Take these tips and improve your bench press
Brief back story: I, Connor Green – Founder of Spark Fitness, used to be extremely skinny, and weak. It took me a really long time to figure out some basic things to do (and then stick to them) to really add a bunch of muscle and get really strong. That, in combination with the experience of helping 1000s of people improve their bench press, I can confidently say that this article will, in fact, help you too. The principles found in this article transcend bench press and can be applied to your other lifts as well.
While far from a world record holder, I did recently manage a 340lb bench press (video above) – hopefully by the time you read this, it will be far above that!
Recommended Pre-Reading:
- What is Strength Training?
- The NLP
- What are the Stages of Training?
- Simplify your program. The number one problem we see when people are stuck with their bench press is that the program has grown, and grown, and grown. This is normal response to a plateau. “Oh I’m stuck, I must not be doing enough”, and soon enough we have a 2 hour chest day, and no gains. This results in huge accumulating fatigue, lingering soreness, an inability to recover, and actually a significant decrease in training intensity. You just can’t train intensely for 2 hours. Stop doing all of that. Do a 1 rep max the first day. Take 70% of that (DO NOT START HEAVIER) and do 3×5 (3 sets of 5) at that weight, and… that’s it. Then, continue the 3×5 1-2 times/week – if you are sub 200(f)/300(m) you can do it twice per week, if you are over that just do it once, and then add 5lbs per week for as long as possible (6-20 weeks), and retest that max, and it will have gone up. If you need a consultation on how your program is structured, we can help!
- Dial in your form. Form is extremely important for improving your bench press, and everyone knows that. Very few people take the time to actually develop high level technique. Big things on bench press: 1) Pull your lats together. 2) Try to pinch the bar. 3) Drive your feet into the floor, and utilize all of your leg muscles to try and push your bodyweight into the bar. #3 is the biggest thing that people don’t do – you must use your entire body and maintain a strong connection to the floor. If you need help dialing in your form, reach out to us. The below photo illustrates proper leg drive.
- Track your nutrition. Get on a nutrition plan, and track what you eat. Very few people do this, and everyone should, for at least as long as it takes to be able to manage your nutrition without significant tracking efforts. (This takes no less than a year). Nutrition is 70% of the ball game – if you think for one second that you won’t get significantly better results by going from no plan/tracking, to a personalized plan and tracking + accountability… well you are sorely mistaken. If you’re stuck on bench press, you’re probably not eating enough calories, probably not eating enough protein, and probably not eating enough carbs. But, you probably don’t know that because you don’t have any evidence of it – a plan and tracking will provide the necessary data to make adjustments so you can get your progress back on track. If you need help dialing in your nutrition, we can help.
- Become an expert on recovery. Sleeping well and often is very important if you want to improve your bench press, and there are a million ways to get more, prioritize it, and get higher quality sleep. When you train in the gym you tell your body to get stronger, but the actual changes take place when you are sleeping. If you cut it short or get bad sleep, you’re literally cutting off your progress. You need to hydrate like it’s your job – drink half your body weight in oz per day – manage your stress (work stress, relationship stress, etc) as the stress hormone cortisol makes it more difficult to recover, get sunlight, and eat enough. Almost everyone wants to spend more time in the gym when they start plateauing, and what they should be doing is investing more time and effort into recovery.
- Increase your bench press frequency. If you want to improve your bench press, depending on where you are in your training journey, you may need to bench press more – that could be bumping from 1x/week to 2x, or even 3x/week. If you do this, make sure you have a good program, and ideally a coach to help you with this. If you need help increasing your bench press frequency, we can help.
- Focus on bench press – the basics. You think that focusing on bench press if you want to improve your bench press would go without saying… but it doesn’t unfortunately. Accessory work almost always does nothing of consequence – but people love doing it. The best way to get better at bench pressing… is developing a complex program full of all kinds of things that are similar to bench pressing but not actually bench pressing… NOT. It may serve you very well to reduce or completely get rid of your accessory work and just focus on your bench press sessions. This will allow you to train more intensely, and recover better. We’ve seen MANY times, simply by reducing the amount of accessory work, a lifter is able to better recover and start increasing their bench press again.
- Be willing to gain weight. We see this all the time too. Muscle has weight, and the more muscle you have the more you will weigh, and the more you weigh the easier it will be to improve your bench press. This doesn’t mean getting fat – it means literally adding muscular tissue to your frame – which is always a good thing. If you are against gaining weight you are going to have a REALLY hard time building muscle and strength, and improving your lifts as a result. Yes – you can do a “recomp” which is gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time, but this is going to be pretty slow – effective, yes, but it takes a long term commitment that you just might not have right now if you have a meet coming up in 8 weeks, or you just really want to get this lift moving in the right direction again. This goes along with your nutrition – be in at least a slight calorie surplus – it will do wonders for your gains. Believe it or not, you can get more muscular by… gaining muscle… which as weight. If you want to improve your bench press, you have to care more about improving your bench press and gaining muscle than you do somehow enjoy staying the same weight and struggling to not gain muscle or improve your bench press.
- Hire a coach. This is the 8th thing we’ve listed here of many more things you can do to improve your bench press, but it is the most important thing! I wasn’t subtle about this in the article. Hire a damn coach. Everyone benefits from expert guidance – including the best lifters, body builders, and other athletes in the world – at every single level. If you think you’re going to just figure things out on your own, I hope you have over a decade to mess around and find out all the things that don’t work, before maybe settling into some things that do work for a few years. If you don’t want to spend all that time, and you just want to improve, get the benefits of your results, and spend your additional free time NOT becoming an expert on something that is not your career… then hire us. We will help you improve your bench press whether you are just a hobby lifter, a competitor, you want to get better at sports, get sexier – whatever your goal is! We will help you improve your bench press guaranteed. Inquire within.
External Reading:
- How to Bench Press – From Starting Strength’s Website. This is a great article for how to improve your bench press form.
