3 Tips to Improve Your Bench Press
I'll get straight to the point with this one. Everyone loves to bench press including myself but very few do it right. Why do something unless you're going to do it correctly? Try these simple tips to improve your bench. 1. If you don’t set up correctly your bench will suffer…
I’ll walk you through my set up; keep in mind you don’t have to do it exactly like this but I have had success with it and I feel I get tighter on the bench than most people. Start with your chest under the bar and set your feet, this becomes your first base of support (I choose to leave my heels on the ground). Leave your feet in that position as you slide your body through; while sliding through start to arch your thoracic spine and pull your shoulder blades back and down (retract and depress). Once you are in this position push your upper back and head into the bench while keeping your butt on the bench; these become your other base of support. Congratulations you now have a good set up and if you are doing it correctly you should feel extremely uncomfortable; almost cramping in your upper back it’s so tight. Do this even in your warm-ups, I don’t care if its 115lbs or 315lbs each set up should be the same.
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2. Always have the intent to move the bar FAST!
I feel like this is a no brainer but I guess not. You need to go fast and if you’re not fast then at least try and go fast (that would be me). Having this intent to move fast during the CONCENTRIC portion (upward portion) is going to recruit higher threshold motor units allowing you to accelerate with more force thus getting you stronger. So your press should be nice and controlled on the way down, quick pause on the chest and BOOM! Lastly, if you are grinding out reps then you aren’t moving fast so you should oh I don’t know, DROP THE WEIGHT! I just wanna go fast!
3. Do upper back work….. All the time
I don’t care if it’s an upper body day or a lower body day, you should be doing some kind of upper back work every day. A strong back will help your bench press. It’s going to allow you to get tighter on the bench, control the eccentric better, and utilize your lats more. Right now my upper body days consist of two horizontal pulls (any type of row variation) ranging from 3-4 sets of 10-12 reps and my lower body days consist of a vertical pull (lat pull down, pull-ups, neutral grip pull-ups) and scapular retraction work (banded W’s or band pull-a-parts) usually in the 30-50 rep range and I break it up however I want depending on how I’m feeling that day.
The bug and the Windshield
There are two important lessons that one needs to know when training…
- You are going to have bad days in the gym, accept it. Or as Kelsey would say, “Some days you’re the windshield and some days your bug… Today you were the bug.”
- If your bad days keep on occurring you need to fix your program.
Allow me to expand a little on these two points as I have recently come into contact with both during my training. It’s vital that you listen to your body during your training in order to make the best gains you can. To do this pay careful attention to how you feel during your main movements because this is going to be the marker for the rest of your workout. Undoubtedly you will have a day where you feel like absolute crap which is perfectly FINE but you have to make the proper adjustments thereafter.
With me the times that I usually feel like this are during my deadlifts. If you know me then you know that I absolutely HATE deadlifting, it’s the worst thing ever (I probably feel this way because I’m terrible at it, who knows).
Pulling had been going well though up until last Monday when I realized I had become the bug. On that day everything felt heavy, I also felt out of my groove on every pull. I worked up to 90% of my 1RM for a single and it was a griiiiiiind. I tried to go down to 80% and get some quality work in but I didn’t even pull the weight off the ground, what happened next? Well after I got my Wolverine rage on I calmed down and just nixed the rest of my pulls, went onto my squat variation got in some good sets and called it a day. I simply chalked this up to being the bug and chose to just move on and look forward to the next training session. These days can happen for just about any reason, tired, hungry, unfocused, and maybe even OVER TRAINED. Don’t try and force it on these days, just get in whatever quality work you can and leave. If you force it you will most likely make the problem that much worse and get hurt.
On to the second point, if these “bad” days keep occurring they are probably "bad" because you are OVER TRAINED and you need to fix the problem. As I stated before I had a horrific time last Monday but this past Monday I was ready to go and felt pretty decent. I worked up to 85% and pulled it for two singles with an alright bar speed. I decided to put on 90% went to go pull and NOTHIN’! I couldn’t even get the bar to budge at all. I knew something was wrong because that shouldn’t have been happening. Stevo convinced me to drop the weight, significantly, and just go for an easy double. Well sadly that easy double was not easy at all. I knew that I was pretty over trained and needed to fix something. I called up “The Programmer” and told him what was going on, we talked about my training and my technique and came to the conclusion both needed to be fixed. The answer ended up being that I won’t pull heavy again until my meet and when I do pull (probably once every two weeks now) it will be around 40-50% for singles just working strictly on form. The take home message is don’t just ignore your body and keep going through a program simply because you feel you need to. You will only get weaker and probably injure yourself doing that. Reassess what you’re doing and make the adjustments needed so you can avoid your reps looking like this guy.
