 You know we talked about some of those criteria and being able to train the most muscle mass When you drop the bench press on your chest And let it bounce off your chest and then sort of grab the bar and start pushing from a few inches off of your chest It's really it's really a front-delta and tricep exercise at that point. You've lost these giant peck muscles You're listening to barbell logic brought to you by barbell logic online coaching where each week We take a systematic walk through strength training and the refining power of voluntary hardship Welcome to the barbell logic podcast. I'm here with my cohort Nikki Sims Before we get started on the show, I want to tell everybody we've got a place now We get asked a lot like what are the current offers for barbell logic and so we created a page for that It's just barbell logic comm slash offers So what's on there? So all of the relationships we have with like great companies like Tushie and Dominion and micro gains and and all of those companies that we have Relationships with that you can get discounts. They're there, but also like our latest e-book or any Any discounts that we're currently running for online coaching or things about the academy all that stuff is there So if you want to stay up to date We update that all the time barbell logic comm slash offers and that will take you that'll tell you what the Discounts are and the discount codes and all that fun stuff. They're all in one place Shopping and that'll that'll be there forever. Hopefully so So we we were talking a little bit over the last couple weeks about this idea That I continued to play around with with programming with my clients and that is I'm gonna make a super blanketed statement, which is really more for a Probably clickbaity title, which is that everyone should pause their bench press. Whoa, should they tell me more? I Think so now the question is should everyone at all points at all time during the training pause or bench press and the answer Probably no When someone new comes to me who is a novice. I don't have them pause or bench press Because it just adds an extra step of complexity to the bench press that doesn't need to be there, right? And they're already just trying to figure out where everything's supposed to go And you just give them like 35 steps to follow This is actually really funny when we were shooting the bench press how-to video a couple months ago It is so much harder to explain all the steps for a bench press then the squat or the deadlift or the press like combined It's so weird There's way more steps even though it's a fairly simple lift And so but you're right one of the things you'll you'll notice especially for coaches or for people who have trained for a long time And maybe they've coached new clients or they've got training partners that have never trained before They're trying to coach their their spouse or a some sort of training partner Then they'll notice that that on a bench press. They're kind of all a brand a newbie is kind of all over the place Right, they touch their chest at a different spot every time The lockouts at a different spot every time and they may be trying to touch the same spot and lock out at the same spot They just don't yeah, it's just kind of all over the place They get wiggly wiggly hands wrist are bending. They're like breathing up and down while the bar is moving. Yeah there's a lot of stuff to remember and once those things sort of The the groove is greased and those things fall in place then I start to notice as people get towards the end of LP and they start going into making their first several steps into Intermediate-style programming maybe we've moved them to five sets of three on the bench press and I start to see the problem of the bounce on the bench press and That is most of us everyone understands when I say the bounce is this you know It's the people that literally drop the weight on their chest It bounces off their chest and and they catch it about four inches off their chest and then return it to lockout And you'll see like you'll see it have like kind of one Consistence be down until it gets like two inches above their chest then it goes really fast Then it goes kind of fast back up and then it gets really slow. That's exactly right. That's exactly right now a Lot of people don't actually bounce it real hard off their chest And that's certainly certainly a more egregious error a lot of people just get loose in the bottom And so maybe they've learned to not literally Bounce the bar off their chest, but they're not staying tight in the bottom so Before I get to why we bench press I want to stop for a second and actually take the bench press Discussion and put it on the back burner and go to the squat for a second because everyone knows this makes sense on the squat so if you're a coach and You have a client who's really struggling to stay tight in the bottom of a squat What are some of the things that you might do to get them to learn how to be tight in the bottom of a squat? Tell them to slow down Yep, so what down there's their speed on the way down. Yeah, the descent the down part. Yeah Yeah, so that they Be baby and by doing that they actually become more intentional about about where they're supposed to be putting their body in space and That makes them stay tighter instead of this kind of like Dive bomb like I'm just gonna kind of hope for the best and see what happens here. That's right And so when they when they do do the dive bomb What do you see like how do you know