The question most often asked in gym circles is, “What do you bench press?” Pushing the most weight is often seen as the gold standard, but it can come at the price of good form and technique, which often leads to injury.
Gym-goers generally want to get bigger and stronger, and these three expert training tweaks can lead to substantial strength gains while avoiding potential injuries.
Bench Press The Right Way
The bench press is one of the movements most commonly messed up with the most diverse group of form fails. It is one of the most technical lifts, but there is a bigger margin for error than standard bicep curls or rows.
Common tips like keeping your whole back flat against the bench and your knees at 90 degrees are not good advice for strength training.
Bench Press Tip: Get into the right position to tighten the back muscles and support the shoulder so it can bear the most load.
Get A Comfortable Grip
The default grip of novice lifters is a wider grip that slightly stimulates the outer chest (attachment points) while shortening the bar’s range of motion, creating the potential to lift more weight. This often causes shoulder injuries, especially in taller lifters and those with longer arms.
Try doing different chest exercises to find out the optimal grip for you.
On a strong bench press, ensure your hand position matches the movement’s physics and body geometry. One of the biggest rookie mistakes is using a wider grip with flared elbows and lowering the bar to the same spot on the torso as would be the case with a narrower grip.
Grip Placement Tip: A narrowed grip should be placed toward the navel, lower down on the torso, while a wider grip should be placed toward the face, higher up on the torso. This ensures that the elbows and forearms correspond, and vertical positioning under the bar gives the best force production.
Include The Upper Back In Your Training Routine
A bench press needs lots of stability to be strong. Because of the demands on the shoulder capsule, the scapulae and the muscles attached to it need the most attention.
When reaching a training plateau, upper back training is key to making further progress. Use horizontal pulling exercises to increase the strength of the shoulder retractors and external rotators, such as the rhomboids, rotator cuff muscles, and rear deltoids.
Seated rows, inverted rows, reverse flies, one-arm dumbbell rows, and bent-over rows are good exercises for this. At the same time, the upper traps can be huge stabilizers to the bench press for intermediate lifters.
Upper Back Workout Tip: The stronger you pull, the stronger you’ll be at pushing.
Having a bigger squat, deadlifting, and overhead pressing delivers better bench press strength benefits. If you want to get bigger, instead focus on other exercises like the dumbbell incline press.
| Bench press tweak | What it does | Risk it helps reduce |
|---|---|---|
| Set your arch and pull shoulder blades back and down. | Creates a stable base and lets the shoulders stay packed under the bar. | Shoulder impingement and front shoulder pain. |
| Match grip width to bar path (narrow lower on chest, wide higher on chest). | Keeps forearms vertical and lines up joints for better force transfer. | Pec strains and stressed shoulder capsules from awkward angles. |
| Train upper back rows at least as often as you bench. | Builds the muscles that stabilize the bar and control the descent. | Loss of tightness, wobbly reps, and overuse issues around the shoulder blades. |
Personal trainer - Evan helped hundreds of clients simply 'build muscle and burn fat'.
