Hey Bro, Whaddaya Bench? - The Over-Glorification of the Bench Press

We've all seen it—a huge gym, packed with $500,000 of equipment, outfitted with 20 of the latest and greatest bench press racks and chest exercise machines taking center stage (all in use, of course), and a lonely squat rack gathering dust in the corner. It makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Not because I hate the exercise or the equipment or the idea of having disproportionately large pectoral muscles (actually, I kind of hate that), but because it has been over-glorified to a colossal degree—to the point of negligence towards other aspects of strength, physique, and fitness. In many common circles, the bench press (and to some extent its correlate movements) has become the end-all, be-all, alpha and omega, status defining, holy grail, apotheosis of all strength-related exercise. And the worst part by far is that most people suck at it.

(By Jay_Cutler_bodybuilder_2008.jpg: robbden derivative work: Nesnad (Jay_Cutler_bodybuilder_2008.jpg) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

Bodybuilder Jay Cutler has probably benched once or twice before.

First, let me start by pointing out that, despite its ubiquity today, the barbell bench press as we know it has not always been a thing. The style of bench press that we see today, using an elevated flat bench and uprights positioned arms-length overhead (called stanchions) to hold the bar, did not come into popular use until the 1950s. Before that time, most horizontal barbell pressing was either done lying on the floor or sometimes on a standalone flat bench with a pull-over type movement used to bring the bar from the ground—behind the lifter's head—to over the chest before the actual press movement began. In other words, sorry dudes, the Spartans didn't use the bench press to develop those sweet bods (though I'm sure Gerard Butler did). 

To make it crystal clear right off the bat, I have no contention with the use of the bench press in a balanced strength, physique, or otherwise fitness-oriented program. In my own training I perform the bench press and/or one of its variations 1-2 times per week, I program the bench press as a core lift for anyone whom I am training for strength, and I encourage everyone who wants to have a strong and/or muscular upper body to implement the bench press in their training (unless you have awful form, in which case you need to learn how to properly bench before you annihilate your shoulders). Because of the potential for using heavy loads and the compound nature of the lift, the bench press is a great exercise for building upper body strength, especially in the shoulders, chest, and arms. But, as Spiderman's Uncle Ben and Voltaire tell us: with great power there must also come great responsibility.

Aside from the abundance of wretched form (saving that for another post), the “problems” with the bench press can be boiled down to: 1) too much of it, and 2) not enough other stuff.

1.

The general population of gym-goers benches too darn much (frequency and volume). This can lead to a whole host of shoulder, chest, and arm injuries (common injuries include pectoral tears, rotator cuff tears, triceps tears, and general inflammation [tendonitis, etc] in the shoulders and elbows). While improper form is likely the most common cause of such injuries, overuse is also a huge contributor. Muscles and joints need time to heal. When you bench five days a week and supplement every bench session with a dozen other chest and shoulder exercises, adequate recovery will not happen. In addition to overuse injuries, benching too much will almost always lead to stagnated progress and often to regression. In the same way that muscles and joints need recovery time in order to stay healthy and injury-free, they need recovery time in order to get stronger. All bench and no recovery makes Jack a weak boy.

In addition, benching too much, especially when combined with a lack of pulling exercises and/or a lack of mobility, will often lead to bad posture. Bad posture leads to looking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, poor leverages (sub-optimal performance), potential for injury, and nagging pains down the road. Don’t be that guy.

(By MGM studio [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

Hunchie learned the side effects of too much bench press the hard way.

2.

A good program needs balance. If you are going to bench (a pushing movement), you must also pull. With the proliferation of bodybuilding split routines in which you spend one day working chest and biceps, another back and triceps, another calves and glutes, and so on, it is all too easy to forget that the body is a system. When you perform the bench press, your pectoral muscles and triceps are doing the majority of the pushing work; but a whole host of other muscles, ranging from the lats to the abdominals to the glutes, is making that movement possible—strengthening your base and your positioning, stabilizing, decelerating the weight, etc. In other words, if you don’t supplement your benching with a heavy dose of pulling and other assistance exercises, not only are you creating a visual imbalance (gross) and subjecting yourself to injuries and poor posture, but you are limiting how much you can bench. There are all kinds of ratios thrown out there for the best balance of pushing vs. pulling exercises (I’ve seen everything from 2:1 to 1:3). I don’t think there’s a magic number, but I do think that with a bit of intuition and trial and error it shouldn't be hard to figure out if a program lacks balance. When in doubt, do more strength work for your back.