that they're not staying tight in the bottom? Their depth starts to be very inconsistent. Some reps are too high Some are way too low and you know when you squat too low You see their lumbar flex you see some knees come in you see their back angle suffer So it ruins consistency and then it ruins the amount of tension that they're holding at the bottom, right? That's right So I have the same strategy that you do as a first sort of step in Fixing the problem which is slow down the descent And I tell them I want you to slow down the descent because I want you to feel the tightness in the bottom I want you to feel the tightness Really at the top of your hamstrings or the bottom of your butt at your sit bones at your ischial tuberosity there That's kind of where you feel tightness. You'll feel tightness in your adductors on your inner thighs You'll feel tightness there and if you can't feel tightness there you're going too fast and you're probably bouncing off your knees Yeah And that's like that spring analogy that you talked about when the last couple times where it's like this really tight spring that you're Trying to compress but it's not one of those like flimsy springs That's just gonna be like a quick boing like you have to really push down on it. That's right now Here's here's the next question you and I haven't talked about this on the spot Yeah, then we're gonna stay with the squat when that doesn't work because sometimes you tell people that mm-hmm, and it just doesn't work Do you have like what's the next step to fix the problem if they just can't slow down or they just can't control themselves in the bottom? What do you do awesome? But it's my next step. Yeah, that's exactly right You go to a pause squat or or I'll go to a box squat Which is also a pause squat so pause squat is my first choice because I really don't want Something it's sort of a depth gauge if it doesn't have to be there I'd rather them be able to stay tight and stop in the bottom and pause the squat And if they are just they just can't you know, you see people that they think they're pausing But the bars like still moving down kind of slow and they still fire up I'm like, I really never or they pause and they do the little cheater bounce. That's right We'll cheater bounce then I'll put them on a box. Well, which makes them stop in exactly the right spot Right and it teaches them how to and on a box when I have them sit on the box I tell them sit on the box super slow super easy like a ninja don't make any noise Right ease on to the box. Yeah, like make your butt cheeks touch, but not your ischial tuberosity. That's right. So now What are we doing? We pause a bench press Same thing. It's the same thing Basically, the chest is the box That's right. Whoa, geez. Whoa We got there together Yeah, so I mean so it fixes the problem and so what we do is We tell them to pause on the chest And we pause for about a one second count is enough. We don't need anything really ridiculously long There are other things, you know in that controlling the descent on a bench press Similar to the controlling the descent on the squat and one thing we do and what what you said on the bench press video That we've got on youtube is to just basically think about touching your shirt Touch the material of your shirt without touching Your breast bone the bony portion of your breast when I pause or when I have a client pause the bench press Especially in the beginning when they're learning how to pause One of the first cues I'll give them is to keep all the weight of the barbell in their hands I don't want it distributed onto their chest now You'll see some really advanced power lifters Set the bar on their chest sink and throw and certainly I'm not that's not entirely legal But it also is really called and so hey, let's do it. Let's let's do the best we can to lift the most weight But for for people who are still trying to learn how to get tight That step of teaching them to Ease onto their chest Keep all the weight in their hands so they don't feel any of the weight on their breast bone Pause for a full second count and then fire the thing up as hard as they can It accomplishes all sorts of things So first off it accomplishes learning how to descend correctly. It fixes the descent Yeah, you end up putting the bar exactly where you need to put it That's exactly right or you don't but you'll figure it out pretty quick It'll force you to figure it out because you have in the same way of a squat You have time to think about it now a lot of times people go down and they get loose in a squat They don't know how deep they got they don't know What they bounced off of They don't know if they bounced off their adductors or their hamstrings or their knee tendons or anything Right because it's just too fast. It's the same thing with the bench press by going down and lightly touching and pausing And throwing you can you can concentrate on staying tight all the way to the bottom Touching the same spot every time Staying really really tight while you're down there and then firing back up, right? Yeah, and it it's going to reduce the stretch reflex a little bit But there still is some stretch reflex that elasticity holds for a couple seconds, right? If I pause down there for three full seconds, I'm basically going to lose all of that But we don't pause that long we pause for one second And really you probably shouldn't be getting much stretch reflex on a regular touch and go bench anyway Like it's not like the squat where you're reaching the full