What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
Starting a new series here today.
We're going to look at some classic "Bro-science" tips.
Things that you've been told, things that you've heard in the gym from the professors.
You know, the big guys in the gym.
We want to find out whether or not what they say has any fact to it at all.
Is it partly factual?
Is it all fiction?
So we want to break them down one by one.
Today we're starting right here at the bench-press.
You've probably seen it.
It looks a little bit like this.
Guys get down to go bench and the next thing they do it they've got their feet up in the
air.
They're either going to get ready to do their bench from here like this, or they have their
feet flat on the bench here.
And you're thinking to yourself "Geez.
Is that how I should be doing it?"
we're going to break it down step by step.
Now, what is the justification for doing it?
There are three things that you'll hear form the "brofessors" about why they do this.
Number one: They say it's better for creating stability.
You're training in an unstable environment so you're training for stability.
That's number one.
Number two: that you're protecting your low back by eliminating the arch because we don’t
think that arching is a good thing to do.
Especially under load.
Then thirdly they'll say that you're actually getting more work for your chest because of
this instability that you're creating.
You're focusing more of the load on the chest.
Let's take them one by one and see, is there any truth to what's being said?
Well, if you go back here and you look at the first, we talked about the instability.
So I get up here like this – well, first of all, if my feet are flat on the floor,
I grab the bar.
I'm up in here, I go to press, it's a pretty stable environment.
I'm down, up, down, up.
The second I bring my feet up, look.
Now I have to control this.
So if I'm benching from here I have to control that.
I can tell you one thing that's already happened.
My shoulders just took a beating.
I'm going to go into that in a second.
If my feet are up we know that form the windshield wiper exercise my core has to contract to
bring me back to the center, or centralize me the whole time, and keep me here.
So your core is working.
This is not the place you want your core to be working.
This is not a core exercise, guys.
We're not trying to challenge our core here.
There are so many better ways to do this.
Not under a couple hundred, 300lbs of load.
You don’t want to do that here.
So that first one is out.
The second one about protecting your low back.
Are we protecting our low back?
I'm going to argue "no".
What we're saying here is, you've seen the guys do this and get into position here with
a big arch in their low back.
As long as your shoulders are in contact with the bench – which mine are – I'm getting
this stable platform by getting my shoulder blades back together and keeping this contact
of my butt with the bench.
Doing this and picking your butt up; that's bad.
That's hyperextending.
But keeping your butt here in contact with the bench, now what I've done is I've created
a much more stable position for my low back.
And more importantly, I've taken my shoulders and put them in a much safer position to press
because watch what happens.
My shoulders are nice and back, I've got good stability here, just like if I was going to
do a deadlift, just like if I was going to do a row my back would be slightly arched
anyway.
That's the strongest position for your back.
When I do this and I put them – even if I put them on the bench – I've just taken
this arch that I had here and I've flattened it.
So now I can't get my hand in here.
I've flattened my back and I've brought my shoulders more forward.
Just by doing what I did at the low back, I brought my shoulders down.
Now when I press I've got the opportunity to screw my shoulders up a lot more because
they're benching from this anterior position here.
And again, like I said, I'm doing myself no favors in my low back because I need that
slight arch for more stability.
Finally, are we activating more of the chest by doing this?
Because as we get up here, now we're weakening the bottom contribution here.
The legs can't push into the floor so we're not getting that.
So now we're getting all the work done here by the chest.
That's not true because, again, think about what happened to the shoulders.
The shoulders were brought forward.
That just took away the stretch on the pecs.
By taking away the stretch in the pecs we've taken away some of the power and the force
contributions that they can make.
So we're limiting what we can lift.
We're limiting the amount of force the pecs can be subject to.
So we're eliminating the amount of work that they can do and grow from it.
so what we want to do is, when we keep them back by having the low back arched and having
our feet flat on the floor, we've created a stable platform so that I can now take this
bench, lift more weight, get a better stretch here on the chest at the bottom, and power
up, and create much more overload for the chest, and therefore, growth potential in
the long run.
So on all three accounts: stability, protection for your low back, and then more work for
the chest; it's a fiction, fiction, and fiction.
Guys, keep your feet flat on the floor and learn to use them to actually push through
the floor to create a counterforce so that you can push that bar with more force and
start lifting more weight when you're under the bench.
If you're looking for more of these guys, I'm sure you encounter tons of them, I have
a lot of them already stored up for you guys, but let me know.
What are some of the questions you've heard and some of the things you've heard in the
gym?
It could be diet related, it could be supplement related, it could be lifting related; let
me know if the comments below and we'll cover them in our future series here.
In the meantime, if you've found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
If you're looking for the truth behind training, the no BS approach here – as you know, I
always will give you on this channel – make sure you head to ATHLEANX.com and get our
ATHLEANX training system.
90 days, step by step, showing you everything you need to do in the gym, with your meals,
and how you approach your workouts the safe way, and the right way.
All right, guys.
I'll be back here again soon.
See you.