The Many Benefits of the Bench Press
As a longtime Austin personal trainer and gym owner, I can assure you, that in the fitness world, there are a handful of exercises that are considered benchmarks for strength, as well as essential to perform if you stand any chance at all of becoming bigger and stronger. The squat is one, as are biceps curls, but in my opinion, the most common, and highly touted exercise of all time, is the bench press.
The bench press is a pectoral exercise, and has been one for the ages, as it’s often been used as a measure of a man’s strength, level of all around manliness, and gym prowess as well. All that nonsense aside, the bench press is a great chest exercise, but like most things, it’s not for everyone. How much you benefit from a traditional bench press will be determined not just upon your technique, but from your build, as well as any tightness’ and imbalances throughout the shoulder and trapezoids. Those who are tight and/or long limbed, etc, will find the anterior deltoid taking a good deal of the load off the pectoral muscles as will the traps as well, thus diminishing the overall benefit from the pectoral muscles. Those people would be better of to firstly, fix all tightness’s and imbalances through a process which I call corrective flexibility. Those who are simply long in the arms, would benefit more from a different pectoral exercise such as dumbbell flys, machine presses, etc, and with a wider grip.
Those that are ill equipped to bench press, yet proceed to do so anyhow, will see results such as the pectoral muscles not being able to recruit enough muscle fibers to fully get the benefits of the exercise, as well as an overuse of the traps and anterior delts. This is why, for such people, a machine press, dumbbell presses, etc etc may be a more suitable option as they will fit their individual needs better and thus allow them to derive the maximum benefit from their efforts.
If you are a suitable candidate for the bench press, and you have mastered the various required techniques which will make it effective, as well as safe for you, it is a good idea to start adjusting hand positions, ranges of motion, and so on. Working within different parameters not only will keep you interested in the bench press, but will also stimulate different areas of the pectorals, and to different degrees.
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Andy
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