Feet Up Bench Press
Proper form is the key to getting the most out of your bench press exercise.
Feet up bench press. This places a lot of strain on your shoulders and can lead to painful rotator cuff injuries. The downsides of bench pressing with your feet up. A recent study found that lifting your feet and holding them at a 90 angle activates more muscle groups significantly more than with feet down.
After truly owning the three month position we progress to the dreaded benching with the feet up. You should have complete confidence in your own or your athlete s ability to stabilize and maintain joint centration at the spine hips and shoulders. As i alluded to earlier the feet up bench showed a dominant display of activation in literally every muscle group analyzed including pectoralis major triceps brachii external oblique and.
Try to keep your feet back toward your butt as far as you can while still keeping them flat on the ground. As i discussed in my common bench press mistakes article one of the biggest potential dangers when bench pressing is having your elbows flare out to the sides. The legs up bench press is performed like a standard bench press but rather than the feet placed on the floor the legs are bent and the feet are positioned flat on the bench.
The main benefit of putting the feet up on the bench is teaching lifters to maintain their upper back arch and shoulder blade position. Even though this might seem like a small difference the impact of having the feet off the floor while bench pressing can change the emphasis of the movement drastically. Many personal trainers and misinformed coaches advocate performing the bench press with your feet in the air because doing so flattens the lumbar lower spine and is thus deemed safer.
Although your foot placement isn t as crucial on the bench as it is for the deadlift or squat it s still important. At my gym we call this 3 month bench press. Your feet are the start of a strong base and are where you ll draw your power from.
After thoroughly warming up the subjects performed 8 reps of bench press with 60 of their 1 rm with either their feet on the ground or their feet elevated. They did a set of 8 reps using a 2 2 tempo both lowering and raising the bar to a count of 2. But does the increased efficiency come at a cost.