STOP Doing This!! Your Shoulders are DESTROYING Your Bench Press
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Your shoulders might be ruining your bench press, and if they are, you probably aren’t aware of it.
There are two potential mistakes in this scenario, so let’s identify and fix them quickly.
Mistake #1: Lack of Shoulder Retraction
You don’t want shoulder protraction when setting up to bench, i.e., you don’t want your shoulders pulled forward (Figure 1).
figure 1: mike demonstrates the incorrect position of shoulder protraction (i.e. ,shoulders forward).
Instead, you need to pull your shoulders back, and more specifically, you want to pull them back as if you’re trying to grip the bench with your shoulders and down as if you’re trying to touch your scapulas to your butt (Figure 2).
Pull them back and down before you unrack the barbell and do it again before you start your first rep as you may have lost a bit of positioning during the unracking process.
figure 2: mike demonstrates the correct shoulder positioning: shoulders back and down.
Finally, pull them back and down yet again before every succeeding rep in case you lose some shoulder positioning when you lock out the previous rep.
When you think “pull the shoulders back and down,” remind yourself to drive with your legs and lift your chest as this helps with the down aspect of the cue.
Compared to a position of shoulder protraction (i.e., shoulders forward) as shown in Figure 1, you are now putting your shoulders in a stronger, safer position as shown in Figure 2. You get a wider base of support on the bench, and pulling the shoulders back and lifting the chest also shortens the range of motion a bit.
The range of motion that is lost when retracting the shoulders is an artificial, unstable range of motion (akin to squatting up on your toes), so eliminating that artificial portion of the lift is useful indeed.
Mistake #2: Popping the Shoulders at Lockout
At the end of each rep, you should maintain shoulder retraction, but many lifters allow their shoulders to come out of retraction - the shoulders pop up off the bench a bit and are thus in a poor position to start the next rep.
To fix this, remind yourself to “finish the rep under control.”
You can also cue yourself to “lockout only with your elbows.” In other words, you are cueing yourself to bench only with your elbows with no shoulder involvement. This is an overcue, of course, as the shoulders are heavily involved in the bench press, but the cue often proves very useful.
Finally, you can cue yourself to “finish the rep with short arms.” The arms need to be straight at lockout, of course, but the bar will be several inches farther away from your chest at lockout with shoulders protracted than with shoulders retracted, so you are simply reminding yourself to finish with the bar as close to you as possible (again, with straight arms).
As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.
-Phil
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