Kind of sweat where you're switching from concentric to eccentric You're not really getting that much out of your your pecs or your interior dirt deltoids unless you have like Maybe really long lower arms Yeah, no, that's a good point You're not at the deepest range of motion of any of those joints or muscle groups But when you stay tight the muscles are still lengthened Yes, and so therefore they can fire and shorten whereas if they relax They're not really lengthened in a under load, right? They're they're no longer lengthen under load and so being able to maintain that is is a big part of this And then here's what I found The first couple workouts that I do this with my clients. They're like, man, my pecs are sore Because you haven't been using them Getting that eccentric contraction now That's right They've just been dropping the thing and you think about where where are the pecs in a bench press doing the most amount of work Right when you switch from down to up That's right down there in the bottom and so if you're Flying through that spot if you're dropping the thing and you bounce off your chest and that bounces off your chest a few inches Just like you said you'll they lower slow they lower slow They lower slow and they get a couple inches off their chest and then womb it flies down And it bounces and womb it flies back up and then they it's almost like they catch it Totally, and then it goes really slow again. Well, it goes from you controlling however much weight you have in your hands You're controlling 225 pounds down Then when you let it go fast you're controlling 225 pounds plus whatever that acceleration is Then you have to switch directions Then it's even that much heavier when you're kind of essentially digging yourself out of that hole on the way So you want you want to keep it weighing 225 Yeah, and I would argue that The pecs aren't getting used very much down there Because you have let gravity pull the weight down entirely, right? There's no there's no lengthening under load because you just relaxed and the thing's falling down at 9.8 meters per second right and they totally totally jostles They're like arch and they're oh, it's awful at that point And like so much of your bench press has to do with how well you're setting up your arch and pressing Your upper back against your shoulders that if you let the bar slime into you all that stuff just kind of pancakes So another great analogy here. We can literally take the same The same idea and apply it to both the squat and the deadlift as well So on a squat if they if i'm having somebody box squat and they fall on the box That's the last thing I want because now it's in a massive compressive and shear force On the back between the box and the barbell. It's not that's not real fun. Good time Yeah, it does not it sounds like an injury waiting to happen. So that's what we have to ease on the box But this is also the problem that we get with people that bounce their deadlifts on the floor It rattles them out of position. It's the same thing. Totally. And so we're trying to maintain that position So, you know, we talk about some of those criteria and being able to train the most muscle mass Is one of the most important criteria we use When you drop the bench press on your chest And let it bounce off your chest and then sort of grab the bar and start pushing from a few inches off of your chest It's really it's really a front delt and tricep exercise at that point. You've lost these giant pec muscles Yeah, the biggest muscles in the whole lift big origin right down the middle of your sternum They insert your humerus like they're giant and then when you lose those just like all right Like you just said here we go triceps Let's hope this works You know, we we don't typically train for aesthetics only but when we think about bench press Who doesn't want bigger stronger more built Pecs everybody does. Yeah, that's why we do it Or may not be the main reason we do it, but it's certainly one of the reasons we do it We is in a small group of we Yeah, we is in you and I in the room How so how often Do you or is there a time that you tend to take your trainees From just their regular bench press and you make them start pausing their bench press Is there are things that you can pull out and say this is sort of a commonality when they get about here Or is it are you kind of all over the place with your clients with I like to use it as one of the first variations That I use at the lift because it's so similar to the main lift and yet It will only add more control at the bottom We don't have to do a huge offset and weight And we don't have to teach them a whole new movement We're not adding any new equipment So it's just a really simple first choice for the first variation that I use And then if we're training for a competition, I'll get it going right away So it's either going to be a supplemental Well, I'll use it for like the the one bench press day of the week And then I'll I'll stick with the touch and go for the second day But if they're training for a meet I want all pause bench all the time So, um, I'm yeah about the same I mean, obviously I think everybody that's listening to this probably knows but in powerlifting A contested bench press must be paused And in in basic normal strength training it doesn't And if there's good control of the bench press, especially in that in that descent all the way down to the chest I don't know if they ever have to pause it, but Almost everyone at some point will start to use some