Basal Muscles, Standard Bench Press

No matter what kind of bodybuilder, bench press is an optimal upper body training movement that can not be avoided. When everyone goes to the gym, the flat bench press machine is always full of people waiting to practice a flat bench press.

As a multi-joint compound movement, bench press can train almost all the muscle groups of the upper body, especially the chest that everyone cares about most. When you ask me "What action is the most plastic chest?" "What is the most basic action of fitness?" "High-efficiency fat burning action of the upper body" "How to improve the strength of the upper body?" Push".

If you do a good standard bench press, other chest exercises, such as pinching the chest, birds, etc., are all done by hand. But how can you make a standard flat barbell bench press? commercial strength equipment suppliers to share with you:

Smith Machine 

action:

1. Lie on your back on a bench with your feet resting on the ground naturally, holding the barbell with both hands, and shoulder width or slightly wider than shoulder;

2. Remove the barbell from the bench press, slowly lower the barbell, and stop when the barbell is a little far from the chest;

3. Quickly push up until the arm is nearly straight, and then stop for the next group.

Key points:

1. When exerting force, pay attention to the chest, shoulder joints and forearms to be clamped inward, but not to straighten the elbow joints. Keep your chest and shoulders heavy.

2. During the action, the upper back and buttocks must not leave the bench surface to form a waist (during bodybuilding training). If your goal is to train your pectoral muscles, you'd better not use too much leg strength, and your feet should be stable without using force.

3. In training, the position of the barbell should be at the root of the palm, not the palm or front of the palm. This will put too much pressure on your wrist and easily damage your wrist bone!

Push from the chest? Or start with the clavicle?

Falling on the collarbone, this is a mistake that is easy for beginners to make. When using a flat barbell bench press, many people are used to doing a high chest bench press, that is, the barbell falls on the collarbone, up to the face, but this action is actually not conducive to Overall training. Compared with the standard flat bench press falling on the chest and up to the collarbone, the high chest press will reduce the pectoralis major training effect.

High chest bench presses cause excessive abduction of the upper arm, which increases the angle between the barbell's resistance line of action and the pectoralis major muscle fibers, which results in a decrease in the stimulation of the entire pectoralis major. Therefore, the standard bench press with the barbell in the middle of the chest is the more effective training method.

Free weight barbell or Smith machine?

The smith machine is a fixed-track barbell machine. Compared with the free ordinary training device, he does not produce front-to-back displacement, and is more stable, which is loved by many people. Many people think that using the Smith machine can impact more weight because it is more stable and does not shake back and forth.

However, in a study, it was found that for trainers, free weight barbell flat bench presses can push 16% more weight than Smith machines. In other words, in fact, the free weight barbell allows you to train with a heavier weight and achieve better training results!

Why does a more stable Smith machine not let you push more weight? In fact, when you press the bench press, your movement trajectory is not straight up and down, but starts from the clavicle, drops to the middle of the chest, and then starts from the middle of the chest, pushing to the clavicle.

Because the Smith machine is fixed back and forth, it limits the strength of the pectoral muscle fibers and does not allow the pectoral muscles to exert their power 100%, which leads to a limitation of the training effect.

However, we are not totally negating the Smith machine here. When you have no training partner protection and want to shock the weight, the Smith machine is also a good choice. However, we still need to focus on free barbells ~ Tips:

1. The standard flat bench press weighs 20 kg;

2. Smith machine empty rods range from 10-20 kg, usually about 15 kg.

The standard bench press is to hold the barbell with both hands and shoulder width. The bench press with standard grip distance can well take into account the training of the pectoral muscles, deltoid muscles, and triceps, allowing you to kill three birds with one stone. And if you want to focus on your breast muscle shaping, then widening the grip will bring better stimulation to the breast muscle!

It can be seen that although the electromyographic level of the triceps brachii decreased during the bench press with a wide grip distance, the electromyographic level of the pectoral muscle increased significantly. Therefore, a wide grip bench press will bring you better chest training results!

I personally think that it is best to hold it wide 1.5 times closer to your shoulder. A study found that when your hands are separated by more than 1.5 times the width of your shoulders, your chances of shoulder injuries are significantly increased. Because when you hold the grip too far, the pressure of the barbell will act on your deltoid muscles and shoulders, which not only causes shoulder pain, but also increases the chance of shoulder ligament injury.

How to test the standard? If the lowest point of the entire bench press, your elbow angle does not exceed 90 °, then it will not cause too much burden on the shoulder.