Contradicting Information On Bench Press Form?

[Shazbuckle]

Ok, so I've been working on my form for various exercises.

I looked at this(*edit: can't post video, my post count isn't high enough, just youtube seach "David tates 6 week bench press cure" if you want to see it ) and many of the threads dealing with compound exercise form to start.

Now that lad in the video has a massive chest, so his ROM is obviously going to be less than that of a skinny person like me. He also explains that your elbows should go down to where it is parallel with the floor, any more than that is causing shoulder strain. yet on this site on all the guides it sais to go all the way down to your chest and touch it. For me, that is a long way down. It would cause a lot of shoulder strain.

So which is it bodybuilding.com...is it go all the way down to your chest, or is it elbows parallel? Surely if it's all the way down to your chest a big buy would have less ROM than other people. Keep that in mind.

[-Lucifer]

So which is it bodybuilding.com...is it go all the way down to your chest, or is it elbows parallel? Surely if it's all the way down to your chest a big buy would have less ROM than other people. Keep that in mind.

Go as deep as you can, without experiencing any pain or discomfort.

I personally lower the bar, till it's around 1" away from my chest.

[dizzay20]

go with wuts comfortable, i prob go down to like 2" from chest.

[nkh]

For me, that is a long way down. It would cause a lot of shoulder strain.

It would and it does are two different things.

I feel like I have long arms and touch my chest with the barbell. I feel like I'm cheating myself if I don't.

Just find the grip width that puts your forearms perpendicular with the floor when you are touching your chest and keep your elbows from flaring out to the sides.

[NeverAgain87]

The form he initially demonstrates is for competing. Don't think you should always have your back that arched.

Go as low as you can without straining your shoulders.

[Al Shades]

First of all, it's extremely important that you recognize the context of the advice you're taking.

A bench press isn't just a bench press. It's a very different exercise for powerlifters than it is for bodybuilders.

For powerlifters, the goal is simply to move as much weight as possible using any type of form that will facilitate that. Since Dave Tate is a powerlifter, his advice reflects these goals. Powerlifters move lots of weight by reducing ROM, taking the bar to their stomachs and tucking their elbows in. These techniques are exactly the opposite of what you should do if you're using the bench press to stimulate hypertrophy.

For bodybuilders, the goal is radically different. It is to stimulate certain muscle groups and the weight being used is only an afterthought. The form of the exercise and the ROM used are entirely dependant on which muscles one is trying to stimulate.

Do not repeat the mistake, made by thousands of weight trainers both young and old, of trying to apply strength-specific techniques to hypertrophy, or vice versa.

One thing you really need to watch out for is strength coaches giving people advice on how to get big.

You never see it the other way around: bodybuilding specialists attempting to coach strength athletes.

But strength coaches who think they know how to coach bodybuilders are a dime a dozen on the internet and in real life.

Watch out for that.

You have been warned.

[ByronOrpheus]

OP, do whichever feels better, don't concern yourself with what "bodybuilders" and "powerlifters" do, focus on getting stronger and you will get bigger. Do whatever keeps your shoulders healthier.

Do not repeat the mistake, made by thousands of weight trainers both young and old, of trying to apply strength-specific techniques to hypertrophy, or vice versa.

One thing you really need to watch out for is strength coaches giving people advice on how to get big.

I'm sorry but this is absolute garbage, for drug free lifters (most of the people on this site) more often than not the strongest people are the biggest. So many people seem to have the idea that strength and hypertrophy are two completely different things. I'm aware that strength gains are neuromuscular with some myofibril hypertrophy, but come on, people on here act like they can get bigger pecs by benching 135x12 than just focusing on adding more weight. "Why do you want to bench more bro, you're not a powerlifter"

Worry about whether you're a "bodybuilder" or a "powerlifter" after you've actually done some lifting. Most people here including myself are beginners, seems like people lose sight of that a lot.

In before calmdownbro.jpg

[KrisKros]

Check your range of motion. Sit up straight and put your arms in front of you like you're benching. but when you bright your arms back, stop at the point where it would naturally stop without forcing it. Now that point is probably your safest point to drop the weight to when you bench..anything more can cause several problems. Everyone has their own ROM which is comfortable and safe for them. That 1 inch ROM won't make a BIG difference in your end result physique..but it can make a difference in recovery time and injury.

[Al Shades]

OP, do whichever feels better, don't concern yourself with what "bodybuilders" and "powerlifters" do, focus on getting stronger and you will get bigger. Do whatever keeps your shoulders healthier.

I'm sorry but this is absolute garbage, for drug free lifters (most of the people on this site) more often than not the strongest people are the biggest. So many people seem to have the idea that strength and hypertrophy are two completely different things. I'm aware that strength gains are neuromuscular with some myofibril hypertrophy, but come on, people on here act like they can get bigger pecs by benching 135x12 than just focusing on adding more weight. "Why do you want to bench more bro, you're not a powerlifter"

Worry about whether you're a "bodybuilder" or a "powerlifter" after you've actually done some lifting. Most people here including myself are beginners, seems like people lose sight of that a lot.

With that attitude, you're destined to become one of the people who trains for years and always looks/performs the same.

Every trainee must decide at some point whether they want to go for strength, speed, hypertrophy, or some other quality and then dedicate the bulk of their training to that quality. The sooner this process begins, the faster the athlete will progress. Those who postpone this decision indefinitely will simply join the legions of "gym-rats" who spin their wheels year-after-year without making any substantial progress.

Bodybuilding and powerlifting/strength training use many of the same tools but they are as different as night and day. Nearly every "principle" espoused by one is contradicted by the other.

I'm sorry but this is absolute garbage, for drug free lifters (most of the people on this site) more often than not the strongest people are the biggest.

That's categorically not true. And drugs don't skew the comparison either, as they are used by both strength and hypertrophy athletes and help with each respective goal.

Absolute strength is not strength. In terms of relative strength, the strongest people are not necessarily the largest. Quite the opposite, actually. Smaller, more compact people tend to hold the most relative strength records.

So many people seem to have the idea that strength and hypertrophy are two completely different things.

Firstly, that's not true: few people actually subscribe to that idea. I've been subscribing to it for a long time and you can see how popular it's made me on this board If more people subscribed to the idea, then you'd see far fewer instances of questions such as, "What routine should I do?" on boards like this one. In reality, most trainees think exactly the same way that you do: That all they need to do is lift heavy, focus on compound movements, and generally train like a powerlifter, and they'll magically develop an aesthetically pleasing physique. It doesn't work that way in the real world. Strength and hypertrophy ARE two completely different things. The sooner you realize it, the better off you'll be.

Listen to the professionals: those who train for hypertrophy themselves or train others as their livelihood:

"I like to get into some high-volume work for the guys so they can build some muscle, says DeFranco. While he usually recommends between six and twelve reps, he sometimes gets into the very high-rep sets. I like to bump it up to 20 or 25 reps every now and then, he says."

"If you're training for bodybuilding / aesthetic purposes, you should not follow the same principles or methods as you would if you were training for strength or performance.

This goes against the grain because many renowned strength coaches recommend training pretty much the same way regardless if your goal is building a nice physique or improving your performance. Most of the time, this is because these coaches have never actually been involved in bodybuilding or aesthetic training themselves! Most, if not all, of their personal and professional experience has been with athletes.

Well, let me tell you something; while both types of training (aesthetics and performance) utilize the same tools, they aren't the same thing at all. Different goals require different means." — Christian Thibaudeau

"The bench press is the most overrated exercise of all time. In fact, if you perform the bench press in the manner that most people do, it's not even very good at stimulating the pecs.

To make matters worse, other docs I've talked to concur with my observation that the flat barbell bench press is positively correlated with a number of shoulder injuries like AC joint problems, biciptal tendonitis, and torn pecs.

I'm not saying to never do the bench press; I'm just saying that I wouldn't do it any more than any other chest exercise. Actually, I'd probably do it less than most others." — Dr. Clay Hyght

Scott Abel: I'll tell you two things that are related. First, this industry, like many, suffers from its own paradigm blindness. It's much like the way Wall Street experts could not see the financial collapse coming before it was too late. The experts within it, if you look back at their quotes, were supporting foolishness even in the face of logic, common sense, and reason.

The industry suffers from a serious case of science bias. The current emphasis on strength being the common denominator of all fitness is misplaced, especially concerning muscle development. I've trained lots of people at the Olympia level and their strength levels were all over the board. Strength did not explain their development; intensity did. So to accurately put it; it's not the weights that work the muscles, it's the muscles that work the weights.

It's max efforts that build a body, not max weights. How much you lift is less important than how hard you lift. The research supporting this is decades long but the industry either misreads it, or ignores it.

Put another way, many experts in this industry have people believing that if they train for strength, development will come. This is absolutely untrue! You may not be born to be a great powerlifter, but you can still acquire a fantastic physique. The truth is in fact the opposite: Train for development and strength will come.

