What's up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx.com. Should you fear the bench press? Are you in
danger of being the next one to suffer a pec tear? Look, I get it, with the videos that
have been going around lately, you have probably a good reason to be fearful. As a matter of fact,
if you haven't seen this one, this one's going to strike fear in pretty much anybody.
Look, there there's no doubt that is one of the most gruesome pec injuries I've ever seen.
But are you next in line to suffer the same fate? Now, what people have done sort of ad nauseum at
the moment is break that video down and try to reverse engineer what happened there as reason
for what you could do to correct or prevent that from happening to you. That's not the way you look
at this, guys. As a PT, I can tell you, you need to sort of look a little bit more globally at the
biomechanics of the exercise and see where you might have some shortcomings that could
potentially increase your risks a bit in terms of your performance of the exercise. So, I want
to make sure that I do this the right way, guys. I'm going to put the science back in strength and
break the exercise down for you segment by segment and see where you might be at risk and maybe
where you don't have to be concerned at all. All right, so the thing we should do is make sure
that we're all talking about the same muscle, because when we talk about the pecs, there's a
differentiation between the pec major and the pec minor. And you can see here the pec minor has a
different attachment point than the pec major does and is the big difference of why we almost never
see pec minor tears on the bench press and why we almost exclusively see pec major tears. Because
the major attaches to the arm, which is going to be able to move in space to create a greater
stretch that can reach his breaking point. So, speaking of that breaking point,
the pec can tear in one of four different places, either in the muscle belly itself or at something
called the musculotendinous junction, where the belly feeds into the tendon that then goes on
to attach it to the arm. Or it could be a little bit more ugly where it's going to detach itself
or avulse from the bone. And that can be either at the proximal attachment on the sternum or out here
in the humerus. It's actually the humoral avulsion that we saw in that video that I showed you.
Okay, so now who's most susceptible to this injury, because that's probably what you're
most concerned about, are you next? Well, there's two major categories of people that have to worry
even a little bit here. And that is, number one, you're an athlete. Particularly a rugby or
football player, a boxer or maybe a professional wrestler. Because there are stresses that can
happen spontaneously in those sports that place a great eccentric overload on your pecs that can
result in a tear. Ironically, almost all the tears that occur in these athletes happened in that mid
belly form. The other population of people that oftentimes will experience those tendon pec tears
or those avulsion type tears is a weightlifter. And if you're watching this channel, you're
likely lift in some ways. However, within that category, there's one exercise that stands above
all the others when it comes to creating that pec tear and that's the bench press. And we're talking
specifically about the barbell bench press. And when we look at it in relation to the dumbbell
bench press, there's almost a non-existent risk in the dumbbell bench press versus the barbell
bench press. The disproportionate number of pec tears that come from a barbell versus a dumbbell
actually for me holds the key difference as to why we were at increased risk from the exercise.
And that gives you the opportunity to make some adjustments accordingly.
To understand the key differences between the variations of that same exercise,
you want to understand what the pec does in the first place and more importantly,
how we can place it on stretch by going in opposite of those actions. And the first
thing I want you to do is take your arm out to the side and place the other hand here on your pec.
Now, I want you to pull your arm down to your side. That's called adduction, right? And when we
do that, we can feel the pec engage and contract. We can intensify that even more by not stopping
at our side but allowing it to actually cross midline. That's called horizontal adduction,
but it's still a form of adduction. The second main function of the pec is to actually internally
rotate the shoulder. So, if I take my arm and I dive it down and then take the thumb and try
to point it down towards the ground, you're going to feel the fibers of the chest engage even more.
The third function is to actually flex the shoulder more of a job of the upper pecs,
but still the pec major we're talking about bringing the shoulder up into this direction. So,
if we wanted to see where the chest becomes most at risk, then we want to see how we place it
on the greatest amount of stretch, and that is reversing those directions. So instead of going to
adduction, you want to go into abduction, getting the arm out away from our body instead of internal
rotation, we go external rotation. You can see that when we get into external rotation here,
you can feel an even greater stretch on the pecs. The last thing is not shoulder flexion,
but the opposite of that, which is shoulder extension, bringing the arm back behind the body.
You can see what I get to the bottom of the bench press, I'm putting myself in that maximum stress
position. Place a high load there, you're asking potentially for some trouble.
Well, not so fast. You see, because of the three motions I just talked about,
there's only one that actually can be altered and is altered between the two
different positions of the bench press, whether done with the barbell or dumbbell, and therefore
potentially subjecting you to a pec tear. It's not rotation. Because rotation and
altering rotation on the bench press, no matter what form you're doing, is non-negotiable. You
can't change the rotation of the shoulder and still do the same effective exercise. If I do
the bench press and you look at it from the side in order to be done right, the bar has to ride
over the forearm directly in line with the elbow, that is where your pressing power comes from. It's
also where your safe shoulder mechanics come from. Because if I allow the bar to drift backwards
into more external rotation, not only have I taken the bar away from the desired alignment over the
elbow, but I've placed additional stress on the front caps on the shoulder. We don't want that.