momentum In the bottom of that bench press and I start to have to add the pause and so I'm the same way Uh, again, if I'm thinking it through the sort of minimum effective dose changes that I tend to make I'll move them from three sets of five to five sets of three when I get to triples That's a good place to start pausing. I don't tend to pause Uh sets with more than three reps. Yeah, so I like pauses with three and less Now some of my clients are listening right now Specifically father john floater who's doing five sets of five and he has to pause all of all But the guy's struggling to stay tight in the bottom. So sorry father john. That's just the way it goes So occasionally Occasionally you got to do 25 reps all pause, which is not very and I don't do that very often, right? So and then I'm the same way with as I was what you're saying if people are doing They're sort of volume day three sets of five four sets of five five sets of five If they're doing some hypertrophy work, you know, like you're doing right now some three sets of eight type stuff I don't make them pause or maybe I'll say pause the first rep of every set often do that And then touch and go after that just lightly touch the shirt But for sets with three reps and less For just about all of my clients who are intermediates and beyond I'm gonna make them pause all those and I do in my own training because I like to be able to control the weight So that's that's a that's an important advantage now I think there's a a second other more advanced advantage To pause in the bench press and that's that I think it will help teach you How to better use leg drive when you pause the bench press because you really want it Yeah leg drive is one of the hardest things to teach especially online Because it's very difficult. You you almost need to put your hands on somebody and show them It's it's also another one of those things that I want them to see me do it sometimes Like it's it's one of the only things I'll model for somebody else Because when we've talked about this before most of the time people can't look at like hey Watch me do a snatch and then you just do it like me like that doesn't work, you know But when they can see the way the legs help throw the bar off the chest on a bench press My experience has been that for most people a light bulb goes off and like oh I get it right you can throw and I can make my sternum move From my leg drive. I can drive my heels into the ground and sort of tense up my quads And it and and pop my hips a little bit not pop my hips off the bench But pop into a slightly better arch as I pop into a slightly better arch It lifts my sternum and as it lifts my sternum that helps contribute to the leg drive on the bench press So I have a question about that. Do you think that That is better than maybe Having so big of a leg drive on the way down that your sternum reaches its max height For the entirety of the movement instead of you getting to that max height as you throw it off That's actually that's a great question. So first off. Let's say this I don't think a super super arch Or a super super leg drive is really valuable for general strength training at all This is a competitive movement at this point, right? So at the point that we're doing but either either or of those things The goal is to bench press the most weight probably for competition Yeah, or because we're trying to set an all-time pr or something like that now There are two ways. I think two ways that if you look at All of the best bench pressers who have ever lived They all will bench in one of two styles One style the ones who have insanely strong Triceps and can reduce their range of motion dramatically. So it also tends to be guys who have short arms Will do what you're saying they will arch arch arch up They'll meet the bar with their chest as the bar is coming down So that they reduce the range of motion on the bench press as much as possible And then their triceps Only have to move the bar four or five inches to lock the thing out And so it's almost an all a tricep all tricep movement There's very little pecs and this was really the way bench pressing was done Back in the 90s and early 2000s when everybody used a bench shirt So again, probably most our listeners know back in that time period of really the 80s through the through maybe 2005 to 2010 10 years ago or so almost all power lifters were lifting in supportive gear So power lifters would put on these they look like What are those shirts that what are those like? Jackets they put you in in the crazy houses the Straight it looks like a straight jacket But instead of your arms folding over yourself, they would like be straight out in front like you were like mommies Like you're a walking dead And uh, you know, it was and it was made out of denim or canvas or something crazy So just imagine like if you put on the tightest pair of jeans you ever worn your life And you were guaranteed that the jeans were not gonna tear or blow out How much more could you squat in that pair of jeans more Something more And it's like so a bench shirt was basically like jeans for your bench press And it was made with like triple reinforced denim super thick denim Or canvas and it wouldn't tear it's ridiculous, right? But you think about it There was no way to let the bar sink into your chest And leg drive throw because the bench press shirt was too tight And so they did the the style that you're talking about which is that super big arch And it's all tricep and a lot of the the west side