How Much Ya Bench?
REMINDER
- Holiday schedule for this week:
- Monday-Wednesday will be normal schedule.
- Thursday only 1 class at 8 AM.
- Friday No Classes.
- Saturday normal classes
BY BILL STARR
“How much can you bench?” is the question now asked to find out how strong a person might be. Personally, I believe knowing a person’s incline, front-squat or deadlift numbers are more important when I want to know a person’s level of strength.
There’s no doubt that the bench press is king. It’s the lift used to test athletes in nearly every sport. In football, when a player is being recruited, how much he can bench is listed right next to his 40-yard-dash time. That makes the bench very important. Getting a free ride to a D1 school is worth a small fortune.
Because the bench press carries such significance to college recruiters, there is a great deal of pressure on high school athletes to record a high number on that lift. And sadly, that means anything goes: just get it to arms’ length and lock it out. Form is not a factor. Excessive bridging, rebounding the bar off the chest, squirming, twisting … all are game. Many coaches and parents actually encourage this sloppy technique, even to the point where an athlete is almost standing on his head to move the weight through the sticking point.
However, here is a truism in strength training: if you constantly utilize bad form, sooner or later you’re going to pay the price. Whenever improper technique is practiced regularly, the athlete is placing his wrists, elbows, shoulders and rotator cuffs in jeopardy. If the lifter bangs the bar off his chest in order to get a jump-start on the exercise, eventually he will do damage to his pecs and most likely also irritate his elbows and shoulders in the process.
Also, the rash of rotator-cuff injuries can be traced to the emergence of popularity of the bench press in the ’70s. Before that time, rotator-cuff injuries were unheard of. That’s because heavy overhead pressing strengthens those delicate groups. One of the most popular kinesiology and applied anatomy texts of the ’60s, written by Philip Rasch and Roger Burke, does not even mention the rotator cuffs. The muscle group only gained prominence after the bench press became the upper-body lift of choice.
Yet, the bench press is not the true villain. When done precisely it is an excellent exercise to strengthen the arms, shoulders and pecs. It’s only when form is thrown out the window and when it’s severely overworked that problems arise. It needs to be understood that the wrists, elbows and shoulder joints are rather delicate, and whenever they are repeatedly abused with improper technique, often with heavy weights, those areas will become traumatized.
Should the athlete continue to ignore the warning signs and keep pounding away using ugly form, he may injure himself so severely that he will be forced to stop benching altogether. And in some cases, he will have to cease doing any strength training. It’s hard to do much in the weight room with a torn pec or a serious elbow injury.
Bridging and Bouncing Are Banned
One reason so many athletes utilize poor technique on the bench is….
TUESDAY 12.29.20
A. Bench Press
10-8-6-4-2-2-2
A. “Party On”
5 rounds for time:
10 Ring Dip
10 Alternating DB Snatch (AHAP)
*10 Min Cap
