Hannah Altman – Rowing to Bench-Press Success

Jan Hannah Altman, Let's Hear From The Experts ... December 30, 2019December 30, 2019Bench Press, Lats

Hannah Altman – Rowing to Bench-Press Success

The latissimus dorsi (lats) is the primary muscle that is used for the pulling motion, such as in rows. It acts mainly as a shoulder extender but plays important secondary functions as an internal rotator, adductor, and horizontal extender.

Though these muscles are not the most important part of a bench, they do lay the foundation for a strong bench.

When you are bench-pressing you are in internal rotation. Along with this, you will be in a position of internal rotation, shoulder flexion, shoulder abduction, and horizontal flexion. Strong lats are important when it comes to raw bench particularly for lightweight female lifters.

This is because strong lats will allow you to press against the bench to help grind the bar back up. This being said, lats are even more important when it comes to equipped benching, which we will touch upon another time.

A successful bench press means being able to control the eccentric phase of the bench, which is essentially rowing the bar into the chest.

This is the result of being able to control the movement in your upper back. Being unable to do so is what often keeps a lifter’s bench from progressing, as you need to be able to control this motion. As well, you can’t allow this motion to be so slow that it leaves you fatigued; leaving you unable to press the bar back up.

What Are The Main Muscles Used In The Bench-Press?

With regards to bench-press, the main muscles you will be using are the agonists located in the chest, triceps, and shoulders. When we think about the bench-press these are the muscle groups we often want to focus on building. We often forget about the antagonist which, in bench, is primarily in the upper back and the lats. These are responsible for the downward movement (row) that happens during the bench-press action.

To summarize, using the back to help row the bar into your chest will mean that the body will produce an effect like a spring-loaded device. This is why equip bench, once one learns how to control it, is stronger than raw bench. And, this is because the muscles can throw the weight back up as soon as the muscles release into the press phase. This allows the agonist muscles to unload maximal amounts of torque.

What Accessory Exercises Build A Better Bench-Press?

Accessory exercises that build lats are crucial to bench-press past a certain point. Rows are one of the best exercises you can do for your lats. And, when it comes to rows, the stricter the better. Being stricter means that you can’t use the momentum from the body to cheat the movement. For example, one can do pull-ups and chin-ups with no cross fit movements. If those are a bit of a challenge you can use a band for assistance or ask your training partner to help you. You can also jump into them and control them down etc. One can also do landmine rows and lat pulldowns to name a few other appropriate exercises. Another key to success rests with warming up the lats with a band to get them firing before you start training.

Remember, the bench-press is more than the press. There are two sides to all stories. Remember the row in your bench, it is not just all about the press.

Next year we will look at the press in bench-press and trust me when I say, it is all about the chest.

About the Author:

Hannah Altman is a qualified exercise scientist BHS| BCOM | MPHIL and Strength Coach Fitrec, a Pilates instructor and Nutrition Coach PN1 Elemental L2, focusing on injury prevention for strength athletes. She is currently studying for her doctorate at Queensland University of Technology.

She holds multiple junior bench-press records, the current one being 95kg and has a top bench-press of 103kg at 69kg body weight. She is ranked in the top 20 in Australia based on Wilks in all three lifts and in Bench-Press.

She is currently coaches out of Iron Underground in Albion, Brisbane and online.

To book a complementary session; to get a 10% discount for rehab, prehab or just performance and to increase your bench, choose from the options below. Contact Hannah on 0452285271.

Hannah Altman – How To Drive Through Your Shoulders In Bench Press

Jan Hannah Altman, Let's Hear From The Experts ... November 23, 2019November 23, 2019Bench Press, Lats

Hannah Altman – How To Drive Through Your Shoulders In Bench Press

Think About Those Lats!

In this article we are going to focus on how we can use the bench to create torque and drive that bench PB, moving on from last article’s focus on the arch.

Your feet should be positioned wherever they feel most comfortable when you are benching but ensuring that they are not going to slip and that they are providing a stable base to keep your bum on the bench. The goal of your foot position is that it is going to allow you to generate power from your legs to your upper back. That’s where the power comes from.

As you get more and more elite with bench-press you start to notice that everything makes a difference down to the shirt that you are wearing. If you wear a shirt that does not have good grip it is easy to slip out of your arch. In this case, your shoulders will no longer be even on the bench and you will no longer be in a position to drive into the bench with your upper back.

Some people think that bench is all chest and triceps but a major component is back strength wrist stability, core strength, ankle, thoracic and hip flexibility. We are going to focus on what the lats are doing during the bench press. This muscle can actually make or break your bench press and, surprise, this muscle is in your back.

The latissimus dorsi muscles, otherwise known in gym bro language as lats, are the large v-shaped muscles that connect your arms to your vertebral column. This is a series of approximately 33 bones called vertebrae, which are separated by intervertebral discs. The column can be divided into five different regions: the cervical, thoracic, lumber, sacrum and coccyx. Each of these regions is characterised by a different vertebral structure. They help protect and stabilize your spine, while providing shoulder and back strength. Your lats also help with shoulder and arm movement and support good posture.

If boosting your numbers on the bench is your goal, this requires building a bigger back. This will carry over to your other lifts.

