What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
So which one is it?
What is the best` variation of bench press if you're trying to build a bigger chest?
Is it the kind of the exercise?
The king of the chest movements; the barbell bench press?
Or is it the dumbbell bench press?
As a lot of people would argue, they feel that more, and they like that variation better.
Or is it a standing cable bench press?
Now maybe you don’t' even do a standing cable bench press, but I'm going to make an
argument for why you should.
But I'm going to answer the question to this video, right here on the back.
That is: if you want complete chest development, if you want the best chest development that
you can get, then you'd better star incorporating all three.
There's a lot of reasons for that.
I'm going to break down each one for you now.
The reason is, each one of them not only combines variations on the strength curve, but they
also have certain benefits that are exclusive to that variation of the press.
So you want to make sure you're doing them all.
When it comes to the barbell bench press, I did a whole video on this over the weekend,
on how you should be training to improve your ability to get through your sticking point
because that is going to be the weak link.
If you haven't seen that video you can check that out over here.
The idea is that barbell bench presses always going to afford you the ability to load up
the weight a lot more than you'll ever be able to do on a dumbbell bench press.
You're simply not going to be able to split the weight between two dumbbells and manage
it as much as you'll be able to press on a consistent bar with weigh on both ends.
You're going to be able to press more that way.
Because of that, you're always going to increase your ability to improve your strength much
more on barbell than you are anything else.
At the same time, you're also going to learn how to recruit a lot more motor units because
of that.
There's a real place for increasing your overall strength with that exercise.
Then when the dumbbells come into play you realize there's a major benefit here.
Although they follow the same strength curve that the dumbbells allow you to that the bar
does not.
That is, it allows you to get more range of motion from the arm into this horizontal adduction.
This plane here that's required for complete chest contraction.
You know that with a barbell, even as I get to the top, I'm only about 60degrees away
from the horizontal here.
I'm not getting to midline.
If you want a complete contraction we're going to want to be able to cross over midline.
With a dumbbell we can't do that either because as we start to bring the dumbbells across
each other than that will start to fall down this way, so the gravity is actually helping
that to happen.
So there's a limit on how much chest adduction you can get.
Which brings us to the third exercise.
That is what I have my stuff setup for here.
That is a standing cable press.
Now I love this exercise and there's a reason why.
A few reasons why.
First of all it gets us on our feet.
As we train like athletes here, being on your feet is always a good thing.
If we can learn to press and exert strength in a pressing motion from our feet that's
great.
Think about offensive linemen.
Think about fighters being able to exert strength from this position.
It's more functional.
The second thing we have is, we have the ability to not just end at midline on the press.
We can actually come across and have continued tension.
Remember, the band – in this case, the cable – the resistance is always going to follow
the line of the cable itself.
So by having the cable setup to our sides here we're not just behind our bodies in getting
that resistance to press, but we're also getting that resistance across our body.
So we're able to manipulate the line of force a lot better when we do a cable press than
we are with, say, dumbbells or even a barbell.
So now we're out here and let's say we're getting close to failure and we want to finish
this off.
What can we do?
Well, we've got a built in cheat that's actually pretty damned safe.
I can actually get out here, and if I'm having a problem getting across my body at this point
with the hands extended any further, I can actually lean in just a little bit more.
So here, lean in a little bit more.
Lean in a little bit more.
So I'm actually getting my body to cheat my way out there to assist the press and get
a few extra forced reps.
Whereas, if I was doing a barbell bench, or even dumbbells, I might have to arch my low
back which could be a little bit more dangerous and not as healthy of a cheat.
So, you can see the fact of the matter is, each one provides benefits that the other
does not.
If you want to have a complete chest then you'd better have a complete program that
incorporates as many of these as possible.
If you want to make that dumbbell have a different strength curve than even the barbell version,
hold a pair of bands and anchor them down below you, and press those.
Now you've actually overlapped two strength curves.
The idea here is, without getting too complicated, that you want to understand the forces that
are applied to your body through different exercises.
There are so many different variations, but learning when to apply them all and how to
overlap them the right way is key to getting the most out of your workouts.
Guys, we put the science back in strength here.
I always say that, at ATHLEANX.
I'm happy to walk you through every single workout, day by day, and give you my exact
plan on how we do it over at ATHLEANX.com.
If you're interested in it, that's the ATHLEANX training system.
In the meantime, guys, I hope you found this video helpful.
Make sure, I don’t care which version you're doing here, I'm sure you have your favorite,
but try to your best to incorporate all of them if you want to max out the development
you're going to see in your chest.
All right, guys.
I'll be back here again in just a few days.
See you.