Bench Pressing 101

One of the staples of weightlifting, bodybuilding and fitness is the a lift called the bench pres. Often when you tell people you lift a common response is "how much ya bench?". Although I believe the bench press is an overrated lift it can still be useful when executed properly. Often times I see people benching with poor form allowing then barbell to smash off their sternum to build more momentum on their press but this can risk injury and isn't very beneficial overall. Here is a great tutorial on how to bench https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRVjAtPip0Y telling you how to bench press correctly and what to avoid. The bench seems like a simple lift but there are multiple steps that people often miss hurting their progress and potentially cause injury!

Mind to Muscle Connection

As I continue to educate myself training properly and efficiently the more people I'm beginning to notice more and more people doing their exercises all wrong. I tend to see people going as heavy as they can causing them cheat on the exercise which really prevents isolating the muscle that they are training. After researching the mind to muscle connection I realized I had to make some changes in my training. For example, instead of going up to the 45's on dumbbell curls and using my momentum to swing the weights up I use the 35's and make sure to only use my biceps going slow and making sure to squeeze at the top of the motion. Same goes for really any isolation exercises I do now; chest fly's, late pull downs, tricep extensions the list goes on and on. I'm really beginning to focus on getting the squeeze in the muscle I'm training and feeling my muscles contract with every movement. I'm already starting to see major progress and highly recommend this type of training to others it'll help you progress and get the best pumps as mentioned in my last post!