technique in a way that's not gonna do as much damage. And then you're also getting the frequency

and the more practice. So this, I clearly remember, this is well before 315, but I remember this was like me on my way to 225, because I could barely bench 135 as a young 20 year old. So it took me a long time to get here. These are the steps that I literally exactly took to get to 315. I'm glad you brought up the acceleration because that's one component took me a while to figure out because it's a grind and that's one of the things that really like crushes people when

they're doing bench and they can't get over that hill because they don't have that initial explosive energy that they create. And if you don't have that initial explosive energy to be able to get you up to a point where it's just the extension now, you're less likely to put up that much more weight. Well, especially when you realize... So a lot of people don't know that you can handle nearly four times the load on the eccentric portion of a movement. So as you lower the weight, you can easily, even when you can't even bench 315, most people listening, they could bench, you know, 200 pounds or 130, could even resist 315. But then to recruit enough and explosively move back the other direction is where most people fail. So part of you training that speed power like that, you get, you learn how to recruit all that muscle and explode out of that hole. This plays a huge role in getting that bench up.

Yeah. That's right. Next up is you want to work on shoulder mobility every single day. This has to be for people who know how to bench, people who had good technique, people who, you know, practice bench press with the right frequency, shoulder mobility issues, shoulder pain, instability, it is the number one killer of people's bench presses. Period, end of story. Either their shoulder can't stabilize and so they notice that their, their, you know, their rotator cuff, they start to get pain in the supraspinatus or the infraspinatus

or they'll get pain in the AC joint or it just doesn't, for whatever reason, they feel stuck with their bench press. The first time this became evident to me, I ordered, there was an ad at the bottom, at the back of a bodybuilding magazine for something called a shoulder horn. This was a long time ago, I was in my mid twenties, maybe early twenties. And, uh, it's literally, you rested your arms in it and you did external rotation, very basic, like shoulder, you know, mobility, strengthening exercise. It's so, it's so basic. I wouldn't put it in the top five of my favorite, but it was way more than I ever did.

And they sold me on it. Cause it said, add 15 pounds to your bench, you know, right out the gates. So I ordered it and I practiced it and I literally did add, I remember when I was 10, 15 pounds because my external rotators were so weak that they were holding me back. That's what happens when you have mobility issues and stability issues is your body will stop your strength gains. It will not allow you to lift more weight than it feels you can safely lift. It's always trying to prevent you from hurting yourself and there's these small muscles that stabilize the upper arm

that need to stabilize and you have these very powerful movers that are pressing heavy weight. Well, if you're powerful movers far surpass the stabilizers ability to stabilize your body limiting factor. It'll stop your strength. This is almost always one of the things that's neglected because you can gain quite a bit of strength on your bench press initially without addressing this. But then eventually this becomes a limiting factor. And I used to use the analogy of like somebody who's building like a super car,

building an old school and beefing it up with horsepower. And at some point you could take that standard car and you could start to build the engine and make it get a 10 more horsepower, 50 more horsepower. Sooner or later, that rear end and chassis has to be able to match and support how much horsepower or else that engine will just blow right through and it won't be able to support it.

And if the car had like AI regulators in there, it would say, no, we're not gonna let you we're not gonna use all this horsepower right can't support it and it can't in that car let's say you build this car with 700 plus horsepower and you don't reinforce that chassis or reinforce the rear end you won't even be able to get a snap into it snap twist brake you'll never see what that 700 horsepower is really capable of doing until you reinforce that I think the same thing is with shoulder stability with the bench press is that you start to build this great bench press, you're actually,

you could be stronger than you even realize, but you can't get it because you have these limiting factors, these stabilizers are so weak, you gotta catch them up. I actually listened to a pretty interesting conversation. It was with Kelly Starratt, and he was talking about David Weck and the rope flow that he came up with and talking about the value of that, how he incorporates that a lot with his shoulder health,

with his clients and everything. And really it's the acceleration of it. And so it's the rapid movement and stuff that we don't really get a lot anymore as we age and we don't really incorporate because you know, when kids were playing, our arms are very active, we swinging we're throwing um we're doing a lot more you know accelerated type of movement and so uh this plays into fact factor towards the bench too because to recognize

you know those moments of acceleration we need to be able to stabilize that appropriately and this helped me a lot when I was doing Indian clubs. And that's really like my limiting factor was always the shoulders. I could only get to like, you know, I couldn't get to that 405 mark. But I was pressing so hard to get there. And then I would have my shoulder would get impinged.

And I'd get all this pain. And so for me to get back in and really work on the mobility of it, but then also add a little bit of load with acceleration was enormous. Yeah, so a good way to know this, like if you're an advanced lifter, you've been lifting for a while and you go throw a baseball or a football or a frisbee and your shoulder is really sore the next day, it's because you've got really strong, big prime mover muscles and stabilizers that can't support that strength and that power. So mobility for the bench press, it would be like having weak ankles and hips and squatting.

