All you need to know about bench press

Justina
July 24, 2016

Written by ladies personal trainer Justina Triasovaite.

How can anyone ignore the classic exercise of training your upper body? Bench Press is the certainly one of the best lift that you can do to your upper body. It is the time to achieve your dream muscular body with a dash of endless effort. The real charm of bench press lies in building a strong and massive upper body and much of the gym-freaks and great lifters spend their time perfecting the Bench Press Game with female personal trainer Justina.

Muscles engaged

The chect press involves the working of numerous upper-body muscles but the ultimate focus lies on the pectorals main muscles of the chest. When performed on routine-basis, it imparts thickness, muscle clarity and strength to the chest. As a combinational exercise, bench press also involves the triceps and deltoids that are a part of completing the movement properly. In addition to this, bench presses also engaged biceps that serve as active stabilizers and finally it involves the secondary muscles including rhomboids, serratus anterior and rotator cuff as well.

  • Triceps
  • ​Pecs
  • Rotator cuff
  • Rhomboids
  • Serattus anterior

How-to perform 

Hosting a bucket full of benefits, chest press is easy to perform if you are good enough to master the simple trick that we have shared.

  • Simply lie down and sit at the extreme end of your flat bench
  • Squash your Shoulder-blades and lift your chest up high while tightening your upper-back
  • Grasp The Bar
  • Place Your Feet properly or simply keep your feet flat on the floor using a shoulder-width posture
  • Exhale out while lifting the bar up

Benefits

  • The major benefit of doing bench press is maximum overload on chest muscles. This exercise allows you to aim the pecs with chunks of weight. Bench press has eventually no comparison as it entails the ability to aim chest muscles with heavy loads
  • It is an amazing exercise to develop muscle mass on your upper body that means improving muscle growth and adding some real mass to your body.
  • Bench press is best known for increasing and improving push strength as it strikes the chest mainly along with shoulders and triceps. As a result, these muscles turn stronger for a few other exercises such as barbell overhead press or dips.
  • It provides you with bragging rights. Oh yeah! If you have certainly made your way with proper training and technique, there’s no shame in bragging and telling the whole world about your ultimate bench press strength.
  • The amazing health benefit linked with chest press is that it reduces cholesterol levels and frequent training reduces the risk of diabetes.

Common mistakes

  • One of the frequent mistakes made by weight-lifters is thinking “less is more”. Do not over train yourself at all as it can lead to serious aches and injuries.
  • Another blunder made while performing bench press is neglecting “warm up” completely. By performing lighter warm-up sets you will be able to store your energy for the heavier weights and a massive finish.
  • The most common mistake is lowering the bar incorrectly on the chest. Make sure you don’t expand your shoulders and pecs while benching.

    Variations/progressions

    Kick away the conventional method of bench press and try out the listed bench press variations by best female personal trainer Justina

    Reverse Grip Bench Press: Push away the boring method of training the upper chest and try out reverse grip bench press that increases upper pec activation by 30% when compared to traditional method of bench press.

    Close Grip Bench Press This fantastic variation focuses on developing triceps. Grab the par with both hands held close together and continue the movement which would require your triceps to work and function harder.

    Who should do this exercise

      Walk in to the gym; look around and yes you are free to indulge in bench press exercise. There is no limitation and this exercise is great for everyone including beginners or trainers alike. 

      If you enjoyed this article click here for more chest exercises written by female personal trainer Justina

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      Female personal trainer Justina Triasovaite justinatraining.com

      I'm Justina, a personal trainer based in London

      Every day I use my passion and energy to improve my clients’ health, looks and lifestyle.
      Call for more info
      07449 169 906

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