Your Beast Life Now – The Benchpress

Alright you savages, you’ve been at it for over a month now. It’s time to dive deeper into the finer details of each exercise. And this week is the bench press. When people notice that you’re a weight lifter, the first thing they will ask is “what do you bench?”. It is heralded as the alpha exercise, which is wrong, because if there is one exercise that does… including fuck-boys… it is bench press with curls running a close second. It is more of a delta exercise, but it is easy to rack up big numbers and be totally alpha doing it.
For the basic bench press, before you even touch the bar, you have to get into position. Pinch your shoulder blades back, as though you were trying to hold a baseball back there. Now with you shoulders firmly pressed down on the bench, scoot your ass toward your shoulders, creating an arch. You should get enough arch to slide a 2×4 through it. This position keeps your shoulders from getting fucked up by minimizing the strain that you put on them with this lift. Shoulder injuries are common enough with bench press, that it usually regarded as a matter of when instead of if. This position also creates a firm foundation of support with your back muscles, and allows you to drive the lift with your legs.
Your hands should hit the bar just outside of your shoulder socket. Most Olympic bars have lines and notches. Find a way to eyeball your grip according to these lines. This is called the Power position. It gets the max benefit of both your chest and tricep muscles. To put more emphasis on your chest go another hand width wider on each side. Do this for shaping purposes. Going further in puts more on your triceps, but then it becomes a tricep exercise.
Once you get your grip right, lift off. Lower the weight in a controlled manner, as if you were pulling it down. Aim for your nipples. At the bottom you can touch your chest, but the actual Olympic standard is one inch from your chest. I don’t think it actually matters, but touching your chest keeps you from being a pussy who does half reps. It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking six inches is actually one inch (that’s what she said shrimpy), especially when you’re hitting it hard or doing a new personal best. So if you go one inch, make sure it’s actually one inch.
Now explode up. Keep your ass planted, because your natural tendency is to drive your hips up and engage your back into the exercise, but this cheats your chest. And you look like a retard who can’t handle their shit.
The only exercise that is a suitable replacement for the standard bench press is the dumbbell press. Any machine press can be used as a supplement, but never a replacement. The two most important supplement exercises are the military press and the close grip or tricep press. Keeping your shoulders strong not only helps your bench but also helps prevent injury. You should try to keep your military press at 50-75℅ of your bench. Tricep presses are the best for building tricep strength, which also helps your bench. Having stronger triceps won’t cheat your chest during the bench either because when you add weight your chest will still get more stress.
Other supplements are the incline bench press, decline bench press, dumbbell flys, machine flys, cable flys, skull crunchers, cable presses, dips, and kick backs.