How I Bench Pressed Over Double My Bodyweight At 17 Years Old.
This post is written in a way that helps you increase your max bench press from me explaining what I did. I wrote this when I was at the peak of my bench press preparing for State 2020 that was canceled. I bench pressed 275 lbs weighing 130 lbs. Sadly, though, I didn’t get that one on camera.
Mindset Is Everything
Your mindset will need to be in a state of growth throughout your journey to increasing your bench press. Mindset is so important for life, and I literally live my life in regards to my mindset. Start going into every training session excited and believing in yourself. This will allow you to have more enjoyable training sessions, and I guarantee a positive mindset will help you. If you have a hard time keeping a good mentality, reading books will help you. I know this from experience. A great book to get for growing your mind is The Untethered Soul. It’s my all time favorite book.
Going Over Form:
Tucking Shoulders Back
Keep your shoulders tucked back. Essentially, place your shoulders back and down to stabilize your shoulders when performing the movement. For me, this became a challenge after taking time off of lifting. I felt like I physically couldn’t keep them tucked back. After brief research, I found a method that helps stabilize my shoulders when performing the bench press. I found that using a stretch band to practice tucking my scapula helped train my tucking ability. Now, instead of feeling awkward, I feel tight and stable when benching.
I found it effective to warm up my shoulders well before bench pressing. This doesn’t necessarily make it easier to tuck them back, but it insures that I prevent injury during my workout. I use a light band to warm up my shoulders before my bench press workout.
Arching Your Back
Arching your back allows for decreased range of motion in the bench press, along with helping to prevent injury when performing the bench press. For me, I feel more stable when I bench with an emphasized arch. Arching your back also makes it easier to use leg drive and keep your shoulders back. The more arch you have, the less range of motion for the bar.
What people get wrong when they arch their back is that you are supposed to be arching through your thoracic spine, not just the lower back. This requires you to be mobile throughout your thoracic spine. With practice, you will develop a more comfortable arch over time.
Grip Placement
I have found that grip placement on the bar is important for increasing your bench press max. In simple terms, the wider grip you have on the bar, the less range of motion you’ll need to go. The closer your grip, there is an increase in the range of motion, which can play a huge part for maxing out. I have found that for me, placing my grip wider allows me to steadily improve my bench press by reducing the range of motion. It also makes the lockout portion of the bench press easier, and it makes keeping your shoulder blades tucked back easier. Plus, most of the world’s strongest bench pressers press with the widest grip legally allowed.
Leg Drive
Leg drive is essentially using your legs to push back to aid with lifting the weight. Make sure your knees are below your hips to effectively use leg drive. Leg drive is used by driving your feet into the floor as you press the bar.
How You Can Increase Your Bench Press:
Accessory lifts can and will greatly increase your bench press. Lifts such as negatives, rack press, and pause press will increase your bench press. With compounded effort over time, you will see massive results when utilizing these movements.
How To Perform Negatives
A negative is an accessory exercise where you are loading the bar about 10–20 percent higher than your actual max bench press and you lower the bar to your chest at a five second interval. When the bar touches your chest, have a spotter help you bring the weight back up to rack. I have found this exercise the most effective when your spotter makes you work to push the weight back up. This exercise gets your muscles and joints used to the heavier weight, overall strengthening your body to be able to lift more over time. Ideally, you want to have a spotter who is much stronger than you so you can stay safe while performing the movement.
When programming the negative, I learned that I should include this exercise into my chest routine about every two weeks. I started off performing negatives each week, but I found that this became too frequent for me. I backed off to every two weeks and realized it was the sweet spot. With that said, I would recommend performing negatives every two weeks. I typically begin my negatives after I complete a bench workout, working up from about 10 percent higher than my max to about 15 percent higher than my max bench press. Just to give you a reference for my programming, here is an example of my negative workout.
Negatives:
1 x 110% (300 lbs)
1 x 112% (305 lbs)
1 x 115% (315 lbs)
1 x 115% (315 lbs)
(many people actually perform netatives at light weight, but I have never done that.)
How To Perform The Rack Press
The rack press is an accessory exercise that strengthens the locking out and sticking point of the bench press. To perform the rack press, you want to place the safety rails a little bit higher than when your arms are at 90 degrees on the bench press. More universally though, set the racks to your sticking point, or the point where you get stuck when lifting heavy weight. Start with the weight on the rack, and press up from the rack to the lockout. This exercise strengthens your triceps and the overall lockout portion of the bench press. It can also be used to overcome sticking points in your bench press. When performing the rack press, I would recommend loading about 90–110 percent of your max bench press. Be sure to come to a complete stop in between reps to maximize the exercise and to actually do it correctly.
When programming the rack press, I like to perform this movement about once every week. I usually start off at around 90 percent of my max and work to about 110 percent of my max. Keep your rep range low, starting with 3–5 reps and taper down to 1. You definitely don’t always have to work to 1 rep, I just prefer to do it more often than not. I want to point out that it took me a while of consistent programming of the rack press before I could rack press more than I could bench press. I would recommend working up to try and rack press your max bench press. If you are able to do it, then go up in weight.
With the rack press, different rack heights will determine the weight you can do. The workout displayed is a workout I used with the rack close to lockout. If your sticking point is just above your chest and you want to work on that, you will likely need to use less weight. Here is an example of my rack press workout.
Rack Press:
3 x 90% (245 lbs)
2 x 95% (260 lbs)
1 x 100% (275 lbs)
1 x 105% (285 lbs)
How To Perform The Pause Press
The pause press is essentially performing the bench press, but at the bottom of the lift where it touches your chest you pause before pushing the weight back up. The pause press is great for improving your actual bench press because you will be strengthening all areas of the bench press by pause pressing. The pause press is especially great for those of you who are weakest in the bench press when the weight initially comes off of the chest.
When programming the pause press, I basically stopped regular bench press all together. Each time I do bench press I pause press, and I noticed my max increase immediately upon introducing the pause press. I have read articles and seen videos that say to just do the pause press more frequently, but I found the pause press to be most effective when I completely disregard the regular bench press and replace it with pause. All together, I would recommend starting each bench session from now on by pause pressing. Expect your max pause press to be about 10–20 pounds less than your normal bench press. But after a while of using it, I can almost promise you that you will see results.
Warm up Routine
Before each training session, I incorporate an effective warm up routine. Before I begin my training session, I start my workouts with the same warm up every time.
My bench press warm up looked as followed:
- Lower back stretches
- Cow stretches 2x4
- Shoulder warm up with bands (just general movement)
- Rotator cuff warm up (any movement that warms the rotator cuffs)
- 20 benches with bar
With this warm up, I am able to stretch and warm up my lower back, shoulders, and chest.
(This was during the time this post was written. As of now, October 2020, my warmup routine is slightly different. But I still recommend this warm up routine.)
Creating Your Workouts
When creating my chest workouts, I start off with the classic bench press. I will usually start my workouts with a 5 4 3 2 1 5 bench press workout. I would describe it as starting off with the most important compound movement of the day. I recommend you do this as well. After, I switch my days in between focusing on hypertrophy muscle growth and max increasing strength training. The final aspect of my workout is usually the accessory lifts. I combine a mix between shoulders and triceps, since these muscle groups are involved with the bench press.
Keep working with these exercises and experiment with different styles of programming if you wish. I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read my article. I hoped it helped. For help or concerns, email me. If you prefer, message me on Instagram here.
Some other articles I have written regarding the bench press:
