Extreme But Simple Workouts During CrossFit Training
When bench pressing, your shoulder girdle should be kept in a RETRACTED position. This may take practice at first if you’re not used to it. Stand normal with your hands against the wall. Now take one step backwards. From here, without bending at the hip or leaning forward, stretch your arms out as far in front of you to try to touch the wall. That is the PROTRACTED position. To get to the retracted position, you have to do the opposite and pull your arms as far back as possible at the shoulder girdle (no bending of the elbows). In a sense you are squeezing your shoulder blades together. Practice for 5 minutes a day for a few days or a week and you’ll have it down in no time. This is the position your shoulders should be in for the safest and most powerful bench press.
The bench press hits a large amount of upper body musculature with the primary focus being on the pectorals (chest), deltoids (shoulders, especially front and middle), and triceps (back of the arm). Any number of the secondary muscles will be hit, but these are the main ones that are being targeted. I’d note that some don’t feel that the bench press is a very good chest exercise; usually this is because they never learned to use the pecs while benching. I addressed this in detail in Benching with the Pecs. I’ve also seen it argued that the bench isn’t even a pec exercise and that it’s only triceps. While that might be true for some types of geared power benching, that certainly isn’t true for what I’m going to describe.
It’s safe to say that, in the US at least, the bench press is one of the favorite exercises of most trainees (especially males). Let’s face it, if someone finds out if you lift, their first question is invariably “How much do you bench?” And, while it’s difficult to decide which movement is done more poorly in the average gym (let’s face it, 99% of people have atrocious technique), the bench is right up there. I’ve seen staggering amounts of truly amusing things done on bench press, usually by guys who want to lift more weight to impress their buddies and/or hit the minimum macho poundage (which ranges from 225 to 315 depending on what type of gym you’re in). Never mind that the bench is realistically more or less responsible for more shoulder injuries than any other lift, the reality is that trainees will want to do it. So they might as well do it correctly. And that’s what I’m going to describe here. It’s always best to train with Crossfit Tampa personal trainers when starting your new fitness training.
Now, let me say right up front that I am going to be detailing a very specific variation on benching, which is the raw generic power bench press. Let me explain those terms. Raw means no gear as in no bench press shirts. Yeah, a lot of guys belt but, unless you’re using the belt to hold down your bench shirt, it’s pretty pointless. And I guess you could consider wrist wraps gear, I can’t say I’ve seen many non-power lifters use them. But raw in this context means no bench shirt.
My use of the phrase generic power bench may confuse some people. I’m using the term generic to delineate that this is the generic form I’d teach a beginning/non-competition athlete trainee under most circumstances. Yes, there are exceptions. With a bodybuilder, I might do something a bit different, for a power lifter, it would depend on their fed and their gear.
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