At some point your body's like, no, we're not going to let you lift any more weight. That was my experience. I put the shoulder horn on. I literally did it three times that week or two times that week. Nothing crazy. I remember being like, oh I can kind of feel where that hurts or whatever. And my bench press went up. I had been stuck at the center, I don't remember what it was, but I had like 10 pounds in a week and I didn't build my chest and my prime movers anymore. It was just more stable. So Indian clubs are great. I love that for, I like overhead holds. I love face pulls. External rotations always good. Very basic exercise. You know the good old physical therapy. W's are my

favorite. W's are great on a suspension trainer. Shoulder dislocates, another good one. Hand cuffs with rotation. Shoulder mobility work for advanced lifters in particular tends to increase your bench press. Alright next up, and this is just so you know once I say this everyone's gonna say duh but yeah you'd be surprised how many people miss this. You got to eat in a surplus like if you're trying to get stronger and you're not eating a little bit more calories and you're burning good luck. You can still get stronger by mastering the technique and increasing central nervous system output but you're gonna be stuck at some point because you just need more building blocks. You need more materials

Right. So so you got to eat in a calorie surplus and eat a high protein diet I'd if you want to hit a number like I definitely would emphasize the hitting the protein too because surplus is important But I remember even making that mistake of just eating tons of calories But not enough protein but not enough protein and so Hitting your protein intake a high protein intake and a calorie surplus While good programming and do things that will certainly send you in the right direction. And in fact for a lot of people Just eating in a surplus alone and hitting protein their benchpress jumps just from that alone Next up don't neglect back work.

In particular, rowing movements, that back, if it's strong, you'll see your bench press be stable and you'll see your bench press sometimes even go up. I've had clients who, men in their late 30s, mid 40s, been working out a long time, they're like, they want to get more fit. Of course, we're looking at their lifts and getting their back stronger, got their bench press and overhead press to go up because we strengthen. Remember the back-

It's the support system. When you look at the shoulder joint, which is involved in the bench press, it's not just the upper arm moving in a joint. It's also the scapula, the shoulder blade that has to stabilize and hold steady when you're bench pressing. The shoulder joint's quite complex. The back muscles are what stabilize the scapula. It's the rhomboids, it's the mid trapezius, it's the lats that stabilize the upper arm.

It's also the infraspinatus, superspinatus, which, you know, some of that is on the back as well. So having a good, solid, strong back, you don't want to skip that. You need to have a strong back. I also think that there's some carryover benefit from the CNS too. Like for example, there's to be an old saying, if you want to increase your bench press, get a bigger squat. And a lot of that has probably to do with... Just overall. Yeah, overall when you get strong legs, the overall entire body gets a little stronger. And the back is like the second biggest muscle area, right? Like your legs are number one,

back is number two, so it's bigger than even the chest. And I think that it is an area because it's on the backside that people, especially young people tend to neglect. And getting a very strong back, strong deadlift, those type of movements carry over into all other pursuits of strength. And so I think there's something to be said there. Of course it is the part of the eccentric portion and stabilizes in the bench press. But I think too, just getting a big strong back makes you stronger overall. So definitely don't neglect that.

And then lastly, use isometric pauses when you're bench pressing. This is what took me to my final max bench press that I ever did in my life. This one thing right here added 20 pounds to my bench press, and it was learning how to take a weight that I could handle and pausing it in my sticking points and just getting strong on those sticking points. So for me, there were two sticking points. The first one, which is most sticking point is right at the chest. So what I started to do with, with the weight that I worked out with is when I got, felt

like I was strong enough to, I would bring it down. I'd hold it right above my, my t-shirt right above my chest. And I would hold it for five seconds and then press it up. And I'd get to the point where I could hold it for six, seven, eight seconds. When I was able to do that, when I would go to my max, that sticking point was no longer a sticking point. And then I had another sticking point, which was about midpoint. And I did the same thing.

I'd go down, I'd come up to the halfway point. I'd pause, I'd hold and get tight and come up. This is a great way to practice your bench pressing, get better and stronger because everybody has a sticking point. There's one part of your bench that if you get past it you could probably lift the weight. Because actively you can summon more muscle fibers you can literally recruit you just have to command it and so to be able to do that and direct it in your weak points of your lift is so effective and it's worth

doing that and really segmenting the lift out with lighter weight. But you really have to put the work in, in terms of squeezing with max force. In other words, this is another way that it improves CNS. This is another area because what's happening is there's a point in your lift where you're weak because you are unable to recruit all the necessary muscles and then holding that isometric and contracting like Justin's saying is teaching your body how to recruit all the necessary muscles and then holding that isometric and contracting like Justin's saying is teaching your body

how to recruit more. It'll make your weak point your stronger point. And when you get good at doing that, that thing that was a weak point ends up being a strong point because you learn how to recruit more. I actually practiced this so much at the bottom because I had such a bad sticking point there

that this now, now till this day, that is not my sticking point, that is actually the strongest part of my bench press. Well, you know, it's, yeah, and I did that too. I mean, I took it kind of to the next level when I was doing ring dips and I was trying to work on my transition into getting a muscle up. And what that really did was it improved my bench substantially because I got so much depth. And so, and you really have to fight for it. So I mean, you can, you can emulate, obviously you don't have to do for it. So I mean you can you can

emulate obviously you don't have to do rings to pull that off you can do that in a dip as well but to just get that depth and really summon that kind of strength down there is very beneficial. Got a couple questions here the first one is how important is including an incline press? Most important yeah I think such a fan of incline press. I'm a huge fan for overall balanced development. I think it can help with your bench press, especially if you've been bench pressing for a long time.

