Bench press ROM

[Andrew S]

Effective ROM?
Competition bench requires a pause with the bar in contact with the chest; which eliminate some of the stretch reflex which dissipates during the pause, and also note that for most people who can execute an effective throw from the chest will fail the bench press with the bar a few inches above their chest, so what makes the last few inches “effective” range of motion? In regards to building strength the magnitude of weight required to cause you to fail at the lowest point, with the bar still in contact with your chest, is untenable to the strength curve for the rest of the lift, meaning there is no easy way to accommodate maximal resistance to the last 2-3” in a meaningful way because that’s where the weight feels the lightest. So do we even need to go that low? “When the bar touches your chest” is a somewhat abstract concept, in so much as, you haven’t actually reached a stopping point because the muscles reached the end of there extensibility, but rather because there is a hunk of steel that will crush you if you do not. How much additional stress is added to the lift by continuing the decent to a position where the bar touches the chest? And really, how were our bodys designed to exert force? I would say incline press would make as much if not more sense that flat bench, but you can not load it like flat bench and it is very similar to a press with a lay back. It seems to me, the spirit of the SS model, in regards to bench pressing, is it works and it is the angle that fits the 3 criteria the best... or is it???

The floor press changes the range of motion and also changes the way the muscle mass involved is used by changing leverages to overload a portion of the lift through increased intensity. Where do we drawl the line? Of course most of us can quarter squat more than we can full squat, but quarter squats are hard to quantify and in reality do not make you stronger, however, the floor press is quantifiable and does make you stronger and can be trained for years so I believe we are dealing with something entirely different here which leads me to believe the bench may be a supplemental lift to the floor press, after all, the bench press increases ROM and doesn’t allow you to move as much weight much like the deficit deadlift increases deadlift rom in exchange for weight. Here’s the main thing tho, it’s unclear to me that floor presses actually utilizes less muscle mass or that the decrease in ROM matters.

Thoughts?

[Erik Y]

I’ll bite. Floor press is a fine exercise, from what I’ve heard (I’ve spent very little time with it), but the theory needs to follow the phenomenology, or this is all navel-gazing. Right now I don’t think many people are using the floor press as a primary movement, so you’d need either to try it or find people who do this to get some data. At the same time, the current recommendation is for the greatest effective range of motion. From my very limited sample size and from watching bro lifters at the gym, my guess is that you’d lose strength in the bottom third of the movement, since range of motion not trained won’t get stronger. But you could always try it and report back if you find anything different.

[Andrew S]

Ive been doing the floor press and press for upper body days for the last year (doing TM) to help with overhead press and every so often every I do regular bench and can handle the same weights that I floor press. All I can say is that it’s not detrimental to have a different horizontal pressing exercise like floor press, close grip, incline... I guess it just depends on what sport your train for. For general strength I’ll still side with the conventional wisdom. It’s just not as clear cut as overhead pressing, there’s not as many choices for overhead work. I know complexity appeals to dumb people lol so I hope that’s not what I’m doing.