Bigger Leaner Stronger

by Michael Matthews

  At this point, the bar should be at knee height or just below.

  Don’t try to lower the bar to the ground. Doing so forces you to bend your knees even more, which reduces tension on the hamstrings and defeats the purpose of the exercise.

  Once you can’t go any lower without rounding your lower-back or further bending your knees, you’re ready to ascend.

  The Ascent

  Keeping your back and core tight, chest up, and knees slightly bent, drive your hips forward while pulling the bar straight up.

  Here’s how this movement looks:

  Once you’re standing tall, you’re ready for the next rep.

  Six Tips for Better Deadlifting

  Squeeze the bar as hard as you can.Try to crush it with your hands. If your knuckles aren’t white, you’re not squeezing hard enough.

  Boost your grip.Grip weakness not only makes the bar harder to hold onto, it shuts down the entire exercise. Once the bar starts rolling out of your hands, you’ll grind to a halt.

  Your grip will get stronger as you train, but chances are it’s going to fall behind the rest of your body in your deadlift and become a limiting factor.

  A common workaround is the “mixed grip,” which involves alternating one of your hands so it’s palm-up. This works well but also has downsides:

  It makes you tend to rotate your torso toward your palm-down hand, creating a load imbalance between the left and right sides of your body.

  It places more strain on the biceps of your palm-up arm.14

  I don’t know of any scientific data on how this affects the safety of the exercise, but I’ll say this: while biceps tears are rare, when they do happen, it’s often from the palm-up biceps during a heavy mixed-grip deadlift.

  You can take a simple precaution to make the mixed grip safer—alternate your palm-up hand in individual workouts or between them—but I’d rather you just use a double-overhand grip with straps instead.

  Many people shy away from straps because they look at them as a form of “cheating,” but this is silly. When used properly, straps allow you to safely pull more weight without any of the downsides of the mixed grip (and its excruciating cousin, the hook grip, which we won’t even discuss because of what it does to your thumbs).

  To use straps, pick up some simple lasso straps, pull without them until your grip starts to give out (your second or third hard set, for instance), and then use them to finish up. Straps can help with barbell and dumbbell rows, too.

  You can also include grip exercises in your routine at any point if you’re so inclined. My favorite is the plain ol’ barbell hold, which is exactly what it sounds like: holding onto a heavy barbell.

  Here’s how to do it:

  Using a squat rack, place the bar at your knees and load it with a weight you can hold for no more than 15 to 20 seconds.

  Do three sets of 15-to-20-second holds, resting for three minutes between each set.Do this once or twice per week at the end of workouts, separated by two to three days. You should see marked improvements within your first month or so.

  Last but not least, you can also use weightlifting chalk for an easy boost in your grip strength. Chalk helps by absorbing sweat and increasing the friction between your palms and the bar, and you can go with the liquid variety if you don’t want to make a mess or your gym doesn’t allow it.

  Use the right shoes.As with squatting, deadlifting in shoes that have foam or air cushions or gel fillings compromises your stability, power production, and form.

  Plus, most athletic shoes aren’t made for deadlifting and fall apart after just a few months of regular use. Deadlift in your squat shoes instead, in shoes with flat, hard soles, or in socks.

  Explode up from the floor.Don’t start the pull slowly. This makes it easier to get stuck. Instead, shoot your body up as quickly as you can by applying maximum force to the ground through your heels.

  Wear shin guards, knee-length socks, or knee sleeves.For most people, proper deadlifting form requires pulling the bar up their shins, which starts to tear them up as weights get heavy. (“Are his shins bleeding?”)

  You can wear pants or tights, but they’re going to get shredded over time.

  This is why I recommend protecting your shins while you deadlift with lightweight shin guards, knee-length socks, or a pair of knee sleeves that you wear below your knees.

  Use the Valsalva maneuver to control your breathing.As you learned, this helps stabilize your torso against heavy loads, which helps you safely move more weight. That’s why it’s useful for all compound exercises.

  In the case of the deadlift, you can breathe out after the bar clears the midthighs.

  The Barbell Bench Press

  The barbell bench press is one of the best all-around upper-body exercises you can do, training the pectorals, lats, shoulders, triceps, and even the legs to a slight degree.

  It’s simple enough, too. You lie on a bench with your feet on the floor, unrack the bar, lower it to the middle of your chest, and press it back up.

  There are many ways to do that, though, and unfortunately, many more wrong than right ways.

  For instance, you’ve probably seen at least some of the following at the gym:

  Failing to bring the bar all the way down to the chest

  Bringing the bar down to the collarbone

  Raising the butt off the bench

  Shrugging or rolling the shoulders at the top

  Flaring the elbows out away from the body

  And those are all major reasons why the bench press is often bad-mouthed by trainers and gymgoers as damaging to your back and shoulders.

  Like many exercises, when performed incorrectly and with too much weight, you can get hurt benching. Do it right, though, and your risk of injury is very low, allowing you to reap all its great benefits safely and healthily.

  A study conducted by scientists at the University of Salford is good evidence of this.15 Researchers found that as long as you follow two pieces of advice, your chances of injury during the bench press will be fairly low:

  Use a medium grip that’s just a little wider than shoulder-width apart.

  Keep your arms at about a 30-to-60-degree angle relative to your torso.

  I’ve found that about a 45-degree angle works best for me.

  Another reason the bench press has copped a bad rap is it’s one of the most popular exercises, especially among men.

  Many guys simply do too much benching with too much weight and usually with bad form, to boot, and this naturally results in more injuries over time when compared to exercises performed far less frequently with lighter loads.

  You’re not going to make any of these mistakes. You’re going to learn picture-perfect form and do a reasonable amount of bench pressing with a reasonable amount of weight, so your risk of injury will be about as low as possible.

  So, let’s learn how to bench.

  The Setup

  First, lie down on the bench and adjust yourself so your eyes are under the bar.

  Then, raise your chest up and tuck your shoulder blades down and squeeze them together. Think of pulling your shoulder blades into your back pockets. This should produce tightness in your upper-back.

  Next, grab the bar with your hands slightly wider than shoulder width apart, about 18 to 24 inches, depending on your build. If you go too narrow, you’ll shift the emphasis to the triceps instead of the pecs, and if you go too wide, you’ll reduce the range of motion and effectiveness of the exercise and increase the risk of irritating your shoulders.

  Hold the bar low in your hands, closer to your wrists than your fingers, and squeeze it as hard as you can. Your wrists should be bent just enough to allow the bar to settle into the base of your palm, but not folded back toward your head.

  Here’s how this looks:

 
A good way to check your grip width is to have a friend get behind you and check the position of your forearms at the bottom of the movement. You want your forearms to be as close to straight up-and-down vertical as possible, like this:

  As you can see, the position on the far left is too wide, the middle is too narrow, and the far right is correct.

  Don’t use a “thumbless” or “suicide” grip (as it’s aptly called), where your thumbs are next to your index fingers instead of wrapped around the bar.

  When you’re going heavy, this grip can make it surprisingly easy for the bar to slip out of your hands and crash down on your chest, or worse, your neck.

  Next, slightly arch your lower-back and plant your feet on the ground, directly under your knees, about shoulder width apart.

  You don’t want your back flat on the bench and you don’t want it so arched that your butt is floating above it. Instead, you want to maintain the natural arch that occurs when you push your chest out.

  The upper part of your leg should be parallel to the floor, and the lower part should be perpendicular (forming a 90-degree angle). This allows you to push through your heels as you ascend, creating a “leg drive” that’ll boost your strength.

  Then, unrack the bar by locking your elbows out and moving it off the hooks horizontally until it’s directly over your shoulders. Don’t try to bring the weight directly from the hooks to your chest, and don’t drop your chest and loosen your shoulder blades when unracking.

  Finally, with the bar in place, take a deep breath, push your knees apart, and squeeze the bar.

  You’re now ready to descend.

  The Descent

  The first thing you should know about the descent is how to tuck your elbows properly.

  Many people make the mistake of flaring them out (away from the body), which can cause a shoulder injury. A less common mistake is tucking your elbows too close to your torso, which robs you of stability and strength and can aggravate your elbows.

  Instead, you want your elbows to remain at a 30-to-60-degree angle relative to your torso throughout the entire movement. This protects your shoulders from injury and provides a stable, strong position to press from.

  Here’s a helpful visual:

  As you can see, in the bottommost position, the arms are at about a 20-degree angle relative to the torso, which is too close. The middle position is the ideal one—about 45 degrees—and the topmost is the undesirable 90 degrees.

  Keeping your elbows tucked and in place, lower the bar to the lower part of your chest, over your nipples. The bar should move in a straight line down, not toward your face or belly button.

  Once the bar has touched your chest (touched, not bounced off), you’re ready to ascend.

  The Ascent

  Although it’s called the bench press, it’s better to think of it as pushing rather than pressing.

  That is, picture that you’re pushing your torso away from the bar and into the bench instead of pressing the bar away from your body. This will help you maintain proper form and maximize power.

  Keeping your shoulder blades down and pinched, your elbows tucked, your lower-back slightly arched, your butt on the bench, and your feet on the floor, push against the bar to get it off your chest.

  You can also utilize the “leg drive” I mentioned earlier by pressing your heels into the floor and spreading your knees as you begin to push the bar. This transfers force up through the hips and back, which helps with form and increases the amount of power you can generate.

  The bar should move up in a slightly diagonal path, shifting toward and ending where you began—with it directly over your shoulders, where it’s most naturally balanced.