When using your back the best way to think about things is to bench on your shoulders. But the key is to not lose your shoulder positioning on the bench when you unrack the bar. Once you have the bar in your hands the best thing to do is think about trying to break the bar. The goal is to create power and torque in the shoulder joints. This comes from actively engaging your lat. As you press, you should feel your back muscles tightening and this will help you get through those nasty sticking points when you’re trying to get that PB and help prevent any shoulder injuries. This will also put you in a stable position on the bench, which should help ensure that you are even and won’t move.

Next time we will be looking at how to build those lats for a bigger bench-press.

A recommendation for a good bench shirt is SBD or Iron Underground shirts: They stick to the bench and are approved by World Powerlifting.

About the Author:

She is currently coaches out of Iron Underground in Albion, Brisbane and online.

To book a complementary session; to get a 10% discount for rehab, prehab or just performance and to increase your bench, choose from the options below. Contact Hannah on 0452285271.

Hannah Altman – How does the bench press work?

Jan Hannah Altman, Let's Hear From The Experts ... November 6, 2019November 23, 2019Bench Press

Hannah Altman – How Does The Bench Press Work?

Let’s talk bench press – arch and bench contact.

For women, the bench-press is arguably one of the hardest lifts to progress. In this next series of articles, coming out every two weeks for Powerlifting4women, we will be discussing how to break through the bench and avoid injury.

A major point to consider with bench-press is that it is an extraordinarily technical lift and there is not a lot of room for technical breakdown if you want to get three white lights in competition.

The first thing to keep in mind with regards to bench-press is the set-up.

You need to set up to ensure your hands are in the right position for your body type and for how you’ll need to build your bench strength. This is because bench-strength is built in the accessory work that you do (December article).

Once you grip the bar you need to ensure that your feet are set so you have leg drive. You must have a decent arch such that your bum is in contact with the bench. You need to ensure that your arms are fully extended and that you don’t lose your arch when you unrack the bar because the bigger the arch the less the bar needs to travel.

Not losing that arch can come down to your breathing technique as one of many factors. Once you start the bench you lower the bar through the eccentric (downward phase) movement, then you need to be able to hold that stopping position at the bottom long enough to get a press command from the referee.

The concentric (upward phase) part is where things often go wrong in the bench press. You need to ensure your feet don’t move, your bum stays on the bench, the bar only moves in one direction (meaning that if you get stuck and the weight pushes you down you are finished). Also, you need to try and avoid hitting the rack because that can throw off your bar path and you won’t be able to lock it out. Oh, and don’t beat your rack command.

So, to summarize, there are heaps of components that go into doing a proper bench-press and if your technique is off you are likely to slip up and will end up getting a red light.

One of the biggest mistakes that lifters make is that they don’t train variation in their lifts. Every lifter has a sticking point and different variations of the bench-press can target those weak points so that you don’t fail your bench-press at the same point in the lift.

In this article, I’m going to focus on what, in my opinion, is the most important part of the female bench-press and how to avoid one of the biggest red light makers in bench. This refers to an Instragram post from the 23^rd of August 2019 on HannahAltman ES.

The reason why we arch our back is to minimize the distance that the bar has to travel (shorter bar path). Though the one little down side of the arch is that the bigger the arch is higher the risk of lifting your bum of the bench.

This being said, there is a lot of false information out there claiming that arching one’s back for females will cause lifetime back injury.

What many don’t take into consideration is the fact that lumber and thoracic vertebrae and inter-vertebral discs are actually safest in a lordodic position, which is the fancy term for being arched. The main reason for this is that discs tend to herniate posteriorly due to the presence of an incredibly robust anterior longitudinal ligament in front of the spine.

Even if the disc somehow manages to herniate anteriorly, the resultant herniation would likely be asymptomatic as the spinal nerves are behind the inter-vertebral discs, not in front of them. Arching the lower and mid back does not push the limit-range of motion of the cervical spine in the neck, so there is less concern of the probability of injuring the neck with arched benching.

If your form is correct, arched benching (with a retraction of the scapulae) allows a greater use of the lower fibres of the chest muscles. Not only is this pushing angle likely safer for the glenohumeral joint of the shoulder, it’s also conducive to the great use of the larger mass of lower fibres (vs. upper fibres) of the pectoralis. This creates a more forceful lift without sacrificing as much safety as a flat pressing position might (August 24^th 2019).

This being said, an increasingly common que used by coaches is to bench with one’s legs. The issue then becomes that when we do this we lift our bum off the bench, causing one to get three red lights. We end up lifting our bum, using this approach because when we drive through our legs we initiate the force towards the ceiling, which pulls our bums up.

However, if we focus on driving our shoulder into the bench, the force goes into driving the bar back up which is more likely to end in more bar speed and no red lights.

There is heap more that goes into the bench-press. Our next article will be on how to use the bench to generate more force and to minimise shoulder injuries.

About the Author:

She is currently coaches out of Iron Underground in Albion, Brisbane and online.

To book a complementary session; to get a 10% discount for rehab, prehab or just performance and to increase your bench, choose from the options below. Contact Hannah on 0452285271.