I cannot for the life of me get a bench press to get my chest to feel worked, usually my triceps feel burnt out to quick. What is the best way to force more of the work to be done by the chest? I am absolutley lost here any help will be great. grip distance, barbell or db, incline, flat or decline? thx
[quote]Get Stoked wrote:
I cannot for the life of me get a bench press to get my chest to feel worked, usually my triceps feel burnt out to quick. What is the best way to force more of the work to be done by the chest? I am absolutley lost here any help will be great. grip distance, barbell or db, incline, flat or decline? thx[/quote]
Generally a wider grip helps you work your pecs. Db’s should also solve the problem.
along with reallly concentrating on having your pecs contract.
in my experience flat bench sucks, i never felt my chest working in it, so i left the flat, now doing just incline and decline.
what u wanna try to do is doing partial rom, lower the bar an 1-1.5 inch from ur chest and push it up while concetrating in ur chest moving the weight…
do urself a favor, and try doing incline+decline in this way and see how u feel
goodluck
In addition to the previously mentioned solutions, here are a couple more:
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You could lower the bar like normal and then pause and hold it an inch off of your chest for about 3 seconds before pressing it back up. Do this for every rep. The deep range is where the chest is most active, so the chest will be doing a considerable amount of work during the pauses.
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You could integrate Electromyostimulation (EMS) treatments on your chest. After a few sessions, your body will begin to preferentially recruit the chest over the shoulders/triceps.
Either one will help. Do both if you want the most chest activation.
Flys?
[quote]Get Stoked wrote:
I cannot for the life of me get a bench press to get my chest to feel worked, usually my triceps feel burnt out to quick. What is the best way to force more of the work to be done by the chest? I am absolutley lost here any help will be great. grip distance, barbell or db, incline, flat or decline? thx[/quote]
Widen your grip and stop short of locking out the weight on each rep. sort of like a half rep with most of the load at the bottom and middle portion of the movement.
What do you bench? It might just be that your tris are so weak that the weight isn’t gonna stim your chest till you improve your tris and put some weight on.
Try performing flys in the bottom 1/3 of the movement as a pre-fatigue isolation. also, squeeze the bar tightly and push in on the bar as if you are trying to make it buckle. This is a static push and you will do this on each rep. CT has written about this previously.
Give feedback and let me know what you think.
Thanks for the help, I got some good stuff to focus on now.
[quote]tveddy wrote:
What do you bench? It might just be that your tris are so weak that the weight isn’t gonna stim your chest till you improve your tris and put some weight on.[/quote]
tveddy you hit the nail on the head with what I am convinced is at least a part of the problem as well. I am repping 160 right now, which sucks, but I’ll get it respectable with some more time. mindset+food+weight=kickass peace
If you’re working out with 160 I would guess that we figured out the problem. Keep it up, and when your tris catch up you’ll start to feel it in your chest. I can tire my tri’s and never touch my chest if I use light weight. It takes me a lot of weight to hit my chest good.
[quote]skidmark wrote:
Flys?[/quote]
So simple, yet so effective…
Bench is a compound movement, meaning your weak points will get exploited. It still hits your chest, but it will help build your tri’s for now until you get stronger. It also sounds like your repping too much. Tri’s are used so much that they tire quickly when going for reps in the bench.
If all you want is to build your chest and feel it then flys are where its at.