3 Exercises that Will Increase Your Bench Press

Improving overall body strength can be beneficial when trying to increase your bench press. Developing upper body strength will always play a huge role but other areas like strong legs and core are just as critical. There are many exercises that you can try that will help your cause. The following three exercises will enable you to lift more weight when it comes to bench press.

Military Press

Strong, powerful shoulders, with out a doubt, have much value when it comes to executing proper bench press technique. This is because having strong shoulder stabilizers can help at various points during the tracking pattern required during bench press. This is especially so when maintaining a load overhead while in a supine position. Another important area regarding the shoulder is the anterior deltoid, which comes into play when you press the bar off your chest. Adding both barbell and dumbbell military press variations into your workouts will help increase your bench press.

Medicine Ball Ab Exercises

Another area that is important to develop and maintain strength is your core. There are 29 different muscles that make up the core. A strong core is helpful when it comes to maintaining good posture. A strong core is vital for any sport-specific movement and it’s also important when executing a chest press exercise. A great way to get strong, ripped abs is to incorporate the use of a medicine ball. Like with anything else, begin with a light medicine ball before progressing to a heavier ball once you master the technique. A medicine ball generates speed through various ranges of motion like spinal rotation and flexion. During exercises like medicine ball Russian twists or overhead slams.

A strong, functional core can help generate more power through the upper and lower body. When you perform a bench press exercise, it’s prudent to brace your body as you remove the weight off the rack and during the movement. A strong core, via medicine ball training, will improve the bracing posture needed to increase your bench press.

Barbell Squat to Increase Your Bench Press

When you perform a bench press, remember to maintain four points of contact at all time. This includes head, shoulder and back in contact with the bench and feet flat on the floor. Building strength in your legs and hips will help you to “push” your feet and legs into the floor, and as a result, you end up pressing more weight. One of the best ways to develop leg strength is with a great compound movement, the barbell squat.

Try Combination Movements

If you lack time to add these exercises into your training routine, you can combine some of the movements into one to get similar effects. An example of a combination movement would be a squat to overhead throw, performed with a heavy medicine ball. This will target your legs, core and shoulders all in one efficient, compound movement. You can try throwing the medicine ball overhead against a wall or just into the air and repeat.

Use Jefit to Record & Track These Exercises and More

Try Jefit app, named best app for 2020 and 2021 by PC Magazine, Men’s Health, The Manual and the Greatist. The app comes equipped with a customizable workout planner and training log. The app also has ability to track data, offer audio cues, and has a feature to share workouts with friends. Take advantage of Jefit’s exercise database for your strength workouts. Visit our members-only Facebook group. Connect with like-minded people, share tips, and advice to help get closer to reaching your fitness goals. Try one of the new interval-based workouts and add it to your weekly training schedule. Stay strong with Jefit as you live your fitness lifestyle.

Here Are The Most Often Selected Exercises For Jefit

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The award-winning Jefit app, was recently named best app for 2021 by Men’s Health, PC Magazine and others. The workout planning & tracking app includes a database of more than 1350 exercises. Of all the exercises featured on the app, Jefit members (more than 9 million), continue to choose three exercises more often than any others.

The most often selected Jefit exercises are:

1. Barbell Bench Press

2. Barbell Bicep Curl

3. Wide Grip Lat Pull-Down

Let’s take a look at each one of these. Two of the three are multi-joint exercises (bench press and lat pull-down) and none surprisingly work the lower body. Only two leg exercises actually made our top ten list. The most often used exercises, if you were interested, are barbell deadlift followed by barbell squat.

Most Often Used Jefit Exercise – Barbell Bench Press

No surprise here that bench press is the most often used Jefit exercise. It has always been a long time staple in bodybuilding, traditional and sport-specific workout programs. Considered an ideal exercise because it develops upper body strength and power. It also helps pack on upper body muscle mass while targeting multiple muscle groups. As a result, it’s probably one of the best multi-joint exercises you can do. Not to mention, it’s a fun exercise to perform and you can easily track your progress in the Jefit app via 1-RM. Finally, don’t you always feels like you get an efficient upper body workout after completing a handful of sets of bench press?

Muscle Groups Worked: Chest, Shoulders, Back & Arms

EMG Activity: See the following study published in the Journal Human Kinetics (2017).

Barbell Bicep Curl

A fan favorite of just about everyone. Dumbbell curls have there place but a barbell bicep curl is terrific for adding size to the biceps. An old favorite of mine is barbell bicep curl 21’s. Even though barbell biceps curl is a favorite of gym-goers who use Jefit, check out the research paper (below. The study looked at the differences in EMG activity when using a barbell and an EZ curl bar.

Muscle Group Worked: Arms

EMG Activity: Read this study on differences between tradition barbel curl and EZ bar

Wide Grip Lat Pull-Down

This wide grip lat pull-down is a great exercise to add to any program for overall back development. This is one of those exercises that can stress different aspects of the back and arms depending on hand placement. A wide grip recruits more of your back muscles and a close grip pulldown emphasizes the forearm muscles. Considered a great compound or multi-joint, upper-body strength movement, because it targets the back, chest, shoulders, and arms.

Depending on who you read, an over hand grip with hands slightly wider than shoulder-width works best. Lean back slightly, pulling the bar down towards the chest, does a good job activating the biggest back muscle, the latissimus dorsi.

Muscle Groups Worked: Back & Arms

EMG Activity: See this paper that looked at muscle activity of three variations of lat pull-down. Here is a second paper published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research (2014) on various hand positions during lat pull-down.

Try adding one or all three of these exercises into your next strength training program that you build using the Jefit app and let us know how it goes.

Try Jefit App

The award-winning Jefit app, was named best app for 2021 by PC Magazine and Men’s Health. It comes equipped with a customizable workout planner, training log, the ability to track data and share workouts with friends. Take advantage of Jefit’s huge exercise database for your strength workouts. Visit our members-only Facebook group. Connect with like-minded people, share tips, and advice to help get closer to reaching your fitness goals. Try one of the new interval-based workouts and add it to your weekly training schedule. Stay strong and recover well using Jefit.

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