Equally as bad, we would allow the bar to drift forward, taking us into more internal rotation.
This is going to lead to a far greater likelihood that you're going to see an AC
joint injury than ever having to worry about a pec tear alone, because these biomechanics are
horrible for the shoulder. And again, nothing you would even consider, so it's a nonfactor
between the difference of the two versus the bench press. Which leads us to the extension component,
once again, not something we even consider here. As a matter of fact, on the dumbbell bench press,
you get more extension of the arm behind the body because you're not
being stopped by the bar on your chest. Add to that fact that most pec tears occur
in this zone right here. And that is the zone just a couple inches off of the chest
where you were nowhere near full extension at the shoulder. Again, fewer injuries on the
dumbbell bench press versus the barbell bench press extension is not the focal point.
Which brings us to abduction, that third component of chest function that I believe
is the determining factor of whether or not you're at greater risk of a pec tear when you're doing
the bench press. See, because if I grab a pair of dumbbells, you can see first and foremost that my
hands are very close together, much more narrow than we would finish the top of a bench press.
Hold onto that thought for a second because it matters. When I lower the dumbbells from there,
you can see that the elbows track pretty close to the side, generally at about a 45-degree angle
or so from the side. And Jesse even verifies that here with a goniometer measurement at the bottom.
Now, if I grab a barbell immediately, because I have to take a non-close grip bench press grip,
I'm going to be gripping much wider at the top than I would on the dumbbells. Like I said,
what that does, guys, is it takes that arm into greater abduction even from the start.
If I hold my hands right here as if I'm holding a pair of dumbbells, you can see that grabbing a
barbell takes my arm into greater abduction away from the body from here to here.
Now, from there, we drop down, even if you're properly tucking your elbows,
you're going to find in most people, they don't have the flexibility to get any closer than,
let's say, 60,65, 70 degrees of abduction, which is a significant increase over the 45 degrees
that you get on the dumbbell bench press. This alone adds just enough of a difference,
especially for those people that are lacking the mobility and the flexibility through the pecs in
the shoulder to handle the stresses, especially under high loads in the heavier loads that you
would experience on the barbell bench press versus a dumbbell bench press that can lead to that
sudden pec tear they've now become fearful of. So why are you at such risk here? Well,
a couple of things are happening. Number one, the activity of the pecs is greatest during the press
in this area. We know that right off of the chest, the shoulders contribute the most.
Then it sort of shifts a bit more towards the chest, doing the majority of the work. And then it
sort of finishes off with the triceps, helping you up through the lockout. If we apply the fact that
we know that eccentric stresses are even greater than concentric stresses, most pec tears occur on
the way down. And again, in this red zone where the packs are controlling the most of the work
and the tension through them is highest. Now, if that tension exceeds what the tendons
can handle, they can snap. Add into the fact that anyone abusing anabolic steroids
has generally weakened tendons and they are much more likely to give in and be able to be exceeded
by the force that can be generated through the stronger pecs, especially in this risk area.
So now is the recommendation they have to stop barbell bench pressing in order to avoid the
pec tear? No, not at all. As a matter of fact, again, the risk is very, very low for most people,
especially those that are not abusing anabolic steroids. But I will tell you this,
you should try to adapt your chest to the stresses that it's going to have to face in a barbell bench
press that are unique to that variation versus dumbbell bench press. We could actually use
different variations of the exercise to help our body to accommodate to the stresses is better.
First thing we could do is a pause bench. No, not the kind done traditionally with the pause
occurring at the level of the chest. I'm saying done on netcentric when the stresses of the chest
are at their greatest and that area of the dissent that they're at their greatest and that is two to
three inches above the chest. Now, of course, you can take this even further by incorporating
the traditional pause to the chest for a double pause. Take it down on the center,
hold for a second in that hot zone, two to three inches above the chest, come down to the chest,
hold for a second and then explode back up to the top. Now, one of my favorite ways to do this is
actually to get out of the bench press entirely and take it to the floor in a weighted to push
up. And what's unique here is we're actually taking it from an open chain exercise to a closed
chain exercise. And that has different kinematics that make the exercise more safe and has better
stability provided to you when you perform it so you can explore wider hand positions on the floor
to get your body used to the stresses that they're going to feel in the best press.
The fact is, all of these things can help you to accommodate to the stresses so you don't have to
forgo the exercise just because you're trying to avoid a pec tear. All right, guys, I hope
you found the video helpful. If you're looking for programs where the science is in everything we do,
because as you see here, the science matters. You can find them all over at Athleanx.com.
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