powerlifter guys did it that way And they also didn't tend to throw the bar back over their face as much They tended to touch low and they would press almost straight up So it was almost like a decline bench press for them big giant arch very wide grip Belly up that you say belly up belly up That was like a you know one of those terms they would use Which is sort of like meet the bar with the top of your belly is what they would do To be able to reduce your range of motion The other style of lifters the ones that you'll tend to see I think this you'll see this if you play around on youtube for all The ones that tend to be the strongest raw without a bench press shirt And who have never benched in a bench press shirt before tend to do the sink and throw Which is what i'm talking about here So you get nice and tight you still get a nice arch but it's not a ridiculous arch You've got you could theoretically arch more You could theoretically have more leg drive And you bring the bar down under nice control Although some of those guys actually bring down really fast even somewhat out of control And let it but rather than bouncing off their chest because they're not allowed They let it hit the hit their breastbone they sink their breastbone down a few inches And then they fire their breastbone up like they're doing a chest bump Like with your buddies after you made like the game winning three-pointer shot in a basketball game But you chest bump the barbell and as you chest bump the barbell You you initiate the leg drive you fire your heels down you hit that bigger arch And you throw the bar from the top of your belly Back over your chin and you lock it out of your chin So it's got a much more diagonal bar path to it That sounds like it takes a lot of precision and timing practice It does and I can remember so I can remember when I was first coaching Ness Ozast who's one of our one of our coaches and I was online coaching her But I would see her three four five times a year from you know at seminars and whatnot And so she just couldn't get the leg drive. She was going to compete in a parallel to me She couldn't get the leg drive couldn't get the leg drive and I said man So we had a trip and you were on this trip I think where She was in LA at the time went down to LA and I got to just work with her for like an hour and a half And teach her the leg drive she became a master of the leg drive And I see this out of females a lot because they tend to be more flexible They can get into a bigger arch than a lot of guys can and so for for Hypermobile people which tend to be female other guys that can do this too, especially lighter weight guys They have a little more play in their arch and she learned how to bring that bar down Super tight the base of her chest kind of sink and you would watch her throw I bet she got four inches of throw out of her chest alone I mean out of her breastbone and leg drive alone. She would throw it that hard. It was crazy She was great at it. So so that's one of the reasons we do it now again That's an advanced movement But it's very difficult where you can kind of back this up a couple steps Is for clients who are struggling with leg drive and you can see and by the way, this is actually why we're doing I I gave him a hard time a minute ago But why we're doing it with father John floater is because he actually doesn't have a hard time staying tight On the descent on a bench press. He just doesn't have any leg drive That the guy could literally be uh, uh, what's what is it when you cut your legs legs off? Well, that means he could be like a like a like yeah, it could be like a double amputee His legs and you wouldn't notice any difference. The guy's just an upper body bench presser But the thing is he's a way better squatter and deadlifter than he is a bench presser. He's made us He's got super strong legs. Yeah, so it's like man We got to figure out how to use your legs on the bench on the bench press And so that's why he's pausing so he's pausing and sinking and throwing see j. Gocher one of our coaches I'm coaching him right now. He's got a meat coming up. He's doing the same thing We've adapted to using the the sink and throw I have a question Do you ever Have a client wear a belt for their bench press? Yes, or is that do you leave that up to personal preference? What do you think I tend to leave it up to personal preference? I do You may have a different answer for this in general I have done both when i'm competing in powerlifting. I tend to wear a belt more often I think a belt for sure helps to solidify The val salva maneuver we want a good strong val salva on any of the lifts We know the spine isn't loaded. So in the same way that it sort of helps create that Interabdominal pressure so that the muscles that tend to move the bar like on a squat and deadlift like the muscles around your hips It helps to transfer the energy from the hips into the barbell. We know that's not the case on the bench press, right? But I do think you tend to get a better val salva maneuver and you can get a little tighter Um, so I'll use it some but I tend to use it for leave it for personal preference. What about you? Yeah, I'm always just like, yeah, if you want to wear a belt wear it like I've never felt a good trade-off But now as we have this discussion, I'm wondering if that would be At all useful for someone who's not really connecting their lower body to their upper body Like maybe there needs to be some like tactile feedback there through the abdomen that could be