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Coaching Nutrition and Exercise For the Win: Keep it Simple, Stupid
Last weekend, my wife and I were able to take advantage of a great opportunity. In short, some good friends of mine recently had their "Harajuku Moment" (or personal tipping point) with regards to personal health. They requested that Kelsey and I provide them with some nutrition lessons and give their current dietary regimen a "makeover," if you will. Given that they have a beautiful lakehouse - and offered to lodge us there for the weekend on top of providing all the food - we replied, "When do we start?!"
Needless to say, the experience was very rewarding. Throughout the weekend, we prepped+cooked meals with them, along with putting together a “mini packet” comprised of easy recipes, quick & dirty checklists to run through every time they prepare a meal, a sample grocery list, and a brief chart of healthy fats, proteins, carbs, and supplements. We were also able to answer some questions and debunk some myths for them:
Should I avoid eating close to bedtime? What should I eat before/after a workout? How much red meat should I consume/avoid consuming? Should I avoid egg yolks like the bubonic plague?
Kelsey and I were able to provide this family with some very practical strategies they could begin applying to their lives immediately. Strategies that would allow them to experience greater mental clarity and energy levels, lower blood sugar, reduce the risk of heart disease, and all-in-all fix a lot of “stuff” going on in their bodies. And these strategies were all very uncomplicated.
We didn’t tell them to count calories. We didn’t tell them to weigh their food. We didn’t tell them they had to buy everything “organic” (whatever that means anymore). We didn't them them if they failed to eat Paleo then their world would be over immediately.
This entire process got me thinking….many of us – whether we are the teacher or the student - tend to overcomplicate topics in the exercise and nutrition realm. Given that I’m a strength & conditioning coach, I often fall on the teaching side of things, so I’ll briefly touch on this subject from that perspective.
When I first started in this industry as a personal trainer, I made things way, way, WAY too complicated. Whether it was coaching someone through a squat or something as simple as a X-Band Walk, I practically gave the poor client a short essay on how to perform the exercise.
The same thing with regards to nutrition advice. I gave them wayyy too much information. All this ended up doing was overloading the person and didn’t actually help them get on their feet toward reaching their goals.
My heart was in the right place, but my head was not.
For those of you reading who teach exercise (be it in a professional setting or simply to a friend or family member), please learn from my mistakes. Don’t overwhelm the person who is listening to you. Give them one cue and explain why they should care.
When you teach someone a squat for the first time, they don’t care if you know that the rectus femoris is the only quadricep that crosses both the hip and knee joints, or that you understand the biceps femoris is the only hamstring that externally rotates the femur along with extending the hip.
Please.....let's get over ourselves.
Practical Application
Let’s put this into a practical scenario, shall we? Pretend that your teaching someone to squat for the first time. I’ll provide the “fail” version, along with a strategy you could take that will lesson the odds of your student completely hating you and being overwhelmed.
Female Volleyball Player. First Session.
Fail: "Okay, next, we’re going to squat. First, we’re going to hold the weight at our chest, or “goblet position” because if you don’t, your body will likely shut down and move like a pregnant seal, creating aberrant movement as a result of a perceived threat due to lack of stability…although you might still suck due to poor ankle dorsiflexion, inhibited glutes via reciprocal inhibition of the hip flexors, and/or tight lats. You’re then going to turn your feet out, point the big toe up, but keep your weight distributed evenly on your feet, then sit BACK, don’t fall forward!, keep those shoulder blades down and back into your back pockets, pull yourself down via your hip flexors, CHEST TALL! don’t slouch now, act like your sitting on an egg so you don’t slam into the box, then EXPLODE up so you can access your fast twitch motor units and improve your rate of force development."
Win: "Okay, first, we’re going to squat. This is going to help improve your vertical jump and allow you to move faster on the court. Watch how I do it, and then do your best to replicate it." *Coach then demonstrates a few reps of the goblet squat to box*
See the difference?
In the second scenario, we gave the athlete a reason to care, and then coached them by showing them. Ninety nine times out of a hundred, the athlete/client will perform the movement better in the second scenario rather than the first.
Is it still going to be perfect? No. But you can tweak and help them throughout the subsequent sets, adding just one or two coaching cues and keeping it there for that day. Throughout the following weeks, you help them with one small improvement at a time. Rome wasn't built in a day, ya know?
