BENCH PRESS REGRETS: Top 7 regrets from veteran lifters

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

Think your bench press is solid? Think again. In this video, Starting Strength Coach Phil Meggers breaks down 7 common bench press mistakes and how to avoid them. Learn from the mistakes of others — and make faster, safer progress.

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The 2 Most Overlooked Bench Press Tips

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

You’ve had this experience . . .

You’re benching. You’re at Gold’s Genesis 24 Hour Anytime Planet Crunch Fitness, and you’re set up for your work set. You’re driving with your legs, your arch is set, and your shoulders are pinned back.

The last rep is a grind, but you know you’ve got it. The barbell is moving upward slowly . . . and then it happens.

“i’m all pinkies, bro!” this spotter is a fool and just stole a rep from his lifting buddy.

Your spotter steps in and begins helping you with the rep. You didn’t give your spotter permission to do this, of course. You know that if the spotter touches the bar on any rep, that rep doesn’t count, so to say that you’re annoyed at this point is putting it mildly.

Make no mistake - your spotter messed up . . . but you could have prevented this.

Let’s cover two subtle, yet important, bench press tips to help make the bench press a more productive and less frustrating lift for everyone involved.

Tip #1: Get an educated spotter
Spotters are important in the bench press. If you’re not benching with safeties, you need a spotter, and even with safeties, spotters can help tremendously with the unracking process of a heavy bench press.

With that said, your spotter should know that he is to only touch the bar if it’s moving in any direction other than up. Moving slowly is not a reason to provide assistance.

If you can’t find an educated and experienced spotter, then it’s your job to find a person and explain it to him. If your spotter messes up, you probably didn’t explain it well enough.

It’s your work set, so make sure it counts.

Tip #2: Don’t destroy your lifter’s unrack
As the spotter, when assisting with the unracking process, be sure to provide just enough assistance to help guide the bar into position over the lifter’s shoulders (and if you’re the lifter, be sure your spotter knows to do this).

The spotter helps lift the bar off the hooks, but the lifter does most of the work in this process. The spotter should not provide a lot of lift as the bar comes smoothly up and off the hooks - perhaps somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-30 lb as long as we’re throwing out random numbers.

The specific amount of assistance will vary by load (and as mentioned, those were random numbers) - the major point here is that you shouldn’t provide so much assistance that you accidentally pull your lifter out of position on the bench. This can happen in a few different scenarios, but it often happens when a larger, stronger lifter is spotting a smaller lifter.

Don’t be that guy.

Assist. Don’t yank.

As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.

-Phil

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Bench Press & the Biggest Mistake You’re Making

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

You’re missing out on something big when it comes to your bench press, so let’s identify it and fix it real quick.

The Error
You’re set up to bench - you’ve got your stance at roughly squat width, you're driving with your legs for stability and to support your arch, you’ve got the barbell positioned in the base of the palms over the bones of your forearms, and you’ve established a stationary focal point on the ceiling.

What could you possibly be missing?

Shoulder retraction.

Why It’s Important
The bar is balanced over your shoulders, so you want as strong, stable, and safe of a platform as possible from which to bench. With this in mind, you want your shoulders pulled back into retraction. Specifically, you want them pulled back and down (i.e., toward your butt), but if you’re driving hard with your legs to support your arch while simultaneously lifting your chest, you’re already taking care of the down aspect.

You pull them back to create a wider base of support on the bench, i.e., so it’s not just the middle of your back in contact with the bench. You also pull them back to help reduce any chance of impingement when benching.

Note the height of the barbell (compared to the exit sign in the background) when mike sets up poorly (left) vs when he correctly retracts his shoulders (right).

Additionally, you pull them back to slightly reduce the range of motion on the bench press. This isn’t cheating, by the way; instead, it’s reinforcing a stable and correct range of motion as compared to the unstable and incorrect range of motion created by protracted shoulders.

Locking out the bench press on protracted shoulders is like locking out your squat standing up on your toes. Sure, it’s a longer range of motion, but it’s not stable, and it’s also idiotic. Benching with retracted shoulders is analogous to squatting with your feet firmly anchored to the floor.

What to Do
When setting up to bench, cue yourself to pull your shoulders back. Try to keep them pulled back when unracking the bar, but if they slip out of position slightly, make sure to re-retract them before starting your first rep.

When locking out a rep at the top, keep your shoulders pulled back. If you notice the outsides of your shoulders “jumping” up off the bench slightly when you finish a rep (watch yourself on video), cue yourself to “finish deliberately” or “lock out with control” as opposed to locking out aggressively.

You can also cue yourself to “lock it out with short arms” or try to lock out the bench press with the barbell as close to your chest as possible. This drives home the idea that, although your elbows are obviously straight at lockout, your shoulders should be pulled back so that the bar isn’t any further away from your chest than necessary.

Pull your shoulders back, keep them back, and as always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.

-Phil

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Quick Breathing Tip to Improve Your Bench Press

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

Here’s a quick and easy tip for the bench press: it is possible and possibly desirable to perform more than one rep on a single breath.

In other words, you can hold your Valsalva maneuver for multiple reps in a row, and in fact, it may actually be advantageous to perform two or perhaps three reps on one breath. 

How Could This Possibly be True?
Every time you take a new breath, you have to perform your Valsalva and get tight again. In the bench press, you’re essentially lying on your lungs (technically, you’re lying on your torso, which contains your lungs, but I digress), so every time you breathe, you create potential movement between your torso and the bench. This movement can compromise your bench press setup position, so you now have to work to reestablish that position (e.g., pulling your shoulders back into retraction) before you start the next rep.

With this in mind, if you’re not running out of oxygen, you may find it useful to perform a few reps on one breath.

But What About . . . ?
It’s certainly worth pointing out two caveats with this tip. First, this breathing technique works very well with the bench press, but I would not generally recommend it for any of the standing lifts (e.g., squat, deadlift, press, etc.).

Second, don’t take this as a personal challenge to see how many reps you can bench press on one breath. There are no bonus points for “reps-per-breath,” and the last thing you want to do is pass out from a lack of oxygen when you’re holding a heavy barbell above your face.

Keeping these two caveats in mind, feel free to try this out - intelligently - the next time you bench press.

As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.

-Phil

PS: Whenever you want even more Testify in your life, here are some free resources:

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Interested in getting stronger, looking better, and having more energy?

I Failed My Bench Press! (Stop Making This Mistake)

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

In less than two minutes, Starting Strength Coach Phil Meggers discusses and demonstrates a common mistake that might be causing you to fail your bench press, and he also covers how to fix it. This is the fifth video in our series of Saturday Shorts on fixing the bench.

(A Blast from the Past video originally published on 10/22/22)

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Top 10 Bench Press Mistakes

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

Starting Strength Coach Phil Meggers covers 10 common bench press mistakes as well as how to fix them so you can get a bigger, stronger bench.

Whenever you want even more Testify in your life, here are some free resources:

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At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Interested in getting stronger, looking better, and having more energy?