You could not bench for a little while, get stronger at the incline, go back to the bench and notice some of your weaknesses have been solved. From a muscle development standpoint, I actually prefer the incline over the flat bench. I think it develops the chest in a more balanced way. Functionally speaking, I I've heard arguments that say that incline is probably more functional. I think from an athletic standpoint, it's probably true. I think you tend to push people more in the incline. It's, it's, it's one of my, it's, I would, I would say you could replace bench for incline and I would,

you wouldn't hear a complaint at all. That's how I train. I rarely ever flat bench ever, ever, ever. I mean, because of all the things you just said, you, for just performance, overall health, function, it makes sense, incline is better. You could have an incredibly strong flat bench and a terrible weak incline bench, but you will not have an incredibly strong incline bench and have a weak flat bench and a terrible weak incline bench, but you will not have an incredibly strong incline bench and have a weak flat bench. If you can incline 315, you can flat bench 315. And I wish someone would have told me that in my early 20s because like a lot of young

guys, they gravitate towards the thing that they're better at. And naturally, if you've never done any of them and you go to a bench press, you'll be stronger bench pressing than you'll be inclining. And so, like many young men that avoid exercises they're not good at, all I did was flat bench press and never did incline until I tell the story

of where I made it a goal, like I wanna try and catch my incline bench press up to my flat bench. And so I totally stopped doing flat, went all incline. I had to my flat bench. And so I totally stopped doing flat went all incline. I had the best chest development. I ended up catching my incline up to my flat bench and I've been stronger in bench than I've ever been. It's like, what's the purpose of doing the flat if you get good.

So if, if I could give any advice to the young listener, like focus on the incline bench, it'll serve you so much more in all pursuits, overall strength. Now, granted, if you're in a powerlifting competition you got a bench you got a bench press you have to flat bench but if you're not going to compete and you just want to get a strong bench press you just want the aesthetics you just want all the results from it incline bench is the way to go. How can bands and chains be used to improve my bench press? My favorite favorite tools they are my favorite advanced if you're gonna I mean I guess for lack of a better term advanced training tools

First rank maybe her best for bench to write. Oh perfect on your speed day I mean you add then that's exactly what I would do is attach those units of the barbell into It's so great because you get that It's it's not wonky at all. So the thing is the chains are a little bit different because it could separate and it could be one to the next and you have a little bit of shifting, but the bands are always smooth and you can go pretty fast with them under control. Yeah, they're my favorite tools by far. Bench press, they work so well. Wouldn't you say it's the best muscle group to probably use?

That and squat. It's great for his strength curve. Yeah, so good. So, for people unfamiliar, so why would you use bands and chains on a bar? I remember the first time I saw them, I thought it was stupid because I didn't get it. I'm like, you just put weights on.

Why are you adding these other things? I had no idea what was going on. So, imagine chains for a second, right? So I have a bar loaded and I put lighter weight than I can normally lift because I'm going to add some heavy chains. So then I add heavy chains and let's say each chain weighs 30 pounds. So it's at the end of the bars and it's hanging all the way down to the ground. When I lower the bar the links hit the ground and the bar gets lighter. As I lift the bar I'm lifting links off

the ground and the bar is getting heavier. Why is that valuable? Because I'm getting progressive resistance as I get stronger in the lift. In other words, people tend to be the weakest at the bottom, strongest at the top. So as I'm lifting the bars getting heavier, making the lift match my strength curve. Bands, same thing. As I stretch the band out, it gets harder. As I unstretch it, it gets easier. Which one's better? They're just different. For speed. I like bands way better I generally like bands better anyway, because they seem to feel so I've always like chains chains just look cool I mean, I like the sound I like the sound of them

I like the grinding strength feel that you get from them I mean it allows you to lift like so your analogy of like so let's say you're somebody who you know to 25 or 200 let's say a flat number so it's easier 200're somebody who, you know, 200 is a flat number, so it's easier. 200 is the number that you can use your Mac bench. You could put 185 on the bar with probably 60 pound chains and lift that. So total, it's over 200 pounds at the top, but it's because in the whole,

you're only at your 180 something. So you can get it out of the hole really easy. But then by the time you get to the top, you're lifting more weight than you've ever lifted on the bench press. So it's a great way to progressively overload with weight that you can actually control. So I love chains. Totally. Look, if you like the show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind Pump to Stefan Oh, and Adam's at Mind Pump.

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