I get the question all the time. You know. The one. How much do you bench? It’s a fact—everyone wants a bigger bench. Most people I know who lift, especially athletes, want to have a strong bench press.
I can remember in high school how weak my bench was. The crazy thing was I was benching something like 3–4 times a week! Little did I know, this had a reverse effect on my bench. Another thing I really didn’t know was that doing other exercises other than benching would actually increase my bench. Who knew?
4. Reclined rows Another pulling exercise? Yep. Pulls do your bench good. Reclined rows or horizontal rows help balance out your pulling and pressing strength. You don’t want to be unbalanced. Again, any type of rowing movement will help you build up a nice solid “canoe.” You must have strength in your back to have a big bench. Have you ever seen a 405-lb bencher with a small back? I don’t think so. Row! 5. Ring dips These are by far one of my favorite exercises. I love dips. These babies alone will add slabs of muscle and strength to your whole upper body. When you properly progress to these, you’ll have a set of solid shoulders and triceps. First of all, you don’t want to have weak shoulders. This will keep you from a big bench. Think of your shoulders as the base of the pillars holding up your roof. When you have a heavy barbell across your chest, you don’t want this base to be weak. Weak base = weak pillars. Dips are important for creating lots of strength, stability, and mobility in your shoulders and will also increase overall triceps strength, which you’ll find out is also important for your bench. Start out with regular dips on a bar. After you can knock out 15–20 repetitions, hit up some rings to increase the difficulty. From there, add weight with chains around your neck. 6. Body weight skull crushers These are a lost art, and I have yet to see anyone else in my life do these other than in magazines. It’s a shame because not only do body weight skull crushers work the heck out of your triceps, but you work you abs as well. What’s a big bench without some nice strong abs, right? Body weight skull crushers can be done in many different ways. I started out by using a Smith machine (yes, the Smith machine does have some use). I lowered the bar down to about hip height. Then I grabbed the bar with a regular grip facing down and performed a free standing skull crusher. The key to these is to keep your elbows in and tight. These types of skull crushers are more difficult because your abs are working extremely hard and most people lack this basic body weight strength to skull crush close to half their body weight. Depending on your angle, you can add difficulty the closer to parallel to the ground you are. If you’re doing these for the first time, do them at a higher angle. Start backing your feet away once you start to increase strength in your triceps and abs. You’ll need both. Body weight skull crushers are an excellent movement, especially for isolating the triceps. If you didn’t know, the triceps are responsible for the final press of your bench press. Your triceps are what extends your arms, and if you have weak triceps, you will hit a wall in the middle of your press. Have you ever got stuck halfway up on a bench press? You have weak triceps and you need to start adding in body weight skull crushers. Just take my word for it. 7. Hand walking We’re ending with a highly primitive way of adding strength to your upper body—hand walking. It’s funny—I had an old client who really wanted to add both strength and mass to his chest. In the first few weeks of his program, we did tons of hand walking. This not only helped build stamina in his upper body, shoulders, abs, and back, but it added tons of useful strength as well. In just a few short weeks, his bench press numbers increased and we didn’t even bench in that timeframe. Hand walking is super functional, and when added into your program like plyometric push-ups, it will help turn on lots of “dormant” muscles that are waiting to be awakened! You can do partner “wheel barrow walks” or my new favorite power wheel walks. Either way works, but you have to add them into your routine if you want to increase you numbers! So there you have it. Add these different variations of movements into your program to help blow your bench up! Don’t go too crazy! I would use these as “supplemental” movements meaning use them in conjunction with other weighted exercises that you should currently be doing anyway such as barbell bench presses, dumbbell presses, rows, military presses, and deadlifts. When you add these in with you current movements, you’ll have a lethal program!