Now, I realize there are exceptions. Some people are more “audible learners” as opposed to visual learners, and others actually do want a lot of detail (usually those are people who already have some lifting experience and are involved in the field in some form or another). But I hope you get the point.
The same thing can apply to fat loss clients, someone dealing with knee pain, or those seeking some extra help in the kitchen.
Keep it simple FTW.
Complete and Utter Randomness
Just a few random thoughts that have been running around my mind and some training videos for everyone out there. Random Thoughts:
- I’ve been struggling as of late when it comes to high school weight training either as a class or after school for sports. It seems to be very few and far between that you have sport coaches/weight training teachers who know what they’re doing in the weight room (I’m not saying all of them). Just talking to athletes about what they do in there blows my mind such as maxing every three weeks with terrible form, crumpling under the barbell during a squat or rounding their back and hitching a deadlift just to get the weight up. Most of these kids can’t do a bodyweight squat correctly, why are they maxing with a barbell on their back? I’m not trying to make people angry but it just seems ignorant when there is so much good/free information everywhere that would help these coaches and their athletes immensely. I attribute this to one of two things, they are to prideful to admit they don’t know what they are doing or they just don’t care to find out that what they are doing is wrong and harmful. Either way it’s unacceptable.
- The previous thought kind of led into the idea of being average. I’ve heard people for as long as I can remember talk about how they are better than “average” or that they don’t want to be just “average”. I always thought that thinking like that was arrogant, or that they felt they were superior. I used to be of the mindset that in order to be above average you had to be something like an astronaut, sports superstar, movie star, bill gates, you know things along those lines. I’m assuming I thought that way because from the time I was in elementary school to the end of high school that’s what I felt I was, just average. Why? Because I was led to believe that’s what I was by OTHER people. It wasn’t until college when I started taking my physical education and exercise science classes that I started to realize that I wasn’t “average” and that I never want to be “average”. I started becoming more confident in my intelligence and through weight training I became more physically confident, and most importantly I stopped listening to negative people. This all lead to me understanding that it’s OK to NOT want to be average. Nobody should want that. Whatever it is that you are currently doing you shouldn’t be satisfied with being average at it. Whether you are a student, strength coach, teacher, sport coach, attorney, grounds keeper, etc. you should STRIVE to be better so you can look back when it’s all said and done and be able to say you left your mark. Anyways the reason why this all got sparked was because I’ve been hoping this is the message that I am instilling in the athletes I work with. There is enough negativity in the world and I REFUSE to be a negative influence when it comes to working with these kids.
- My last thought as of late is that I want to buy a truck. Really not for any other reason than to buy a Prowler to leave in the bed of the truck just so I can always have it on hand in case the mood strikes to push it. Weird right?
Videos:
And without further delay, here are some videos to take your mind off the incoherent rant you just read….
Here are two of our female high school volleyball athletes. I think they are just realizing that they are really strong. SAPT is really proud of all their progress…
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The next video is of one of my training partners and GMU’s S&C graduate assistant John Delgado. He’s currently doing Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 and he decided to get real squirrely with this 315 deadlift for what I believe is 13 reps…
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The last video is of me getting in some work for my upcoming powerlifting competition. My training is going really well and my squats and pulls feel really fast and smooth (bench is still feeling a bit weird and wild). I’m about 7 weeks out from the Richmond Open and I am getting all sorts of jacked up about it.
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How to Get HOOGE!
By far the question that I get asked the most by our male athletes is “how do I get bigger”. I give them the simplest answer they could ever want yet they still for some reason don’t like what I tell them. My answer is usually along the lines of “eat food… a lot of it, all day…“ The resounding follow up from them goes something like “but I don’t want to get fat”. At this point, in my mind, I want to just go kick down a door (figuratively speaking of course). [vsw id="q3SFXQfE4kk&feature=youtu.be" source="youtube" width="425" height="344" autoplay="no"]
I blame society. For the last 20 years we have been told by media organizations that if we eat food we will get fat and then we are made to idolize people that look like sticks, RIDICULOUS! Sorry, I’m digressing from the point… What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, gaining weight.
Fellas, the only way to gain muscle mass is to eat A LOT of REAL FOOD and have a sound strength and conditioning program. Please, I beg you to get rid of the notion that you will get fat because honestly, you won’t. The guys I get the gaining weight question from are usually 5’6”, 130-140lbs or 6’0” 165-175lbs; the last thing you should ever worry about is getting fat. I can’t really blame you for thinking this because I was the same way when I was younger. It wasn’t until college that I started to educate myself on the issue and ignored my ridiculous thoughts about getting fat. I went from 5’8” 150lbs to around 6 months later weighing in at 177lbs (after trying to gain a little more muscle recently, I weigh in around 187lbs currently). All that said I’m going to give you a list of some of the foods I ate frequently to help me reach my goals (the foods are in no specific order).
