The bench press is the single most popular traditional resistance training exercise in the world. You could go into the most rudimentary of gyms in the deepest, darkest regions of the Congo and you will find a bench press. It's usually the first piece of equipment that guys buy when they start training at home.
Should you happen to train in a commercial fitness center, your worthiness, in terms of strength, is often related to your capacity to perform the exercise with substantial resistance. Being able to bench a ton of weight is a badge of honor and is highly prized, establishing one's status in the gym world pecking order.
As such, the bench press has the reputation of being the most revered resistance training exercise in the gym.
But, does it deserve that reputation?
While there are electromyographical studies that show that the exercise solicits the chest muscles very well, there are quite a few reasons why I choose to steer away from the bench press.
Firstly, there is a question of security that cannot be avoided. If you want to push the bench press exercise into a zone where you will have an impact on strength and a growth-stimulating effect on your chest muscles, you will need to make something close to a maximal effort. Now, if you don't have anybody experienced enough to spot you properly, you are not going to be in enough of a secure environment that will allow you to take your sets to the limit. This translates into a sub-maximal effort and limited stimulation, thus restricting advancement towards your goals.
Should you happen to have a training partner to spot you, we need to take into account the fact that the poor individual is likely to get a great biceps and traps workout due to the fact that you will most likely use a much heavier weight than you should with the bench press. That person's lower back could also be severely taxed if a quick recovery action is required on their part should you happen to fail during the press.
Secondly, what if you do not have a steady and reliable training partner? Just asking anyone in the gym to give you a spot leaves you heavily exposed to inconsistent spotting techniques. As such, you will never be truly comfortable in making a maximal effort because you will constantly be unsure about the individual spotting you. This might be a distraction when you really need to concentrate and slip into your psyching-up mode for the lift.
Thirdly, still from a security perspective, if you happen to hit the pins on the bench (the little bars on which you rest the barbell when it's racked), you might lose control of the exercise, which can lead to all sorts of nasty outcomes. There's no guarantee, either, that you will rack the bar properly which means gravity might just bring the bar quickly into contact with your chest. While this might sound improbable, it did happen to a friend of mine a few years ago. I was not a witness to the incident, but I was told that the cracking sound that his chest made when the loaded bar fell on him was quite audible to those in close proximity. He came into the gym a few days later with a heavily bruised chest and a lesson learned about having an alert partner to spot him properly. Just a little something to think about.
Fourthly, you are always courting the possibility of staying stuck under the bar if you happen to be attempting the exercise alone. This is obviously a dangerous situation in which people find themselves occasionally, especially in a home gym environment.
The fifth challenge is related to the actual biomechanics of the bench press exercise. Generally, the benching action will have an effect through a restricted range of motion, which, of course, limits the muscle-developing aspect of the exercise. With maximal range of motion actions, one encourages muscle strength and volume development to a greater degree, giving the muscle a fuller look.
The sixth problem with the good old bench press exercise has to do with grip width issues and the urban legends that they spawn. The bench press typically requires that an individual apply a relatively wide hand placement on the bar. The main issue here is that the farther you place your hands away from the primary joints involved in the exercise, in this case the shoulders, the more stress you are throwing onto the big muscles and the little stabilizing muscles around those joints. This makes the bench press much more of a shoulder-building (and shoulder-damaging) exercise than a chest-building exercise. Just ask anyone who has been benching for years if their shoulders still feel great.
Of course, the wide grip hand position for the bench press can be exaggerated quite a bit with those individuals who happen to believe that taking an extra wide hand placement on the bar will throw more stress and emphasis on the outer portion of the chest muscles.
This is a very common, but erroneous notion that has spread like a virus through gyms around the world. While it sounds logical, and most unfounded notions and techniques sound logical on the surface, it's a practice that is not grounded in sound anatomical or biomechanical fact. Essentially, the fibers of the chest muscles are not oriented in a way that allows for that kind of specificity. The chest muscle is contracting from its point of origin to its point of insertion. This means that the outer portion of the chest is always contracting no matter how wide one grabs the bar.
If anything, an extra wide grip merely stresses the shoulders even more, resulting in greater wear and tear and possible acute or chronic injuries. As such, a wider spacing between the hands does not appear to offer beneficial activation over other hand positions, apart from possibly greater influence for the incline bench press. Even then, the shoulders are taking quite a beating.
In close relationship to the outer chest development theory is the idea that a really narrow grip on the bar will allow one to hit the inner part of the chest.
The fanciful notion that we can hit the inner aspect of the chest, also known as the sternal portion, with a narrow grip bench press is founded on nothing logical. It's a popular belief that many gym patrons readily subscribe to, though, because the inner portion of the chest does not always appear to develop as quickly or to the same degree as the rest of the muscle. The idea that a grip modification on an olympic bar can lead to better development of that weak area gives practitioners of such an approach hope.
Ironically, and interestingly enough, in opposition to what is essentially anecdotal opinion, the research shows that a narrow grip on the bench press actually reduces the activation of the chest muscles. One has to believe that this kind of makes it difficult to subscribe to the notion that a narrow grip bench press action will have any impact on inner chest development. In fact, it might have more of an influence on the upper (clavicular head) of the pectoralis major.
We also have to take into consideration the fact that the triceps tendon at the elbow takes quite a beating with a close grip hand position because the triceps muscle is heavily solicited. This can lead to a serious case of tendonitis, an injury that can potentially put your benching out of commission for a few weeks, if not longer.
The seventh problem with the bench press is one of technique. Seeing as it happens to be the most testosterone-lathered exercise in the gym it quite naturally lends itself to absolutely atrocious execution because of the crazy weights people are tempted to push. This opens the door to a multitude of acute and chronic orthopaedic injuries, the shoulder region being at the top of the list.
One of the biggest issues in terms of awful technique involves the act of lifting one's butt off of the bench resulting in a severe arching of the back. While this benching position has been proposed as a way to lift more weigh, the dangers associated with an exaggerated arching of the spinal column come from the enormous pressures placed on the vertebral bodies, intervertebral discs, and the little facet joints of the vertebrae that are all vitally important for healthy back mobility. Those types of compressive stresses add up over time, and can lead to degenerative conditions in the lower back region later in life. At that point, it's too late.
Another potential technique problem with the bench press exercise relates to the practice of bouncing the bar off the chest at the bottom of the movement. Of course, we are not actually talking about a real bounce off of the chest because that kind of action would more likely fragment your rib cage. When we speak of the bounce off the chest, we are referring in particular to what is commonly known in training circles as the stretch reflex, which is a speed-related action. This reflex is primarily associated with a rapid dropping of the bar that is more often than not way too heavy to begin with. Due to the rapid and forceful stretching of the pectoralis major muscle at the bottom of the movement, there is a reflex action that allows the individual performing the exercise to drive the bar back up to the top in a more powerful fashion.
While the stretch reflex is something that we might specifically want to train from a sports performance point of view, it runs counterproductive to the chest development that most are trying to encourage with the bench press exercise. Hypertrophy of a muscle is better served by an intentional action that comes about with a controlled contraction in both the eccentric and concentric phases, and through the full range of motion under constant tension. Bouncing the bar does not respect those criteria at all.
In the end, am I against the bench press as a chest exercise?
No, of course not. It's still a chest exercise, after all.
I do, however, believe it is overrated and question its title as the king of the chest exercises. Personally, I stopped performing any version of a traditional bench press in 1991, and my chest has developed quite nicely. I don't have any chronic shoulder issues to deal with, either.
