Head into any gym on any given day and chances are someone will be on the bench press. Pumping out reps. It’s one of those staple workouts that must be done. But are you doing your bench pressing right? Are you even hitting your chest muscles while performing your reps? There’s a chance you aren’t. There’s 3 major mistakes we can make when doing the chest press.
1. Arching your back. From slight arches to insane ones, it’s easy to arch your back so much that your back barely touches the bench. This is taking the load off of your chest muscles and also setting yourself up to get hurt. Keep your back flat on the bench.
2. Not coming all the way down. So often I see people only come about half way down with the bar, or stop a couple inches above the chest. You want to bring the bar completely down so it touches your chest.
3. Bouncing. This is the last common mistake I see, performing your reps so fast that you are using the momentum of the movement to “bounce” the bar back up after it comes back up.
All of these mistakes are easy to do, but also are easy to correct. So next time you are trying to crush it on the chest press, evaluate yourself and see if you are making these mistakes. For more check out this week’s podcast.
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