What s up guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athleanx.com. So today I want to talk to you about an exercise
that you're not doing right now or maybe not doing that can boost your bench press. And
guess what? It's a back exercise. So, right off the bat, you might be thinking a back exercise
to boost your bench. Well, yes, it's actually very common knowledge that the back and the chest
obviously opposing muscle groups. But what is not necessarily common knowledge is that they assist
each other in the performance of the bench press into giving you a better, safer bench press.
So, a while back, I had the one-legged monster, my friend Casey Mitchell in here and we covered
his best three accessory exercises for creating a monster bench. And then those exercises, the last
one was something he called a lean back pull down, clearly a back exercise. And the reason for doing
it was to create tightness in the back, both on the ascent and descent of the bar during the bench
press. But not all of us have necessarily a lap pull down machine, but we do have one exercise we
almost all can do, especially here with just our own body weight, that's going to have a lot of
carryover if you do it right. And when I'm talking about here is the setup here for an inverted row.
So, we program this exercise basically into every single Athlete-X program or almost every
single one of them. And it has a lot of benefits: number one, we're going to strengthen our back
and our posterior chain in our upper back, which is important just to create better shoulder
positioning and shoulder health long term. But more importantly, if you do this right,
it reinforces something important that's going to carry over to the bench press. So,
see if you can spot necessarily what I'm not doing when I do this the first time.
All right, you've probably done the exercise before you get up onto the bar like this,
you get up into this bridge position or you elevate your legs up onto something. But
this demonstration here, you just simply like this and you pull up.
Can you spot what I'm doing wrong here? Because this is the big difference when you want it to
have a big carryover to the bench press? All right, the issue is hollowing out versus
getting in that type position because if I hollow out, I might be able to do more repetitions here.
But that's not really what I'm focused on if I want to get this to carry over.
What I want to do is I want to get the chest out. And not just that, we have a stationary bar here
in a moving body and want to have my body be as active as I can to get up towards the bar.
In other words, reach for the bar with my chest. Okay. Don't stay in this hollowed out position and
get to there but reach for the bar. So, if I take this into more real speed, it looks like this.
And reaching. Reaching. Reaching all the while keeping my upper back tight and locked in. Let
me show you what happens here on the bench press. When we perform a bench, obviously,
shoulder pain can become an issue for some, and when it happens is in the lower half of
the bench press, right? From having shoulder instability, scapula instability, AC joint issues,
rotator cuff tendonitis, biceps tendinitis. A lot of things can become inflamed or bothersome
in the bottom half of the bench press because you're lacking
a lot of times the stability in the shoulder to do the exercise and the tightness of the back
during the exercise. So, when we do the bench press, in this case, there's a stable body
operating with a moving bar. But the body doesn't have to necessarily remain
completely stable, it can become an active participant in the exercise, just like it was on
inverted row by trying to meet the bar as opposed to just having the bar come down and meet you.
So, here's I'm talking about in this position here, if I just let the bar come down to meet me,
there's going to be a little bit more travel in terms of the range of motion of the bar,
which can become problematic for the people that have that shoulder issues in the bottom here. Or I
can actually actively continue to try to meet the bar. So as the bar comes down, I try to bring the
chest up like that, which is actively basically rowing the bar down. Okay. Again, bring the bar
down, actively reached for the bar, essentially rowing myself up. So, down in real speed, up.
See that subtle reach.
And what happens is, again, you're establishing the tight back from the beginning, you're getting
the chest up from the beginning. But as the bar comes down, you're actively trying to expand
the rib cage and get yourself a little bit higher, decreasing the range of motion even
by just a half an inch, which can help alleviate some of the problems there. But more importantly,
as the chest comes up, the shoulders go back. When the shoulders are back, the shoulder blades
are down, you have a safer position in the shoulders. Making it not just beneficial for
people that have issues or pain during the bench press, but ultimately leading to a bigger bench
press because you can remain tight. You're not allowing yourself to get loose at the bottom of
the bench like Casey and I were talking about in that video. If you haven't seen it, you know, make
sure you want to check out that video. In the meantime, found this one helpful.
Leave your comments and thumbs up below. Let me know so I can cover for you, and I will do that
in future video. And also make sure you click, Subscribe and turn on your Notifications so you
never miss a new video when we put one out. Lastly, for the science back in strength
and all of our programs, including exercises just like that for the right reasons. Make
sure you head to athleanx.com and check out our programs. All right guys I ll see you soon.