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How many times have you heard, “Want a bigger chest? Then you have to bench press.”
Well, this is actually a pretty good answer to how to build a bigger chest.
But it seems that some individuals just don’t seem to respond as well as others do when it comes to developing their chest mass with this chest exercise.
Yes, genetics can play a role in determining this.
But research clearly indicates that you can improve the resulting chest growth you experience from the bench press by applying a few simple bench press tips for a bigger chest. In this video, find out how to bench press to fix your bench press technique and boost the resulting chest gains you get from your chest workout. First, when it comes to how to build a bigger chest with the bench press, you need to be able to keep your chest up and out and your shoulder blades retracted back or pinched together.
This then naturally creates a slight arch in your upper back with space between your back and the bench, and is a position that you need to maintain as you’re pressing. Not only is this position safer on your shoulder and contributes to a stronger press, but based on biomechanical analyses of the bench press, we know that it also increases the involvement of the chest in the movement by preventing the front delts from rounding forward and taking over. So, if you want optimal chest growth from the bench press, you need to improve on your mobility restrictions. Basically, the two things you need to focus on are both opening up your chest and getting more upper back mobility in your thoracic spine so that you can keep that chest up and out and that upper back arched back as you press. And one great dynamic stretch to help you achieve this are snow angels on a foam roller.
By regularly doing exercises like this to open up your chest and loosen the upper back, you’re going to then be able to get into a much more efficient benching position to actually use and place tension on your chest instead of the front delts. Research has consistently shown that improving the activation of your chest as you bench can lead to greater growth. You can do so by being mindful of the following bench press tips for bigger chest.
First, it’s important to understand what the chest does in the first place: horizontal adduction. And it is simply the act of pulling your arm towards the midline of your body. So whenever we perform the bench press, it’s the horizontal adduction and movement of our arms together that’s activating our chest and as a result presses the weight up. And in order to properly activate your chest while you bench, you need to learn how to pull your arms together by using your chest muscles as opposed to other muscles. Once you’ve learned how to activate your chest muscles, it’s time to apply what you learned to your bench press technique. Start with just the bar but before lowering it, pre-activate your chest by thinking about bringing your hands inwards and pulling your biceps in towards each other. Obviously your hands won’t move but this will just help you engage your chest.
After this, start slowly performing reps with the bar but you should no longer be thinking about just pressing the weight up. Instead, on the way up of every single rep I want you to just think about pulling your biceps together. So focus on points A and points B that we previously went through, and just think about bringing those two points together every single rep. And so, you’ve effectively minimized the involvement of your front delts, which is undoubtedly going to lead to developing chest growth in the long run even if you’re using a lighter weight. If you want to see the best results and build muscle in the right areas, then you need to be activating the right muscles during all of your exercises and executing these movements optimally.
Which doesn’t just apply to the chest, but to all your other muscle groups as well.