TM: Any big mistakes you made as a bodybuilder?
Scott Abel: Now, as a trainee, one the biggest mistakes I made was pursuing low rep strength as a means to physique development. All that got me was injured and frustrated. Strength has a ceiling capacity for everyone; and max strength capacity has a lot more to do with genetics than people realize. Giving up this dogma allowed my physique to dramatically improve.

"A guy writes to me complaining about his ****ty leg development. He's totally frustrated. He thinks he's doing everything right, but after leg day all he ever has is a sore back and aching knees.

So I get him to send me a copy of his training journal and, sure enough, it's a mess. All he records is insignificant data but nothing about immediate and residual biofeedback cues. (I'll explain that stuff below.)

First mistake: 5 sets of 3 reps starts every workout. I knew I had a lot of re-educating to do.

I met him in the gym and explained to him what's wrong with his training log and also how to target train. I told him to switch his thinking to train the muscle not train the movement.

In other words, don't do squats to see how heavy you can lift; use the exercise to work the legs. It's totally different thinking because bodybuilding is not strength training.

Then I explained to him about proper biofeedback. I have him record the experience of the workout, not just sets/weights/reps. He writes how he had to lay on the floor between sets and how it took about five minutes just to control his heart beat again. He records how his legs collapsed twice while going to get a drink of water, and how even though he hardly ever drinks during a workout, during this session he downed over two liters of water.

These are all indicators of immediate elements of training focus, and this feedback more accurately reflects target training and how close he can get to optimum work capacity.

The next day he records how he can hardly walk from yesterday's leg workout, but this time it's his legs that are sore, not his back. This is recording residual elements of biofeedback.

From here on, he understood the notion of target training, and how to properly keep a training log. He also understood firsthand what I was getting at when I told him earlier to switch his thinking: that it's the muscles that work the weights, not the weights that work the muscles.

With these key concepts firmly in place, his education as a bodybuilder could begin." -Scott Abel

"I was one of the people that fell to the whole, 'row for big arms, deadlifting is enough for your abs.' Man I'm still paying for these." –MikiB

"Athletes lift weights, bodybuilders contract their muscles against resistance."

"Bodybuilding has been lost with all the emphasis on functional strength, which is to imply that bodybuilding for cosmetic purposes is of no value. To look better physically, more than any single factor, is the primary reason people exercise. I'm all for bodybuilding for bodybuilding's sake alone." — Dr. Ellington Darden

"Strength doesn't increase forever and ever. There's a ceiling effect. What happens is after the bodybuilders learn that it's the amount of stress the muscle is under and not the load, they actually start to progress more by using less and less weight." — Scott Abel

Also if you want to have some semblance of a physique at some point in your life, please train your arms and other muscle groups. The deadlift/bench/squat ONLY program results in bad physiques. -TribunalDude, T-Nation

"[Nominal], I have nearly the same build as you and started lifting weights to build muscle…I went the get stronger to grow with compound exercises route and didn't grow! What shall I do?"

"I am a person who has the problem of continually getting stronger, but not really looking like it! I have to gain a lot of strength to add a little muscle size. This article came at the right time for me b/c I just started doing higher reps. for lower body instead of trying to get stronger and stronger. It seems to be working. -Heartandsoul317, T-Nation"

"Actually, I started off with lower reps and was advised a little while ago to train higher reps (15,12,8 etc) by a pro-bodybuilder I know from my town. The gains have jumped up dramatically (srs)."

"I've seen some pretty good growth switching to high reps low weight work sets..."

[XXX666]

A Bench Press for a power lifter is no different than that of a bodybuilder. Likewise a squat is a squat and a dead lift is a dead lift.

reps, sets and other schemes used to manipulate the body will determine what you are trying to accomplish.

[KurtyJ99]

Watch Kevin's Levrones m3 and bench like that.

[Al Shades]

Dave Tate: For powerlifting, a lot of isolation work – concentration curls and **** like that – isn't going to do a whole lot. For someone trying to build hypertrophy though, whose main function isn't going to be strength, I think movements like that are extremely important.

T-Nation: What about the pump and hypertrophy? Is the pump necessary?
Dave Tate: I'm part of the old school on this. I think if you're trying to build hypertrophy, you still at some point need to pump the **** out of the body. You need to get the fluid and blood in there.

Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder, but don't nobody want to lift moderate weight for high reps. - Diamond Delts, mod on BB.com Forums

Neuromuscular coordination doesn't matter much for bodybuilding. You don't need to worry about skill transfer. Instead, you want to make sure that a specific muscle, or muscle group, is doing the work.

