11 Tips to Increase Your Bench Press Strength Today

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Tweet11 Tips to Increase Your Bench Press Strength Today


Over at Fitness Geared forums, one of the leading fitness forums on the web, we’re all about giving you the best information on fitness and bodybuilding to get you to your goals. This post is specifically about the bench press exercise, which includes some tips and tricks that will help you to lift more weight on the bar TODAY.
The bench press is the most popular weight lifting exercise in the fitness world, as it should be because it’s one of the most effective. It’s the #1 pushing exercise for lifting the maximum amount of weight using your upper body muscles. It works out the chest and indirectly works out your arms and shoulders as well.
For those of you who are lagging in your bench press strength and want to get bigger pecs, follow these 11 simple tips to increase your strength.

1. Bench First

If you’re doing any workout that involves working out the chest, do the bench press first. You’re strongest when you’re fresh at the gym. If you do other exercies first, you will get fatigured and your energy level won’t be 100%. Make the bench press your first exercise in your workout.

2. Eyes Under the Barbell

It’s crucial to have your body in proper position before you bench. Most people just randomly lay down on the bench and start lifting. The correct position when laying down on the bench is having your eyes directly under the barbell.

3. Retract Shoulder Blades and Stick Out Your Chest

This will give you a solid foundation. Your range of motion will be significantly better and also shorter, and by doing this, you are also isolating your chest so that your shoulders aren’t as involved. This will also reduce the risk of injury on your shoulders.

4. Push Your Feet Off the Ground

This goes back to building a good foundation. You need to drive power through your feet and legs from the ground. This stabilizes your body as a whole, which then focuses the energy only on your upper body. Just make sure you keep your butt on the bench. Otherwise your form will suffer.

5. Tuck In Your Elbows

You can easily strengthen your bench press just by tucking-in your elbows. Try it for yourself. Tucking in your shoulders also keeps your shoulders in good health. By having your shoulders outward, you are straining your shoulder joints.

6. Straighten Your Wrists

People tend to bend their wrists backwards when they bench. This is bad because, for one, you are greatly straining your wrists. It’s also affecting your strength because the transfer of power towards the barbell on the upward motion suffers. Just keep your wrists straight and have your knuckles point upwards to the ceiling instead of bad.

7. Have a Death Grip On the Bar

Squeeze the bar as hard as you can when you lift the barbell. It gives you more control over the weight and helps to tense up your muscles. This is one of the most important tips that we wish we had known before.

8. Squeeze Your Glutes and Abs

Another tip for stabilizing your body and for improving strength. Indirectly works out your abs too.

9. Lower the Bar Slowly and Explode Upwards

This is how you gain mass in your chest. The negative part of benching (lowering the bar) is more important than pushing it up, and this is how you can dramatically increase your bench press. Bring the weight down slowly to your chest and explode up on the pushing movement.

10. Don’t Use Momentum

We see a lot of guys using momentum when they bench. They go down really fast and let the bar bounce off of their chest. This is wrong and very ineffective. Follow tip #9 and go down really slow.

11. Feel the Muscle

This is our last tip because it’s the hardest to do. You need to “feel” your pecs when your benching. This also applies to any other exercise for any other lift. It’s important to have that mind-muscle connection when you do an exercise to make sure that you are isolating that muscle.

[MOUNTAIN-MAN]

Tweetnice write up thanks

[guns01]

Tweetgreat tips