Gaining Weight & Muscle with the Bench Press
Many underweight teenagers turn to the bench press with their introduction to lifting weights with the aim to gaining weight and muscle. In the bench press, the range of motion your shoulder moves through is directly related to your rib cage thickness and your forearm length. If you lower the bar to your chest and your upper arm/elbow sinks far below the level of your shoulder, then your pecs are no longer playing a significant role in the exercise. That’s why the average person has more pain in the front of the shoulder than actual sensation of pec work/fatigue following several sets of bench press. You see, most folks have relatively thin rib cages (front to back). In order to touch the chest, they are required to lower the bar through much greater shoulder range than those few individuals who are “built to bench”.
Look around. The guys who are great at the bench press typically have thick, barrel-shaped rib cages and short arms. When they lower the bar to their chests, the upper arms/elbows never go lower than shoulder level, and the best guys in the world never even travel that far. So when the rules of powerlifting say “you must touch the bar to the chest”, these guys that are “built for it” move through about half the range that you or I would. That’s why it is important to remember that this is only the rule for powerlifting. If you’re not built like a powerlifter, you should let only shoulder range, pec mechanics, and your goal influence the range of motion. This means if your goal is pec emphasis, you’d have to stop the bar before it reaches your chest in order to have the same shoulder motion and pec mechanics that the thicker guys achieve.
How far from your chest? Look at your shoulder motion, not the bar. (By the way you can’t change your rib cage thickness with exercise. If you’re not happy with yours, you should have chosen your parents a little more carefully.)
Leave a Reply