That doesn't mean you'll rely solely on isolation exercises, but it does mean you should feel the muscle working during the set, and feel a difference within the muscle afterwards. You want to get a pump, to feel the burning sensation in the muscle (which we used to think was caused by lactic acid), and/or feel post-workout soreness a day or two later. Those are all signs of effective muscle isolation.

Conversely, when you're training for strength, you don't want to feel the muscles working, or to establish a mind-muscle connection; you just want to do the movement. -Tim Henriques, NPTI Director

I totally agree on the buff Olympic lifters being the exception. There's a guy in my gym who has competed internationally in weightlifting and looks scrawny compared to rest of powerlifters and bodybuilders in the gym.

There is no real reason for someone really good at weightlifting to have loads of muscle, especially bodybuilder type muscle on the pecs and arms. The guys are all legs really. -wushy_1984, TN

I wasted too many years back squatting. I got almost zero quads development from it. -Berserkergang, TN

Ignore the critics, cables and machines build huge arms. - Contract Killer on BB.com

I'm sorry powerlifting coaches, your DVDs about how to shorten the distance the bar has to travel so I can bench more weight just don't apply much to me. I don't compete, and I only bench to build my chest, triceps, and other pushing muscles. I want a long range of motion because it makes me work harder and helps to build more muscle.

Sorry performance coaches, but curling works, at least as far as bodybuilding is concerned. So do leg presses and several machine exercises. I get tired of hearing performance coaches bash training techniques and exercises that have built thousands of great physiques over the years. These exercises may not be functional or carry over to sports, but they build muscle, and that's good enough for the aesthetic bodybuilder. -Chris Shugart

I'm aware that strength gains are neuromuscular with some myofibril hypertrophy, but come on, people on here act like they can get bigger pecs by benching 135x12 than just focusing on adding more weight. "Why do you want to bench more bro, you're not a powerlifter"

At the end of the day, strength training is only about the weight on the bar, while hypertrophy training is about the internal feeling inside the muscle that one is trying to stimulate. It's completely different.

Worry about whether you're a "bodybuilder" or a "powerlifter" after you've actually done some lifting. Most people here including myself are beginners, seems like people lose sight of that a lot.

Putting off big decisions rarely pays off. Outlining your goals and a path to reach them rarely hurts. More likely, the person who decides to "worry later" will start lifting, make some beginner's gains, then reach a plateau and be at a complete loss as to how to proceed. People spend years in this unproductive state, simply read the boards.

As I mentioned before, this attitude is usually voiced by just one side of the training spectrum: the strength-side. Rarely will you hear the other side, bodybuilding/hypertrophy, advising trainees to "just lift weights" and telling them not to worry about how they do it.

[JBrook]

I'm sorry but this is absolute garbage, for drug free lifters (most of the people on this site) more often than not the strongest people are the biggest.

Do you work out in a gym? Most of the strongest people I know are not the biggest, quite a few ppl at my gym, quite smaller than me, out-lift me. Bigger does not equal stronger and vice-versa. I strongly disagree with that statement as do many others Im sure.

[-Lucifer]

Worry about whether you're a "bodybuilder" or a "powerlifter" after you've actually done some lifting.

Agreed.

[DanielBeauchamp]

If you want to Bench powerlifter-style (trying to move more weight), then you will need to bring the bar down to your chest. In a meet, failure to do so is a missed lift.

If you're not a powerlifter or training for strength, then bring it down wherever.

Also, if touching your chest brings your elbows down too far, perhaps try widening your grip?

[ocn2000]

Skinny people have benched to the chest for decades.

Being skinny, I doubt you will have so much weight on the bar that it would hurt your shoulders.

Keeping your shoulders in place and not flaring your elbows would go alot further to protect your shoulders than doing a partial range BP.

I am assuming you dont currently have shoulder pain/injury now.

[Niko49ers]

Al Shades = LukeN. Good Jr.?

[nykwan]

Check your range of motion. Sit up straight and put your arms in front of you like you're benching. but when you bright your arms back, stop at the point where it would naturally stop without forcing it. Now that point is probably your safest point to drop the weight to when you bench..anything more can cause several problems. Everyone has their own ROM which is comfortable and safe for them. That 1 inch ROM won't make a BIG difference in your end result physique..but it can make a difference in recovery time and injury.

Also depends on grip width and where you lower the bar to. I've seen alot of people with what I'd consider a narrow grip, and/or lowering the bar kinda high on the chest say they can't touch their chest with the bar. If they just widen the grip or lower the bar lower on the chest, they could easily touch their chest.

[Al Shades]

Al Shades = LukeN. Good Jr.?

Al Shades = Allerious Shades = Al Shades