The bench press is popular. My mom knows how to bench press, and she only knows the word “iron” as it relates to getting wrinkles out of clothes. Extended family members that only care about the word “fit” as it relates to an old pair of jeans ask me how much I bench. My answer [...]
The bench press is popular.
My mom knows how to bench press, and she only knows the word “iron” as it relates to getting wrinkles out of clothes.
Extended family members that only care about the word “fit” as it relates to an old pair of jeans ask me how much I bench.
My answer usually surprises them: zero pounds.
I don't bench press.
Wanna know why?
Dust off your high school year book. Find the most popular kid in your graduating class. I'm talking Regina George popular. Where is this person now?
This is why I don't bench press.
Popularity isn't utility.
Like most skinny-fat dudes, I used to have an obsession with my chest. My upper-chest sunk towards my heart. My lower-chest went the opposite direction.
I'd obsess over the shirts I wore. My wardrobe was limited. Most shirts made it seem like my nipples were wearing party hats. I wished Frank Costanza's Bro© was a real product. Why couldn't men wear sports bras?
I wanted a better proportioned chest. I was a realist. All I wanted was to look like Franco Columbu. Okay, maybe not, but, seriously… I didn't want much. I just wanted to wear at least one polyester shirt without having a nervous breakdown before I died.
Back then, I bench pressed regularly. Little did I know, this was making my chest proportions worse.
Ready for some bench press physics?
During traditional open-chained presses, where you fight against gravity and not necessarily torque, the angle of your arms relative to your thoracic spine determines muscular activation.
A press with the arms at 90-degrees (perpendicular) relative to a neutral thoracic spine hits the entire chest somewhat evenly. You can assume muscle activation between the upper-chest and the lower-chest to be equal.
Bring your arms above 90-degrees, and you’ll activate more of your upper-chest… but only for a bit. You'll eventually reach a point where your shoulders will do most of the work. Go below 90-degrees, and you’ll activate more of your lower-chest.
And so, it would seem the bench press would, at best, preserve your current chest proportions. Because, during the bench press, your arms are perpendicular to the floor.
But, wait…
This isn't true.
Even though most people press with their arms perpendicular to the floor, they do NOT bench press with their arms perpendicular to their thoracic spine.
People often arch their lower-back during the bench press, which changes the angle of the thoracic spine relative to the arm. The exercise becomes more of a decline press. Your arms press below 90-degrees, which hits the lower-chest more than the upper-chest.
If you're an awkwardly shaped skinny-fat human being trying to build a bigger upper-chest, you shouldn't bench press… on a flat bench.
Instead, you should do incline presses. The best bench angle for your upper-chest is a 30-degree incline. A higher incline (45-degrees) won't kill you, but it'll probably shift more of the stress onto your shoulders and you might struggle to really activate your upper-chest.
Check out my Boring Barbell Program in the Arcade to see how I train incline presses (and overhead presses) to build an x-shaped physique. Or don't. I don't care. Just know this:
The only reason non-powerlifters bench press is to establish pecking order without having to pull down their pants.