Everyone can agree that cut abs and big arms look great. But in the gym nothing impresses the way doing heavy bench presses does. There's just something about pushing massive weight off chest that turns heads. Here's the fastest way to add extra plates to your bench routine.
The bench press is a classic compound exercise. A compound move is defined as any exercise that involves more than one muscle. When you bench the primary muscles worked are the pectoral muscles, also known as your "pecs". But at the same time you also work the front deltoid, triceps and most of the muscles of the back. If you do a lot of benching all of these muscles should be fairly developed already so isolating can and will help, but there is one move that I have found to accelerate my max bench results more than any other.
Weighted dips, but with a twist.
This exercise assumes that you can do at least a couple full body weight dips on a dip station. If you are developed enough to add chained weight around your waist even better, but it's not necessary. When your doing dips the more upright your body position the more triceps work you are doing. As you lean forward it engages your chest. The further forward you lean, the more your chest works. We all know that the triceps is a short muscle that tires very quickly and completely (meaning when your tri fails, it fails, there is no squeezing a couple more reps). So here's the actual move.
Start your dips in a very straight, upright position. As you begin to tire, but before failing, start leaning forward and keep going. The closer you get to failing the further forward you should lean. By adjusting your body position you will isolate (in a manner of speaking) your tries in the beginning, with a lot more weight than doing it any other way, and gradually move into a "semi-push up" that works more chest and front delt. If your shoulders can handle the strain, as you lean forward the deeper you can dip the better. Be careful here though, this is really hard on the shoulder joint. Do as many sets and reps as you can.
By incorporating this move into your chest and/or triceps routine, you will find after a couple workouts that your flat bench will increase. Stop the "Dip with a Twist" move, work at the new bench number for a while, and then come back to it again in a couple sessions. You will almost always see a boost in bench with this pattern.
Posted in: