Want to add more weight to your bench press? Sliding more plates onto the barbell and just letting it rip isn’t always the answer. In fact, in my 16 years of coaching, I’ve seen far too many guys miss solid reps—or worse, take a bar to the neck—by allowing their egos to get in the way.
Instead of piling the extra weight on immediately, train smarter: There are a bunch of tiny tweaks lifters can adopt to reap large rewards on the bench press. And I mean increasing both your size and the amount of weight you can push.
There are two types of bench press tweaks you can make: The first involves the setup, which guys notoriously flub. Most guys just plop on the bench like a dead fish, feet splayed out and putting no thought into their shoulder position. That’s a problem, since the bench press is more of a full-body movement than most people give it credit for. It’s the full-body tension and how you position yourself that will often dictate how much weight you’ll be able to hoist off your chest.
The second kind of bench press tweak involves how you’re actually executing the lift. Lots of times, guys aren’t paying attention to what they’re doing here, either—they’d just trying to rack it back up as soon as possible.
Thankfully, there are tiny tweaks you can make to both of these situations that will make your bench press more effective, and actually help you lift more weight safely.
How to bench press more weight: Get your feet underneath you
Leg drive is an underrated component to the bench press. If your feet are just kind of “there,” and you pay zero attention to where you place them, you’re missing out on some significant gains.
I’ve seen guys instantaneously add 25 to 50 pounds to their bench press with this tip alone. Here’s how to do it.
First, position your feet so that they’re directly underneath your hips. Don’t let our legs hang down, but move them behind you, so your feet will line up directly with your hips. Whether or not your heels are down or up will depend on a few factors—namely, your leg length, and hip flexor extensibility—but you want to make sure you’re able to “press” them into the ground. I’m team “heels down.”
Now slide your feet out to the sides of the bench, just a few inches. At this point, you should really feel tension in your hips and quads. Squeeze your glutes. This is your ideal leg setup, which will allow you to use leg drive in your lift—and, that, of course, will allow you to press more weight off your chest.
How to bench press more weight: Set your shoulder blades
Again, tension, or stability, is key here. If you want to possess the ability to bench press a Mack truck off your chest, you have to be aware of the position of your shoulder blades.
“Place your shoulder blades in your back pocket” is non-geek talk for making sure your shoulder blades are retracted (together) and depressed (down).
Not only will this make you more stable and able to support a heavy barbell in your hands, it will also help keep your shoulders healthy in the long run due to less wear and tear on the joints.
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