Bench Press Cues RSS

This drill is going to be a game changer in your training! While it may initially look weird as you try this in the gym, you'll gain a newfound appreciation for leg drive and hip tension! As I've said in the past, with half the bench missing you should still be able to bench in the same exact fashion. The only points of contact we need to have are the traps and your two feet. The rest of the body including the hips are not bearing weight.Your entire body needs to create tightness in order to transfer that force from...

  One of the very best cues I can give you for learning how to set up properly to bench press is to never let your hips hit the pad!I know, sounds ridiculous right? If your hips are up that's a big red light and a no lift! Correction, you want your hips to be in contact with the pad at all times, but you absolutely DO NOT want to bear weight through them!I demonstrate this to athletes by setting up at the foot of the bench. I dig my shoulders into the very bottom of the bench and show...

You may have heard someone tell you to take the bar out more aggressively before. What does that really mean though? How I perceive an aggressive take out is in two ways. Applying early tension to the bar in a big way, and making a spotter's job very easyWhen you're setting your hands to the bar, get aggressive with it! Crush it, bend it, rip it! I know someone is getting tight to the bar vs just placing their hands when I either see them shaking slightly or the bar vibrating.You should be pulling out on the bar aggressively enough...

Where is the actual entry point of force into the bar when we think of the bench press? That would be through the wrist joint!So if we have a poor hand placement, wrist position, or grip to the bar, it negates a lot of positive things we might be doing across the entire body. At the end of the day, we need to be able to punch as much force into the bar as possible!For this, I like to think if the cue, "punch through the palms". I like to bring up the example of an open palm strike. Where...

When it comes to benching, unlike the squat and deadlift, I believe bracing is a more key element than how you actually breathe. The axial loading changes the demands on the squat and deadlift. If you don't control your breathing and bracing abilities 100% to create the most intra-abdominal force you can, you're not going to be very successful. I t's a bit different with the bench...Bracing is the key element and that is a separate thing from how you breathe. Bracing is using your core musculature to tighten up your midsection. Think how you would approach an incoming punch...