In addition to balancing pushing with pulling, I am a strong advocate of strengthening the whole body. That means balancing upper body work with lower body work. Gym culture today is stricken with an obsession with upper body strength and appearance. I’ll keep it short: do lower body work, because weak chicken legs suck.

Let me end by saying that my negative feelings toward the over-glorification of the barbell bench press are followed very closely by my negative feelings towards the reactionary nay-saying and mud-slinging of the exercise. Some “counter-culture” hooligans of the day are responding to the obscene popularity of the bench press by condemning the exercise as non-functional, ineffective, and a general waste of time, heaping abuse upon anyone who dares to bench, claiming that “you’ll never find yourself in a situation where you have to press a heavy object horizontally away from you while you’re lying flat against a hard surface, you non-functional jag.” This is horse crap. Strength is functional, and the bench press makes your upper body strong.

So, what is the message of this post? Balance. Bench, but not too much, and make sure you train the rest of your body too.

Balance your swole.

"Inactivity is a major cause of death..."

A 93 year old who is in better shape than you tells you why you should be in better shape than you are.

A 16-minute Ted Talk from a wise elder, providing some startling statistics about the declining health of the general population, the reasons an increase in life expectancy doesn't exactly equal an increase in health (or even in "life," if I may editorialize), and the simple things one can do to combat this pandemic.

Don't be the norm.

Thoughts on Programming, Part 1: Starting Strength

And so begins another series of posts, this time about programs and programming. Ah, programming. That formidable and dark realm of strength training tricks and secrets, known only by God and the Soviets, and clung to with great fervor for fear that it may fall into the hands of lesser men. Though I am neither God nor a Soviet, I do have a thing or two to say about programming.
In this post, I am going to "review" a particular program, touching on its strengths, weaknesses, and target audience.

Starting Strength was the second strength training program I ever followed (not counting the "Do 15 Different Dumbbell Shoulder Exercises and You'll Be Huge, Brah" garbage I wasted months doing in my youth), and is probably the program (and book) most responsible for my initial foray into studying strength training.

Starting Strength is a simple, effective, barbell based strength training program that will (if executed properly) bring you from twiggish and weak to moderately strong and more branch-like. Mark Rippetoe, the creator of Starting Strength (the program) and primary author of Starting Strength (the book), is a well-respected strength coach and a name drop that'll usually earn you a few brownie points in the strength training community.

The program itself is a simple linear progression--starting at a sub-maximal weight and adding a small amount of weight to each exercise every workout--which focuses on the basic compound barbell exercises (squat, bench, deadlift, press, power clean) with very minimal "accessory" work and a simple set/rep scheme (3 sets of 5 reps for most of the lifts). In other words, it is a program intended for beginners (hence Starting Strength) with the purpose of imparting proficiency in the benchmark lifts and getting you plain ol' strong.

This guy might be a bit beyond Starting Strength.¹

As for the nitty gritties of the program, I'll break it down.

Things I Really Like About Starting Strength:

