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ASSISTANCE MOVEMENTS FOR THE BENCHPRESS

 There is no doubt about it.  If you want to increase the amount of weight you can handle on the bench, you need to spend a substantial amount of time doing the bench press, or a variation of the bench movement.  But if you want to reach your maximum potential and stay injury free, you must also do assistance exercises for the muscles utilized while bench pressing.

 Often times, a lifter will have a dominantly strong prime mover. Your prime movers in the bench press are the lats, pecs, front delts, and the triceps.  Many times the lifter will rely on their dominantly strong muscles to overcome for their weak points.  This usually results in bad form.  One example would be when the bar drifts back over the face in an arched pathway.  People bench with an arched bar pathway because they have weak lats and triceps.  They overcompensate by putting extra load on the front delts.  They can do all the sets of the bench press exercise that they can, but their form will never improve.  They will continue to let the bar drift back over the face.  The more sets that they let this happen, the worse their muscle imbalance becomes, because more time is spent using the delts, and less time is used stressing the triceps and lats.  This means that if we want to improve form, we need to do so by strengthening the muscles utilized in the bench press in the right proportions.  As time goes by, the amount of assistance that we do for a particular muscle will change.  Over time, muscles that were a weak point may become a strong point and vice versa.  The amount of assistance for each muscle needs to be adjusted on a constant basis so that the weaker muscles are getting the majority of time spent doing extra exercises.

            Some assistance needs to be performed to prevent injury.  Most importantly, rotator cuff exercises need to be done.  This is something that is severely neglected even by many of the top bench pressers.  The rotator cuff muscles are not necessarily strengthened while bench pressing.  If the bar gets out of the correct bar path, you could tweak a rotator cuff muscle.  This often occurs if the bar drifts towards the abs.  The rotator cuffs need to be extra strong in case this happens.  Assistance work for the wrists and forearms is also very important.  Once again, your wrists and forearms are not necessarily strengthened while performing the bench press, but they need to be strong to handle the stresses of holding a heavily loaded barbell in the hands. 

Dave Geistlinger