helpful I don't know. Yeah, I think I think so for sure. I think that's actually a really good point So yeah, it's probably another great learning piece that if you're trying to Put the leg drive together and you have a hard time getting the leg drive add in a belt Probably does a pretty good job of doing that. One of the things that I try to do with somebody when they're I'm teaching the leg drive is I I don't even put the barbell in their hands. I just have them lay down on bench press like they're going to bench press And then I see if they can get their legs to fire and make their breastbone pop up Can you make your breast the bottom of your breastbone pop up using your legs? If you've never done that before just do it before your first couple Before your first couple sets and do it with the empty bar. It's really easy, you know, you can play around Do it with the empty bar. Yeah, and then and then I keep practicing that with With the lighter weights I do the same thing on deadlifts. You've seen me deadlift before when I deadlift my first early sets 135 225 I do this real weird looking like hip pop at the tie get to the top I squeeze my glutes are hard. I pop it and the bar comes flying off my legs at the top Well, it's obviously not going to do that one's heavy. It's going to be too heavy It's not going to matter But you know, I've kind of got bad hips and I'm not great at remembering to pop the hips I tend to lose my deadlifts like you do kind of at the top at lock out and I'm trying to sort of This is probably not a true. This is a bro science word I'm trying to set the set the motor pattern set the central nervous system to say, hey Finish this lift quick at the top pop throw the hips squeeze the butt do those sort of things and so You know, I don't know some of that may just be placebo But it seems to work pretty well to make sure that then as the weight starts getting heavy I've already sort of set the tone. We're not locking this thing out slow. Yeah We're trying to lock it out fast And I had a thought about leg drive that I think sometimes if people May not be getting leg drive. It's always worth it to check that they're That they're sticking on their bench Like sometimes people leg drive and they slide up the bench So if you're at not like anybody can go to global gyms right now Or if you have a really slick bench either get one of those a7 shirts or get that shelf that bubbly shelf lining That you see in cabins that you put in cabinets and that'll help you stick to your bench And make sure your floor doesn't is like grippy enough that your bench doesn't slide That's right Like sometimes sometimes you just don't want to use your leg drive because you're in a like Literally slide yourself out of position. So make sure those two things are secure That's right. So one of the things I look for when I buy a bench a bench press bench We we do not have any sponsorships with equipment what I love about the rep fitness 5000 bench whatever that is the 5000 that's got the the single post at the feet is that it's the The material on the pad is like a It's like half rubber and half marine vinyl like most bench presses are just kind of vinyl Yeah, and that it's it's more rubberized and so The newer rogue ones are a lot like that too. The toms and fat pads are like that I just don't like a I don't like a bench press that wide a lot of guys do I can't imagine very many ladies would like it in this less their shoulders are broader than mine It's too wide for me and I'm 300 pounds, you know You want me to tell you a fun cheater story? totally So back in the early 2000s when I competed in powerlifting and this is before a seven came out So if you haven't checked out a seven, they're one of our favorite They they create they make these shirts that they have like a rubberized back to it And they work great for squats because they help hold the bar and they put you in same thing It helps just sit to the bench now I think for most powerlifting federations are not legal to wear Which is kind of weird, but I don't who cares so but they weren't out there So there was no that wasn't an option what we would do the day before the meet Is we would go to an art supply store and we would buy stickum spray And back in the warm-up room We you know you'd put on your singlet which by the way singlets are usually nylon and they're slick Yeah, right singlets tend to be slick and we put on you'd have a t-shirt on underneath your singlet And you put that singlet on and then you'd have your workout partner spray your your upper back with stickum spray So that you would stick by the way, you know what else you can spray with stickum spray Your butt so if your butt comes off the bench a little bit the material sticks Oh my god, my client Peggy if you were listening to this do not do that. I'll know now She gets real loose shorts and then she sprays it with stickum spray and her butt can come off the bench nine inches But her shorts were still on the bench so Yeah, so that I mean it's it's That's probably about all we have to say about that. It's here's here's the it's pretty simple And if we think about it in a in a minimum effective dose sort of uh logical progression When you start your bench press you just you just bench you you know a full range of motion Mitch it has to touch your chest and it locks out over the shoulder joint. That's it This time goes on uh, you'll probably almost accidentally learn how to get some momentum there And momentum is is not a terrible thing, but it doesn't help the pecs