Stronger Bench Press
Increasing Bench Press Strength
Increasing bench press strength is something that most people who lift weights want to succeed at. Even if you are more interested in building muscle in the pecs, you'll still need to get stronger on the bench press to force those muscles to grow. Fortunately, there are many ways to go about
increasing bench press strength.
One thing you have to do to increase bench pressing strength is to perform the exercise the right way. Lie on the bench with your feet on the floor and pull in your shoulder blades to contract the upper back muscles and 'pop' the chest muscles out. This will decrease the distance you have to lift the weight by a little bit without resorting to cheating. It will also focus the resistance more on the pectorals. If you keep your back flat you will be benching with your front deltoids and triceps more than you need to. It's a good idea to do some warm up sets for your upper back when you're warming up on the bench press as it will allow you to flex those muscles a bit more. Always keep your butt on the bench and keep a natural arch in your lower back to perform the bench press properly. Once you get down the right way to do the exercise, you'll be on your way to increasing bench press strength without cheating.
The shoulders, triceps, and even the biceps to a lesser degree all get involved when you bench. While training all of these muscles with high intensity will help you at increasing bench press strength, you also need to make sure that none of them are sore when you are bench pressing. Any weakness in these muscle groups will negatively affect your benching strength. Set up your routine so that you aren't training any of these muscles for at least a few days before you bench press. Try following a push pull routine so that you do chest, shoulder, and triceps during the same workout. Do back and biceps during the next workout and legs during the last workout. This will ensure that the muscles that assist the most while you bench press are fully recovered by the time you get to your next chest workout. You'll be primed and ready to increase your bench press strength.
Of course, to succeed at increasing bench pressing strength you must actually try to lift more weight. Too many lifters end up using the same amount of weight for the same amount of reps and do the same amount of sets during every bench press workout. They never build any real strength and size because their muscles get used to always doing the same thing and they don't try to go any heavier. You need to always try to lift more weight for the same amount of reps or do more reps with the weight you usually do. Small increases will add up over time. If you train with high intensity and change up your routine, you'll increase bench press strength and won't have to spend as much time in the gym.
There are also many weight trainers who take the opposite route and try to train all out for numerous sets on the bench press. They may see some gains at first, then believe that they must keep doing more and more training to succeed at increasing bench press strength. However, doing a ton of sets with some assisted reps is just going to burn a natural weight trainer out and lead to overtraining. You won't be able to muster up any intensity after a while anyway. If you train hard when you bench, it won't take very many sets to see strength and size increases.
Increasing bench press strength is something that anybody can do if they go about it the right way. For more tips on how to increase benching strength, you should check out the best online bench press programs online - Blast Your Bench and Critical Bench.
