Bench Press “BOOSTING” Exercise (YOU’RE NOT DOING!)

If you are looking to boost your bench press, then you need to start doing this back exercise. In this video, I am going to show you how you performing the inverted row is going to help increase your bench press.

What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athleanx. com. So today I want to talk to you about an exercise that you’re not doing right now or maybe not  doing that can boost your bench press. And guess what? It’s a back exercise.

So, right off  the bat, you might be thinking a back exercise to boost your bench. Well, yes, it’s actually  very common knowledge that the back and the chest obviously opposing muscle groups. But what is not  necessarily common knowledge is that they assist each other in the performance of the bench press  into giving you a better, safer bench press. So, a while back, I had the one-legged monster,  my friend Casey Mitchell in here and we covered his best three accessory exercises for creating a  monster bench. And then those exercises, the last one was something he called a lean back pull down,  clearly a back exercise.

And the reason for doing it was to create tightness in the back, both on  the ascent and descent of the bar during the bench press. But not all of us have necessarily a lap  pull down machine, but we do have one exercise we almost all can do, especially here with just our  own body weight, that’s going to have a lot of carryover if you do it right. And when I’m talking  about here is the setup here for an inverted row. So, we program this exercise basically into  every single Athlete-X program or almost every single one of them. And it has a lot of benefits:  number one, we’re going to strengthen our back and our posterior chain in our upper back, which  is important just to create better shoulder positioning and shoulder health long term.

But more importantly, if you do this right, it reinforces something important that’s  going to carry over to the bench press. So, see if you can spot necessarily what I’m  not doing when I do this the first time. All right, you’ve probably done the exercise  before you get up onto the bar like this, you get up into this bridge position or you  elevate your legs up onto something. But this demonstration here, you just  simply like this and you pull up.

Can you spot what I’m doing wrong here? Because  this is the big difference when you want it to have a big carryover to the bench press? All right, the issue is hollowing out versus getting in that type position because if I hollow  out, I might be able to do more repetitions here. But that’s not really what I’m focused on  if I want to get this to carry over. What I want to do is I want to get the chest out.

And not just that, we have a stationary bar here in a moving body and want to have my body be  as active as I can to get up towards the bar. In other words, reach for the bar with my chest. Okay. Don’t stay in this hollowed out position and get to there but reach for the bar. So, if I take  this into more real speed, it looks like this.

And reaching. Reaching. Reaching all the while  keeping my upper back tight and locked in. Let me show you what happens here on the bench  press. When we perform a bench, obviously, shoulder pain can become an issue for some,  and when it happens is in the lower half of the bench press, right?

From having shoulder  instability, scapula instability, AC joint issues, rotator cuff tendonitis, biceps tendinitis. A lot of things can become inflamed or bothersome in the bottom half of the bench  press because you’re lacking a lot of times the stability in the shoulder to  do the exercise and the tightness of the back during the exercise. So, when we do the bench  press, in this case, there’s a stable body operating with a moving bar. But the  body doesn’t have to necessarily remain completely stable, it can become an active  participant in the exercise, just like it was on inverted row by trying to meet the bar as opposed  to just having the bar come down and meet you. So, here’s I’m talking about in this position  here, if I just let the bar come down to meet me, there’s going to be a little bit more travel  in terms of the range of motion of the bar, which can become problematic for the people that  have that shoulder issues in the bottom here.

Or I can actually actively continue to try to meet the  bar. So as the bar comes down, I try to bring the chest up like that, which is actively basically  rowing the bar down. Okay. Again, bring the bar down, actively reached for the bar, essentially  rowing myself up. So, down in real speed, up.

See that subtle reach.

And what happens is, again, you’re establishing  the tight back from the beginning, you’re getting the chest up from the beginning. But as the bar  comes down, you’re actively trying to expand the rib cage and get yourself a little bit  higher, decreasing the range of motion even by just a half an inch, which can help alleviate  some of the problems there. But more importantly, as the chest comes up, the shoulders go back. When the shoulders are back, the shoulder blades are down, you have a safer position in the  shoulders. Making it not just beneficial for people that have issues or pain during the bench  press, but ultimately leading to a bigger bench press because you can remain tight.

You’re not  allowing yourself to get loose at the bottom of the bench like Casey and I were talking about in  that video. If you haven’t seen it, you know, make sure you want to check out that video. In the meantime, found this one helpful. Leave your comments and thumbs up below. Let me  know so I can cover for you, and I will do that in future video.

And also make sure you click,  Subscribe and turn on your Notifications so you never miss a new video when we put one out. Lastly, for the science back in strength and all of our programs, including exercises  just like that for the right reasons. Make sure you head to athleanx. com and check out our  programs. All right guys I ll see you soon.