You Gotta Be Kidding Me- Bridging on the Bench Press (repost)

[repost from Jason]

I could hardly believe what I was reading.

I sat in absolute bewilderment as I read an article in a recent muscle magazine. It explained in detail why you should lift your hips as high as possible off the bench (called bridging) when you bench press.

Was the author seriously recommending this type of thing to people who are trying to improve their workouts? I could hardly believe that any widely distributed magazine would publish this sort of “advice”.

Of course, I don’t think that the muscle magazines are very good reading for most people out there. They focus on what the pros are doing for their workouts instead of telling the readers what will help them the most. I’ll drop by once a month or so and read them just to see what’s out there (and only because I blog about this).

But there it was, right in the magazine. The author was praising the advantages of arching your back as high as possible and shooting your hips into the air on the bench press.

His argument was that arching your back and lifting the hips gives you more power for your bench. More power lets you lift heavier weights, and lifting heavier weights means you’re building strength and muscle.

So how could that be wrong?

More Weight is Not More Strength

Is lifting more weight really equal to adding more strength? In some cases it is, if you consider the fact that the heavier lifts tend to use more muscle groups. But there is a serious mistake in believing that just lifting more weight equals more muscle.

If this were true, then squatting only half way down would allow you to do heavier weights and (as the argument goes) build more muscle. Heck, if that’s true, why not just go an inch down and get really strong?

The top picture doesn’t even come close to the guy in the magazine, as he had longer legs and lifted his hips incredibly high off the bench.

Take a look at the two pictures above. Notice that lifting the hips off of the flat bench press puts the upper torso in a position similar to the decline press. The fact that we have a slight mechanical advantage on the decline press is what helps us to lift more weight at this angle (and this is probably why it’s popular).

Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t ever use this decline angle to work your chest muscles. The problem is that the flat bench is not the best place to be doing the decline bench press. Instead, you should use the decline bench to do the decline bench press.

This will give you much greater stability and safety. The fact that you’re not wasting energy to stick your hips up in the air means that you can focus more of your energy on the weight that you’re trying to move.

Here are a few tips to help you avoid rising at the hips on the bench press:

• Some arch in the back is ok- Your natural posture leaves the spine in a semi-arched position. A slight arch on the bench helps to keep the back tense and position your lats to better act as stabilizers and oppose the stabilizing deltoids.
• Squeeze your shoulder blades together- This helps with stabilization and raises your chest up to the proper position while keeping your upper back on the bench.
• Place your feet correctly- They should placed in a wide stance, with the heels flat on the floor and your shins vertical. If you take the wider stance with vertical shins, raising your hips off of the bench becomes much more difficult.

I just hope some poor guy doesn’t come along, read that article, and then decide to start flaring his hips up on the bench press. I can only imagine how much it would hurt if his toes slipped out and the bar dropped onto his neck. Kids, don’t try this at home.

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Related posts:

1. You Gotta Be Kidding Me- Bridging on the Bench Press
2. How to Prevent an Arching Back on the Incline Bench Press
3. How To Overhead Press With Good Form

Tags: bench press, bridging