How to Bench Press

Awesome Bench Press Tip

Today we have a guest video from Jesse Burdick, elite powerlifter at POWERWOD.com.  A few months ago I met Jesse and Mark Bell at Supertraining Seminar at Zach Even-Esh’s Underground Strength Gym.  I made it to the second day where they were focusing on the bench press.  During day one, Mark and Jesse went over the how to deadlift and how to squat sections.

The Smallest Things Make All the Difference

Jesse immediately picked up on my poor setup and lack of thoracic extension.  I was flat on the bench and as you will hear from Jesse, this adds to a TON of extra stress on the shoulder and a weaker press.  The more thoracic extension you have, the less anterior stress on the shoulder and the less potential for anterior humeral glide there is at the bottom of the movement.

Cool Bench Workout

Because this video is so important for proper execution of the bench press, I wanted to add a cool bench workout to the post.

Warm-up

1.  Lat / Shoulder Stretches – various

2. Banded Facepulls with External Rotations, 2×15

3.  Kneeling Reach Throughs, 2×10 each side

4.  High Tension Rotator “Ys”, 2×10

Workout

1.  Plyo Push-ups, 4×6

2.  Bench Press, 4×8

3A. Push-ups, AMRAPx4 (*AMRAP – As Many Reps As Possible)

3B.  DB Rows, 4×12 each side

4.  Inverted Rows, 120 reps in shortest amount of sets possible