• First off, it's simple, and this is what a beginner needs. A beginner does not need 28 different exercises using a variety of machines, dumbbells, barbells, bands, chains, angles, and ranges of motion to train the quadriceps. What a beginner does need is a healthy balance of basic, compound barbell exercises, performed through a full range of motion, and loaded in a progressive fashion. Starting Strength is just that. No frills, no fancy-pants nonsense, just strength training. And if you do it right, it's darn effective too.
• It uses loaded multi-joint movements through a full range of motion. This pretty much falls into my first point, but it also deserves a point of its own. No half ROM hack squats, overhead lockout presses, and supine wrist curls here. Starting Strength is built off of the exercises that should, truly, be the centerpieces of everyone's strength training program, regardless of their level. As mentioned before, Starting Strength uses the squat, bench press, deadlift, press (overhead), and power clean. These are the exercises that get people strong. 
• The book is great. Really. If you are at all interested in being strong, but you are not yet squatting (real squatting) at least 1 1/2x your bodyweight, I advise you to buy the book. Even if you don't want to follow the Starting Strength program, the book is full of detailed instructions on the lifts, and includes additional information on nutrition, recovery, basic programming, and why you should want to be strong. You can certainly piece together the program and its basic tenets from online articles, forum posts, etc., but the book is well worth it and will help you execute the program the right way the first time through. 
• It tells you exactly what to do. There's no guesswork with Starting Strength. If you're following Starting Strength and you find yourself faced with some guesswork, you should take a step back and make sure you're actually following Starting Strength--chances are, you're not. Rippetoe tells you what to do and what not to do, and that's all you need.

Things I Don't Like Quite as Much About Starting Strength:

• I don't prefer the way Rippetoe teaches the squat. The squat, as it is taught by Rippetoe and detailed in the Starting Strength book, differs a bit from how I like to teach the squat. Rippetoe doesn't teach the squat incorrectly by any means. There are a million acceptable ways to squat, and everyone has their opinions on which ways are better. But...
• I don't prefer the prescribed bar placement. Rippetoe teaches a thumbless, low bar position with the bar placed "just below the spine of the scapula, on top of the posterior deltoids" (SS, pg. 19). For the average squatter, I think this bar position is a hair too low and I don't encourage a thumbless grip. Rippetoe has viable reasons for why he teaches it this way (read the book if you want to know), but I think it can cause a few issues, particularly in newer trainees. For my first couple years of squatting, I squatted almost exactly this way. It worked for a while, but switching to a slightly higher bar position with thumbs around improved my squat, eliminated some shoulder pain from squatting, and allowed me to focus more on moving the weight and less on worrying about the bar shifting around/sliding down my back mid-squat. I have seen the same issues and subsequent resolutions in other people's squats as well. But in the end, bar placement depends on what works for you.
• I don't prefer the prescibed "toes out" stance. Rippetoe teaches the squat with the toes out at about a 30 degree angle. The squat is often taught this way to circumvent a lack of lower body mobility, and I can understand squatting with toes out around 30 degrees while mobility issues are addressed. However, squatting toes out because of lacking lower leg range of motion is just a stopgap measure, and often just encourages and teaches poor movement patterns that are hard to break down the road. When mobility permits, I prefer (for a number of reasons) between a 10-20 degree angle. There is an ongoing argument among strength training folk about which stance is better, and it often seems that sides are taken more out of "belief" than "proven fact"--both sides have valid arguments. But I believe 10-20 degrees is optimal and attainable for most lifters.
• I don't prefer the head position Rippetoe teaches for the squat. Rippetoe tells his athletes to look at a point on the ground 5-6 feet in front of them, which leads to more of a head down position. I teach eyes straight forward. I have my reasons, and Rip has his. Ultimately, it's a trivial contention and a simple fix... If you don't prefer the head down position, don't squat that way.
• It doesn't combine well with other athletic endeavors. If you really want to do it right, you cannot simultaneously do Starting Strength and any other athletic training of considerable intensity (running, cycling, MMA, football, etc). This often means temporarily setting aside other goals in order to spend some time focusing on strength, which isn't always ideal, but is necessary for intense and focused linear progression strength programs like Starting Strength.
• It will probably require you to eat a lot. This might sound like a good thing to some folks. If you're already an avid face-stuffer and are looking for an excuse to continue to stuff face, read no further--Starting Strength is right for you. But if you've ever finished off a huge holiday meal and thought to yourself, "I'd hate to eat like this all the time," then this part of the program might be the most challenging. Because Starting Strength puts a large amount of stress on your body, especially as the weights get heavier, it usually requires a hefty dose of food to properly recover and get the most out of the program. For me (naturally twiggish), this meant spending the better part of a year averaging 4000+ calories a day. This is particularly challenging (and expensive) if you don't want to get diabetes or if you have any sort of aversion to eating Big Macs and dying of coronary heart failure. Some people (generally those who are naturally larger or put on weight very quickly) won't need nearly as much food. But those who are blessed/cursed to be among the more svelte in figure would be wise to stock up on ground beef, peanut butter, bananas, and whole milk. This caloric surplus will help add large amounts of muscle in a short amount of time, but most trainees will also put on a little fat while following Starting Strength. For some (those who are very skinny to start out), this isn't necessarily a bad thing. But for most, it will mean some concentrated effort down the road to lose the extra fluff they accumulated. (Note: the need to eat more is fairly universal in strength training, but is particularly necessary with Starting Strength because of the overall volume at high intensity and how quickly the weights progress.)

