Hello, this is Lee Hayward here from LeeHayward.com. And I am in the process of posting up a video clip of the bench press workout that I did the other day. Like I mentioned in my last video that I posted, I am in the process of doing a power-lifting style training program. So what I am doing now, over the next few months I want to get my size, and my strength back up again, and then later in the spring or early summer or around that time, I am going to switch gears and focus in on dieting down for a body-building competition.
So without further ado, I will take you now and I'll show you the bench press workout. The first exercise of the workout is the Barbell bench press. Now these are done for eight sets of three reps, and done in an explosive fashion. So we will only use about 50% of your one rep max, but again really focus on powerful and fast with the weight. So rather than the slow and controlled type of form that most bodybuilding type workouts are based around, in a power lifting workout, in the dynamic day, we focus on speed and explosiveness.
One thing I am sure you have noticed is the set up that I used. Now this isn't your typical bench press set that you will see most people doing in the gym. So what I have done is I have slowed the clip down so that you can get a better view of how I set up for the bench press. The first thing I do is I place my feet back far behind me so that I can get good leg drive without my butt lifting off the bench. Now the main thing here is to pull your shoulder blades back together behind you and plant them firmly into the bench pad while expanding your chest and ribcage.
This will place you in a stronger position to bench and it will also minimize shoulder rotation and thus reduce your risk of a shoulder injury. Now I know a lot of people out there are totally against arching your back, but the fact is your back is actually in its strongest position when it's arched and the muscles are contracted.
Now I am going to move on and do some work for the triceps. This exercise here is the rolling dumbbell extension, and it's kind of like a combination of a dumbbell bench press and a lying tricep extension. As you can see here I am lowering the dumbbells down and as they come down, I let them roll back towards my head and this really stretches out the triceps good, and it allows you to handle a bit more weight than you could if you were doing a strict lying tricep extension. This is a great exercise for building up the triceps to really help block out heavy bench press.
Now I am going to move on and do some shoulder work. Here in the video clip I am doing side lateral raises. And this is important to do because you want to keep the shoulders in proportion. When you are doing a lot of heavy bench training, what happens is your front delts take a lot of the stress but you don't get much work on the side delts and the rear delts. So it's important to include some supplemental exercises in your workouts to help keep things in proportion, and to balance it out.
So now here I am moving on to the reverse dumbbell flies and this is a great exercise for the rear delts and the upper back, and again it's like I say you want to build up your upper back because it will keep things in proportion and it will also give you a bigger base that you can actually lay your-- when you plant your upper back in the bench, and it will help you get more drive when you start your bench press.
For more bench press training tips, download your copy of the BlastYourBench program at www.blastyourbench.com
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services