  Lock your elbows out at the top of the movement. Don’t keep them slightly bent.

  You’re now ready for the next rep.

  Once you’ve completed your final rep in a set, you’re ready to rack the bar. Don’t try to press the bar directly into the hooks because if you miss, it’s coming down on your face.

  Instead, finish your final rep with the bar directly over your shoulders and your elbows locked, and then move the bar horizontally into the uprights.

  The Close-Grip Bench Press

  As a part of Bigger Leaner Stronger, you’re going to do one variation of the barbell bench press: the close-grip bench press.

  As I mentioned earlier, when you narrow your grip on the bar, you place more of the load on the triceps. This is undesirable when you want to focus on your chest, but it’s a great way to focus on the triceps.

  At bottom, the close-grip bench press is just a regular bench press but with a narrower grip. Other than the grip modification, you should perform the close-grip bench press in exactly the same way as the regular bench press.

  For your grip, your hands should be slightly (a few inches) inside your shoulders. Some people place their hands just a few inches apart to try to maximize the triceps’ involvement, but this puts the shoulders and wrists in a potentially dangerous position.

  If your shoulders or wrists feel uncomfortable at the bottom of the movement (when the bar is touching your chest), simply widen your grip by about the width of a finger on each side and try again. Repeat until it’s comfortable.

  Six Tips for Better Bench Pressing

  Don’t watch the bar as it moves.Watching the bar will likely vary its angles of descent and ascent, which wastes energy.

  Instead, pick a spot on the ceiling to look at during the exercise and see the bar going down and up in relation to it. The goal is to bring the bar up to the same spot in each rep.

  Try to pull the bar down and apart.This is an old-school powerlifting tip that has been proven to work in scientific research. The idea is simple:

  Don’t start the descent by letting the bar drop toward your body.Instead, imagine you’re pulling the bar down toward your chest in a controlled manner. This will help you maintain the proper body position for generating maximum vertical force.16

  As you descend, try to bend the bar in half or “pull it apart.”This requires keeping your shoulder blades in their proper position (pulled in toward each other).

  Applying lateral force in this way also helps you generate more vertical force when you ascend, which is one of the reasons you can move more weight on the barbell bench press than dumbbell press.17 You can’t generate lateral force with dumbbells because they simply move away from each other.

  Keep your butt on the bench at all times.If your butt is lifting off the bench, the weight is probably too heavy.

  The three points of contact you should always maintain for optimal bench pressing are the upper-back (down on the bench), the butt (ditto), and the feet (always planted on the floor squarely beneath your knees).

  Don’t smash the back of your head into the bench.This can strain your neck. Your neck will naturally tighten while doing the exercise, but don’t forcefully push it down.

  When you’re lowering the weight, think about the ascent.Visualize the explosive second half of the exercise the entire time, and you’ll find it easier to control the descent, prevent bouncing, and even prepare your muscles for the stress of raising the bar.

  (This technique works well for all exercises, by the way.)

  Use the Valsalva maneuver to control your breathing.As I mentioned previously, I recommend you use the Valsalva maneuver during all your compound exercises, and that includes the bench press.

  In this case, you can breathe out after the bar is about four to six inches above your chest.

  •••

  Whew!

  That was a lot of information to digest, so feel free to reread this chapter and practice the basic movements of the exercises before continuing. Grab a broomstick if you have one handy to use as a bar!

  And if you want bonus points, put yourself on camera so you can ensure that what you think
you’re doing is actually what you’re doing.

  You should also make sure you download the free bonus material that comes with this book (www.biggerleanerstronger.com/bonus) because it provides links to in-depth video tutorials for each of these exercises.

  If you found anything about my explanations unclear, the videos will fill in the gaps.

  Key Takeaways

  The barbell squat, barbell deadlift, and barbell bench press have been the staples of strength and bodybuilding programs for over a century now because they involve the most whole-body muscle and safely allow for maximum progressive overload.One of your primary goals on my Bigger Leaner Stronger program is going to be improving your numbers on these key exercises.

  Bad form is why these three exercises have been so maligned over the years as harmful to your shoulders, back, and knees.

  While some people’s anatomies don’t play well with these exercises, when performed correctly, they’re perfectly safe and maybe even protective against joint pain.

  The barbell squat is one of the single best exercises for developing every major muscle group in your body.

  Not only is the squat safe for your knees—it may even improve knee health and reduce your risk of knee injury.

  The deadlift is a fantastic exercise for strengthening your entire back, including your lower-back, and doesn’t force an unnatural range of motion or put excess strain on your spine or joints.

  The Romanian deadlift is one of the single best exercises you can do for developing your hamstrings, glutes, spinal erectors, lats, and even forearms.

  The barbell bench press is one of the best all-around upper-body exercises you can do, training the pectorals, lats, shoulders, triceps, and even the legs to a slight degree.