Contribute to the bench press and I wanted to be able to do that because I want to use them the most muscle mass possible And again, we're not talking about competitive lifting yet And so as you start to get to that spot where you go maybe from three sets of five to five sets of three That's probably a good time to start to pause those bench press reps And I would start with pausing all of them and and just like you said it doesn't take much of a It doesn't take much of a deload to usually buy back. It's like five percent, right? Yeah, and I can bench as much pause as I can touch and go now once you learn how to do it and you're efficient When you first start it's kind of hard because you've been used to To drop in the bar and bounce it off your chest But it's a good place to start to pause your bench press to learn how to use more muscle mass You'll control the bar better in the bottom and it'll also help you learn how to leg drive better Moving forward and then it's time goes on if you want to adopt some of those advanced techniques like A much bigger arch to reduce the range of motion for a for a competitive bench press Or a sink and throw with a giant leg drive for a competitive bench press Then you're you've already down that road without getting into this area that's sort of like I don't know is this kind of cheating and I'll and I'll be honest It is kind of cheating by the time you get there by the time you sink and throw Or by the time you have this ridiculous arch and wide bench press and you've reduced the range of motion But you're you're playing within the rules of powerlifting So you're a competitive lifter That's what you're going to do, right? If I was a major league baseball player and they allowed metal aluminum bats titanium bats I use I wouldn't use a wooden bat because That you know, like I think major league baseball should use wooden bats because it's like it's a historical sort of game But if they change the rule, I'm not going to handicap myself And so use it but for normal lifters. It's still a really good reason There's like there's good reasons to eventually get yourself to learn how to pause and throw because it'll help control Just the same way it is for most people when they squat So learn how to pause in the bottom of a squat or sit on a box and fire up off a box The same reason we stop a deadlift after every single rep at the bottom And it's a dead stop because we have to learn how to stay tight get tight at the bottom Not just rattle and bounce around down there All of those things are are beneficial. And so that's why we do it. Yeah I mean you're dealing with a ball and socket joint that even when the bar is on your chest You have so much range of motion With your humerus and that's different with a squat like yeah, your hip is also a ball and socket But when you're at the bottom, it's not like you can wiggle your knees around because your feet are where they're going to be There's some, you know, obviously you can move your knees in or out to some extent But like with the bench press you can touch the wrong spot. Still have these flappy elbows Touching the correct spot still have these flappy elbows So yeah, the more you pause the more you get used to having that consistent groove that you've talked about before That's right. Yeah, and that's we hadn't touched on that and that I have other We can even probably do another show on this, but it's another thing that tends to help people who tend to flare the elbow early They're flaring the elbow early because we're getting loose at the bottom and they're trying to regain tightness In the bottom, right? So you see you see people and they'll actually descend with their with their their humerus tucked Fairly well and as soon as they start the concentric phase, they chicken wing out Well, what are they doing when they chicken wing out? They're getting tightness in their pec is what they're doing So they're they're showing me that they lost tightness in their pec on the way down and they're trying to regain it And they're like, I don't know how to get tight now. And so they chicken wing out So a good thing to do is slow them down on the descent make them tuck And everything is better Awesome. All right, that's another episode of the barbiologic podcast. Thanks for listening We will be here most mondays with new episodes from nicky and I and then about once a month We're going to bring in those series And so we've got some more of the best of the beginning type series stuff on technique and all kinds of fun stuff and Special treat is coming. I heard about uh, I think mr. Sullivan. Dr. Sullivan is going to do a series for us on barbell training and health and quality life and all that fun stuff coming up Soon so we're going to look out for that super excited for that upcoming series From Dr. Sullivan So again, you'll be listening to barbell logic again You can go to barbell logic dot com slash offers to see all the best new offers and we have got a ridiculous Never before done sale that we're going to run that we're just going to test out for three days Coming up kind of the end of the first week of august So this will come out on monday hold tight for another few days about the end of this week Be watching social media and see if you're interested. We think we have removed all barriers to entry and all Friction in joining barbell logic if you want to try it and you're just not sure If you can pull the trigger, we're going to make it easy for you. 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