Touching Chest Bench Press

The touch point on the bench press is a cue a signal that you are benching with a consistent or inconsistent form.

Touching chest bench press. By touching the bar to your chest you ensure a full range of. This keeps the athlete from collapsing and over stretching in the bottom. Touching the chest ensures the lifter is executing the bench press using a full range of motion.

In addition the elbows and triceps end up touching the bench just at the right stopping point similar to a floor press. This would include having the barbell travel in different bar paths as you cycle through multiple reps or having the barbell bounce off your chest because you can t decelerate the weight properly. The lifter will bring the weight down pause the barbell on their chest and then drive the weight back up.

You can feel changes from rep to rep and the pressure of the bar on your chest gives you something to aim for at the bottom. This exercise works your chest muscles shoulders and triceps. This means that you can t claim it when a fellow gym rat asks so how much ya bench.

This will be a helpful cue for lifters who can t control the barbell during the eccentric phase of the movement. The dumbbell chest press closely mimics the bench press the favorite exercise among serious weightlifters everywhere. The barbell should lightly touch the middle of your chest when performing the barbell flat bench press.

In contrast the paused bench press is used by powerlifters because of the bench press rules that they will face in competition. Touching the bench press high on the chest is in my personal opinion one of the least favorable options for three reasons. Any rep that doesn t both touch your chest and end with complete unassisted lockout is not a rep.

First it puts you in a weaker position to perform the bench press as you will limit the triceps brachii to contribute to the push eccentric part of the movement. To touch or not to touch. Use this bench press cue as you bring the barbell down to your chest.

If you have shoulder elbow or lower back problems limit the range of motion.