- Do your joints bother you
when you're doing your bench press sessions?
If so, you might not be warming up enough.
Today, I'm gonna take you through a four-part protocol
that'll help reduce your risk of injury,
and also make sure
you get the most out of your training session.
(intense music)
Hey guys, my name's Cameron.
Doctor of physical therapy
and strength and conditioning coach.
Today, I'm gonna be taking you through
my go-to warmup protocol
for your horizontal push day,
also known as your bench press day.
For the warmup,
I want you to remember four letters: R, A, M, P.
R, we're gonna start with raising our body temperature.
A, we're gonna activate the key muscles
and movement patterns.
M, we're gonna mobilize those joints.
And then P, we're gonna potentiate the nervous system
and get ramped up for our warmup.
So starting off your warmup,
you want to raise that body temperature
and start driving blood flow towards the working muscles.
Now, my favorite piece of equipment for this,
especially for bench press days,
is the air bike.
If you don't have access to the air bike,
you can still use a treadmill, an elliptical.
You can even do jumping jacks and jogging in place.
When Kale's on the air bike here,
what I'm gonna have him really focus on
is the pushing and the pulling.
So we really start getting the pushing muscles
and the pulling muscles working.
He's getting a lot of mobility
through his scapula, his shoulder blades,
and he starts mobilizing his ribs
and his thoracic spine as well.
Now, a lot of people get carried away in their warmups
and they start doing intervals,
or they just go really too hard.
Remember, today's warmup
is all about maximizing performance on the bench press.
So we don't want to exhaust ourself
and build up a lot of fatigue through our warmups.
So, real easy conversational pace here.
You can see Kale, he doesn't even have his mouth open.
He's breathing through his nose the whole time.
That's about the intensity you want.
Depending on how beat up your joints are,
you might go anywhere from five to 10 minutes
on this piece of equipment.
Next, we want to activate the key muscles
and movement patterns that we'll be doing
during today's bench press session.
What I'm gonna have Kale do
is some elevated full range of motion scapular pushups.
So that means
we really wanna focus on the front side of the body,
the chest, the shoulders, and the shoulder blades.
Big emphasis as he's coming down here
is to really go slow, develop that mind muscle connection,
get a good retraction of his shoulder blades.
As he comes to the top,
we wanna make sure that he's fully protracting
his shoulder blades
so we get full mobility through the shoulders,
through the shoulder blades,
and we really start developing that mind muscle connection
of those muscles we're gonna be using in today's workout.
Now, we don't want this to be fatiguing,
so once you feel like
you've established that mind-muscle connection,
you can stop.
Aim for two to three sets of five to 10 reps here.
We just drove a lot of blood flow
to those muscles we're gonna be using.
Now we're gonna get into those end ranges
and mobilize the shoulder,
specifically into extension in an internal rotation,
key movement patterns that we need for our bench press.
So I'm gonna have kale set up in an assisted dip here.
He's gonna keep a really big chest, head up.
He's gonna really open up his chest,
keep his shoulder blades back.
He's gonna lower himself down using the feet for assistance.
And I'm just gonna have him rock side to side, two each,
and then come back up, reset.
As he's doing this,
he's really given himself support through the legs.
We really just want to treat this
as a dynamic stretch in his end range.
If you can't get as low as Kale, that's fine.
Stay in your end range position,
and mobilize the chest and the shoulders.
Just like with the other exercises here,
we don't want these to be fatiguing.
Two to three sets of five repetitions is plenty.
So we finished raising our body temperature.
We activated those key muscles and movement patterns.
We mobilized our chest and our shoulders.
Now we're gonna potentiate our nervous system
with some hard, intense med ball chest passes.
And for this one again, we want it non-fatiguing.
So we're gonna go for two to three sets
of just three to five reps, as hard as you can.
So he's gonna come into that hinge position,
and he's gonna do hard chest passes
down into the ground here.
Give me three good ones.
And that's it.
We don't want this to be fatiguing.
We want to get a lot of power and get everything integrated,
so when get into our bench press,
we can move that bar fast and hard.
Now, getting into your actual bench pressing,
you wanna make sure that you're not just jumping
into your heaviest weight.
So if Kale's gonna be doing bench press sets at 135 pounds,
he's gonna also want to ramp that weight up.
So he is gonna do a few sets with just the bar.
And again, if he's training at 135 pounds,
he'll probably do another two to three sets at 95 pounds.
So you wanna make sure you're progressively
increasing that weight as well.
Remember, raise that body temperature,
activate those key movements and muscles,
mobilize those key movements and muscles,
and then potentiate that nervous system.
(upbeat music)