What His Poor, Sad Bench Press Was Missing
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Are you missing out on using your lower body in the bench press?
Sure, the bench press press is an upper body lift in the sense that the prime movers of the lift - the pecs, the triceps, and the delts - are located in the upper body. However, if you’re not using your legs effectively, you’re leaving pounds, well, off the barbell.
Using your legs efficiently provides three benefits when benching, so let’s dive in (and if you’d like to see this in action, watch the video below).
Benefit #1: Stability
The bench itself isn’t very wide and thus doesn’t provide much in the way of stability. You, however, are smart enough to take a roughly squat-width stance, and you also drive your body up the bench ( i.e., toward the direction of your head) by driving your legs into the floor.
As a side note, you drive your legs diagonally downward into the floor. You don’t drive them straight downward as this will cause your hips to come up off the bench, which means the rep doesn’t count. You also don’t drive them straight forward as they’ll simply slide across the floor when you do that. Think diagonally downward.
Benefit #2: Support
The use of your legs supports your arch and ensures that you can maintain this position efficiently and consistently when performing each rep.
Benefit #3: Rigidity
We humans are naturally soft and squishy, and you don’t want to bench from a soft and squishy platform - it makes for lousy force transfer between the things moving the weight - your arms - and the support surface - the bench.
Think of it this way - in the squat, your lifting shoe is the interface between the load and the platform, while in the bench press, your entire body from your shoulders downward acts as this interface - in other words, everything from your torso downward acts as the lifting shoe, so you want everything to be rigid.
Driving with your legs creates a compressive effect, and this helps ensure that your body is as rigid (and thus stable) as possible when benching.
Make sure you use your legs the next time you bench - your future PR will thank you for it.
As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.
-Phil
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