I did not measure out my food when trying to gain weight. I don’t feel this is necessary because it ends up getting in the way and becomes a huge hassle which leads to giving up.
- 6 eggs (whole eggs, not egg whites) with a handful of cheddar cheese and a WHOLE LOT of vegetables. Try and find whatever you can, mine consists of broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, green and red peppers. I ate this for breakfast and sometimes dinner. I scrambled it all up with some olive oil. This was a great way to get in a lot of good nutrients consisting of fats, carbohydrates, and protein.
- Natural peanut butter and jelly on Arnold’s Double Fiber wheat bread and a glass of whole milk. This was one of my favorites which is why I ate it twice a day; one of those times being after my training session in which case I would substitute a glass of whole milk with chocolate milk/one scoop vanilla why protein. I slabbed on as much peanut butter as I could. Be sure to get natural peanut butter, don’t eat that processed stuff. If it claims to be natural but lists palm oil as an ingredient then don’t buy it; palm oil acts as a trans-fat.
- Burrito bowl from Chipotle with rice, fajitas, black beans, chicken, pico de gallo, cheese, and guacamole. This was usually a once a week thing because of cost. This was a great way to get in a lot of calories on a day where I was slacking or short on time.
- Stir fry diced chicken breast with as many vegetables as you can cram in. It should consist of tomatoes, green peppers, red peppers, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and baby spinach with olive oil and teriyaki sauce. I usually got 3 to 4 pounds of chicken breast filets and made it all on Sunday so I could have it already prepared for the week. Again, gettin' a lot of calories while satisfying vegetable intake. I know what you are thinking and yes you have to eat spinach, because it’s awesome and if you want to be strong like Popeye you have to eat like Popeye.
- I loved drinking smoothies because it was an awesome way to get in a boat load of good calories. The fact that it was liquid allowed it to not sit very long which allowed me to eat again quicker. I had my own recipe but Stevo’s is far superior so I’ll give you that one. Frozen berries, whole milk, Kefir, brazil nuts, and one scoop vanilla whey protein. If the blender isn't full by the end… Just add more.
- West Virginia Goulash with a side of 4% milk fat cottage cheese mixed with strawberry jelly. This is a meal that my dad (from Beaver, West Virginia) has cooked for my family forever. It’s nothing special really, just 90/10 ground beef cooked in a pan with LITERALLY whatever vegetables you can find. My dad uses potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, corn, green beans, green peppers, and tomatoes. As for the cottage cheese, I do like it by itself but after a while the taste takes its toll on you so I added the flare of strawberry jelly. Again, just like the chicken stir fry I would make this at the beginning of the week. If you don’t like this meal then we just can’t be friends.
A Few Things to Note…
- Every week I would rotate between the chicken stir fry and the West Virginia Goulash, a big bowl of either would be my lunch or dinner. The peanut butter and jelly, cottage cheese with strawberry jelly, the scrambled egg dish and the smoothie would be something I ate every day, every week. With all this I would end up eating around 5-6 times a day and drinking around 3 liters to 1 gallon of water a day.
- At this time the only supplement I took was cod liver oil because I needed extra Vitamin D due to lack on sun exposure and protein powder. If you are trying to put on mass for the first time I highly discourage you from taking other supplements such as NO2 products and creatine products. The reason being is not because they are bad for you (because they are NOT bad for you) it’s more so because they end up being a crutch, especially for teens. People and again especially teens tend to think supplements are a “magic pill” and make them a staple of their diet rather than what they are; a “supplement” to your diet. Whey protein is fine; just keep it to one scoop after your training session along with the other post workout food I listed and one scoop for your smoothie.
- If you’re reading this and saying things like “oh man, that’s unhealthy to eat that many eggs”, “I’m going to get fat if I do that”, “his cholesterol and blood pressure must be through the roof!” then I'm sorry to say, you are sorely mistaken. If you truly believe those things then you probably don’t exercise (lift heavy things and condition) enough, you pay too much attention to bad sources of information, and you just aren’t ready to take on the challenge. All of the products I ate were natural and either not processed or very minimally processed. There is nothing “unhealthy” about drinking whole milk, it’s a great source of good fats and is much less processed than skim milk. Egg yolks are fine, actually its the best part of the egg. And, I can assure you that my cholesterol and my blood pressure are better than average.