Things I Neither Like nor Dislike About Starting Strength:

• It's not sustainable in the long-haul. This is not a knock on the program. This is just a simple fact about Starting Strength and about other beginner-oriented linear progression programs like it.  Eventually, you will stall. If you add a bit more weight to the bar every time you're in the gym, logic dictates that inevitably it will get heavy enough that you can't lift that weight for the prescribed reps/sets. If that weren't the case, everyone who followed a linear progression program for a year would be squatting 800lbs. Rippetoe tells you exactly what to do in this situation (so I won't bother explaining here), and you should be able to blow through a few stalls and still gradually creep the weights up for a while; but eventually, you'll really stall. You will be tired and unable to adequately recover, and you will cease to get stronger on the program. This is when Starting Strength has run its course, and it's time to move on to another program (generally deemed an "intermediate" program). Again, this is not a problem with Starting Strength, it's just how novice linear progression programs work. Starting Strength is intended to tap into those "novice gains" that everyone has the potential to harness, and to ride those gains hard until they're completely exhausted. 
• It doesn't really allow for tweaks or variation. Again I'll say that this isn't really a negative, just a fact. If you don't have access to a barbell, some plates, a squat rack/stands, and a bench, you can't really do Starting Strength. If you, for some odd reason, can't do squats, you can't do Starting Strength. There really are no "substitution" exercises. But I see this as part of the beauty of this program as well. It's a do it or don't, no-nonsense kind of deal. This is also why it is a beginners' program. Intermediate and advanced lifters have specific weak points in their main lifts that will usually need to be addressed more precisely with assistance exercises. For beginners, everything is a weak point, and so simple tends to be the most effective. Hence, the (more or less) absence of assistance exercises in Starting Strength.
• It gets ridiculously difficult towards the end. If done correctly, you will reach a point in Starting Strength where the weights are heavy enough on each exercise that it takes every ounce of effort you have to get the last rep of the last set. You will start taking mini naps and having sandwich breaks between sets in a desperate effort to complete every squat rep. Things get hairy and you're left feeling like a heap of broken down manliness. These are the best of times, these are the worst of times. No agony no bragony, am I right?

In summary, Starting Strength is great. If you'd like to be strong and you think you might fall into the beginner category, do it. If you think you're in the intermediate category but you've never heard of Starting Strength, you're probably still a beginner (or you don't have the internet) and should try out Starting Strength. If you're not ready to put in some serious work and follow the program, you shouldn't do Starting Strength.

--

When it comes to strength training, one of the primary issues with programs that you'll find on the internet or in a book is that they are all general. Because they are mass-published programs that are intended to work for a huge variety of people, they cannot be specific to your needs. This is why, again, a knowledgeable personal coach or trainer is your best bet. But who has the money for that? I sure don't, and never have. So I learned and am still learning, through lots of trial and error and reading, what programming works for me and what doesn't; and, more generally, I've learned about what to look for in a good program and what the signs are of a crap program. In future posts I'll look at other notable programs and will address my thoughts on particular aspects of programming as a whole.

---

Be sure to subscribe, share, and comment.
Follow me on Twitter @PSprimont and on Instagram @PSprimont

Strong of heart, strong of mind, strong of swole.

---

1 (By ablight (AJB) (ablight) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)^↩