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2008/06/18, 11:44 AM
It's not necessarily that you are doing anything wrong, you just might be built so that your shoulders and arms are taking over the workload. You need to shift the load back onto the chest.
A few changes to make would be to start benching with a wider grip, and focus on squeezing the bar in, trying to pull your hands together throughout the entire rep. Obviously they won't go anywhere, but we are after the contraction that comes with the isometric here.
Make sure your incline is around 30 degrees or less. A high incline and the shoulders will quickly take the work load.
Also, try pre-fatigue techniques. For example, a set of incline flyes to failure (6-8 reps) followed immediately (don't bother changing the weight) by incline presses. Not only are you hitting the chest harder, but prefatiguing might help you to feel the chest working more, which may carryover to other exercises.
Finally, if you have access to a cambered bar, that would be perfect. Cambered bar 2 board press (1" below chest) is one thing that really develops the strength off the chest for me. If not, you can try partial reps, like doing 1 1/2 reps. That would be bring the bar down, come half way up, back down, and all the way up for 1 rep. Any partial movement like this emphasizing the bottom of the rep would work. Even benching with an extended pause (2-4 seconds) would be helpful.
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SQUAT MORE ~Jesse Marunde
Blood Guts Sweat Chalk
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