Stop letting society dictate your life.
A Tip on Programming
If you truly want to become stronger it’s very important that you take careful consideration when planning your training program. One of the biggest factors that comes into play when doing this is understanding your strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately when this task is undertaken solo the former rather than the latter becomes the focus of the program. Usually what happens when you write your own training program is that unbeknownst to you, you have programmed everything your good at and absolutely nothing you’re bad at. Congratulations, you’re going to spend the next 12 weeks not getting any stronger! So the question becomes, how do we avoid wasting 12 weeks of our life? Simple, DON’T do your own programming. The best thing to do is to sit down with someone who is qualified and experienced when it comes to programming (do not ask your training partner, chances are they probably have the same problems you have and are just as biased). Talk to them about your goals, strengths, and problem areas. Based on the information you give them and the programming knowledge they have, they will write you a program that you will absolutely hate! Why will you hate it? Because, it’s going to be filled with a bunch of stuff you’re not good at and honestly who wants to work 4-5 days a week on things they are terrible at? Nobody! But, I promise that you WILL come out 12 weeks later a STRONGER person than when you went in. Trust me I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else;I would much rather feel like Wolverine in the weight room instead of Howard the Duck.
Don’t believe me? I’ll show you. Below you will find two training days from two different programs. The first was written for me by current strength coach, powerlifter, and friend Gabe Naspinski. The basis of which can be found by reading Gabe’s article for EliteFTS. The second is a day that I wrote for myself a while ago.
|
Gabe’s |
Mine |
||||
| A1) | Conventional DL from Deficit | 9X2/60% | A1) | DE Sumo DL with Chains | 8X3 50%+50lbs of Chains |
| B1) | SSB Low Box Squat w/ pause | 4X6 | B1) | Low Box Squat | 4X8 |
| B2) | Pullups throughout session | 40 total | C1) | Barbell Rollouts | 3XAMAP |
| C1) | Band Pull Throughs | 3x15 | C2) | Reverse Hyper | 4X10 |
| C2) | Static/Dynamic Ab Movement of my choice | ||||
I know they don’t seem completely different but let me explain why the day Gabe planned is better for me than the one that I programmed. First let me give you a little background on myself. I have been pulling sumo for the last two years because I’m better at it and that’s how I compete. I am terrible off the floor when deadlifting but pretty good when it comes to locking out at the top. I am also weak out of the hole of my squat but again, pretty good at locking them out. Lastly, I have weak glutes, hamstrings and upper back. Just with that little bit of information it’s easy to see why Gabe’s training day is superior to the one I programmed.
Let’s look at A1; he has me pulling conventional AND from a deficit (this guy has it out for me). This allows me to work on almost all of my weaknesses. Pulling conventional and from a deficit will allow me to get better out of the bottom due to the increased range of motion and it will work on my hamstring and glute weakness as well as my upper back. Now is what I programmed bad? No, but it’s not exposing nor is it helping me work on my weaknesses nearly as much as what Gabe gave me.
We’ll end with talking about the B series. With this series we have two squat variations, again nothing to different. The main difference is the type of barbell used and the utilization of the pause. He has me using a SSB (safety squat bar) which positions the bar higher on my back causing a greater emphasis on back strength as opposed to a straight bar, thus allowing me to work on my upper back weakness. Again, I’m weak out of the bottom of my squat and my glute strength is sorely lacking so naturally we are going to incorporate a low box, which Gabe and I both did. There is one glaring difference though between his and mine….the dreaded PAUSE in the bottom. Now the pause I’m using is only a second long but that one second pause is a dagger (I’m not joking, go try it). This pause is going to allow me to get stronger out of the bottom while also putting much more emphasis on my glutes. Lastly in the B series, you’ll notice the 40 pullups throughout session that are in Gabe’s program and not in mine. Remember that whole weak upper back thing? Interestingly enough Gabe decided to give me upper back work EVERYDAY of my program (I told you this guy has it out for me). But again, my back weakness has been my downfall and he’s making me face it every day forcing me to get stronger.
As I said at the beginning, it’s important for everyone to know their strengths and weaknesses (especially their weaknesses). One weakness that we all share when it comes to training is thinking that we are unbiased when it comes to writing our own program. You might work on SOME of your problem areas if you write your own program but I guarantee it’s not going to be the same as someone else writing it. Don’t spend weeks on end not getting any better, it’s a waste.
Remember, friends don’t let friends write their own programs.
