ASK THE NATURAL CHAMPION –
To Bench Or Not To Bench…A Look At The Weight Trainer’s Favorite Exercise
QUESTION: I play football for a junior college and now that the season is ending I’m thinking about getting into bodybuilding more seriously. My question is should I concentrate on the bench press for building up my chest? We do benches in the weight room for football but mostly the guys end up just trying to see how much they can do.
ANSWER: The bench press is one of the most popular of all weight training exercises. In fact, one of the first questions asked of a weight trainer is “How much can you bench?”
Part of the reason for the great popularity of the exercise is that it affects a number of the ‘showy’ muscles of the body - the chest, shoulders and arms (triceps). Another reason the bench is such a favorite is that relatively heavy weights can be handled in the movement. It’s rare to find someone who can do a standing press (free weight, not a machine or smith machine press) with 200 pounds, but not at all unusual to find weight trainers who can do that much on the bench press. And a third reason is that the exercise is relatively easy – certainly a lot easier than barbell squats or deadlifts or bent over rows.
Unfortunately, the bench press is sometimes overdone to the exclusion of other important exercises. Also, the bench press is often done incorrectly, with a huge bridge or arch, a bounce at the bottom, an uneven extension, and a ‘spotter’ who ends up doing more work than the lifter. Such techniques allow the bencher to ‘move more weight’ at that particular moment but in actuality does not make that person stronger or better developed (correct technique which forces the primary movers to do the work accomplishes both of those attributes), it just makes the bencher more prone to injury. The only thing bridging, arching, thrusting, wiggling and counting on your spotter to move the weight builds is a misplaced ego…and I can tell you for real that the girls are not impressed and neither is anybody else.
To answer your question directly, I’d say that for most bodybuilders the bench press should be a part of their chest routine, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend concentrating on it to the exclusion of other exercises. Neither would I particularly recommend ‘trying to see how much you can do’. Here’s what I would suggest:
First, if you’re going to concentrate on bodybuilding, work the chest from several angles and especially concentrate on the upper pecs. Full, thick upper pecs give the chest a powerful, pleasing look and tie in well with the shoulders. With this in mind, I usually start off my chest routine with Incline Presses, then go to Bench Presses, and finish off with some type of flye movement, usually on a slight incline.
I’d keep the reps and sets on the bench about the same as any other exercise. If you want to occasionally test your strength you can do a heavy set of 3 to 5 reps…or on rare occasions hit a heavy single – after a proper warm up and with good form.
One more tip: Dumbell bench presses offer a good change of pace to the barbell version; dumbbells are not only often more effective, but they’re safer on the shoulders because you can angle the direction of force to avoid or compensate for those little – or not so little – twinges in the shoulder and rotator cuff that benches are notorious for.
