 Good morning, kids. People, someone got offended by kid. I don't mean it offensively. I think you can tell by the tone of my voice that I mean it endearingly. I don't know if it's just how I speak or if it's a cultural thing, even in Argentina, where my mom's from, they kind of speak that like, if you're kind of chunky, they might call you flaka. Eh, vamos, flaka. It's saying like, let's go skinny. Cause it's just kind of an endearing thing though. It's not making fun of a fat joke, you know? But you're kind of chunky, so I call you kind of skinny and I say, let's go. When I say kid, I don't mean to demean that you're under me. I think kids are the most creative, imaginative, receptive, happy, go lucky people in the world. They find fun. But I digress. Welcome to the video. Ladies and gentlemen, Silent Mike, thanks for all the love on the last one today. We're gonna talk about tips and tricks to maybe explain some things on how to bench a little bit more, be a little bit more stable, or at least understand what we're doing with our feets. Before we dive in and give this thing a thumbs up, be sure to subscribe. Follow me on Twitch, Twitch.tv, slash Silent Mike, M-I-K-K-E. We're there every Monday through Thursday. Have a great time. The community's growing. I absolutely love it. It's bench day. The other hot topic of the century, my beanie. Why the hell are you so obsessed with my beanie? I get to work at 545. It's 30 degrees out. And even if it wasn't, you know? Even if it was 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and I wanna wear a beanie, we'll fug you. I'm here to rock a beanie. I'm here to change the game. I got a bleached mullet. This is just, I'm me. You know what we say, you do you, me do me, kids. So a couple of comments on it. One, I almost didn't wanna post my bench PR because my feet and like my leg drive were so freaking ugly. My hips are real tight lately, just being slightly heavier than I'm used to. And then sitting and getting back and lifting, although I've been back pretty good, you know, for two, three months, it's just tighter than it used to be. The other one, I saw someone asked about toes up versus feet flat on the bench. And then the last piece we're gonna talk about is someone was mentioning that they don't have good leg drive because they can bench, I'm making these numbers up, but they said basically they could bench 275 for five with their feet down and feet up bench. They can bench 275 for three or four. So they're obviously missing weight on the bar. Step by step, here we go. The feet up versus feet down on the bench, or excuse me, when benching on the floor. A lot of it has to do with the federation you compete in. The US APL and the IPF branches of powerlifting, you must have your flat foot on the ground, your buttocks, thicky thick with a cue, on the bench and also your traps on the bench. This is obviously just their rules. It might be something to like, ghee versus no ghee and jujitsu. I don't know anything about jujitsu, I'm just kinda making this up. Or what ounce gloves you use in different boxing federations, et cetera, et cetera. Little rules depending on the federation. Feet up or having your heels up on the bench, excuse me, is legal in most other federations that I'm aware of that are maybe popular. The WRPF, the SPF, the RPS, and the USPA. Those are all the ones I could think of. There's probably plenty more, tag them below. I don't really care. That's why I don't love powerlifting, but I digress again. Now, is there a big advantage from having your feet up on the bench? I would, or excuse me, your heels up on the bench. I'd probably say no. I think some people might be able to get a slightly bigger arch or generally just tighter that way because you can wedge yourself in there. But if you properly have your feet flat on the ground with good positioning and you're kinda squeezing your quads, kinda that leg extension style movement, you should be just as stable and find yourself just as much tightness. Overall, I don't think it's that big of an issue. If you don't plan on competing or that's not your number one goal, all I would focus on is getting your knee lower than your hip from a side angle. You can take a picture or video because this means that your butt probably won't be moving around too much and you'll be stable. And then you're going to flex your quad as hard as you can. You're gonna push your toe through the front of your shoe. I'm gonna be pushing myself up this away, back onto my traps. And the barbell is gonna be what keeping me down because it's obviously loaded with hopefully heavy weight because we're building big pecs and a big bench matters. So you're just flexing as hard as you can and all we're trying to do is find some stability. Now, yes, you can kind of do maybe a quote unquote heave or flex a little bit harder as the bar comes off your chest and get a little ounce of momentum moving back towards your face which sometimes can help you press a little bit more accelerate. Generally speaking, I think these are great tools and things we need to focus on obviously because you can find some stability. You can follow the rules to competition if that is your goal. But overall, I think people talk about it as if it's some miracle. Well, I missed that one on leg drive. You did it. You were just too weak. You were just too weak. Say it with me. I missed that bench press because I was simply too weak. I'm Mike and I missed that bench press because I wasn't strong enough. Your turn. My name is Timmy. Repeat after me. And I was too weak to hit that bench. Okay. Now that we got that out of the way, I hate talking about it in these manners the same way I hate talking about carryover from one lift to another lift what accessory I need because it's not a one to one equation. None of this works that way. And so to my man saying he could bench almost the same amount of weight with his legs up and with them with having leg drivers legs down so he's missing out on something. Chances are that's just maybe the style of venture you are and you are just a strong presser with your arms and your chest. That's not a big deal. Finding some secret leg drive isn't gonna add 20 to 50 pounds for the majority of us. Now some people, you know, a lot a day in green one of the raw powerlifting legends does seem that he gets a little bit of acceleration out of his bench, but that's just his general benching style. There's multiple factors that pull into how you generally bench. That dude also probably floor presses over 500 which is just purely arms and chest, right? There's no legs and there's no arching, et cetera, et cetera. Speaking of arching and grip with shout out to Candido with that video. I actually do agree with what we're getting in the hot topic. You know, we limit dunks and basketball in the 70s although they brought it back and they just changed the key and they started to go three seconds in the key, et cetera, et cetera. Even in powerlifting, there's rules of which people don't talk about and I think I would love to hear Candido's and Sean's ideas on this. Kiss my arch about how low the barbell can be on your back and how advantageous that is. I've never been called on a rule like that but I've had clients that have been called with putting the bar too low on your back and I'm not, I'm pretty sure at least the two major federations, USAPL and the IPF or USPA all have a general rule although it's probably very vague if I was to guess, although I haven't read it. So I'd love to hear theirs. If you guys want to tag them, send this to them on the rule and how we adjust the bar being too low on the back if it's a big deal but generally gradually moving the bench press regulation within, depending on weight class or size, at least test it out maybe. Give a little testing season, see how it goes. I don't think would hurt the sport and it would definitely help this silly argument of the internet yelling about arch benches cause quite frankly I don't care and I've heard it for way too long. Long story short, I think that we're focusing on the little things and if we can find some stability, if we can push ourselves back onto our traps and we can keep constant tension through the entire system from our legs all the way up to the barbell, we're gonna have our best press to, our best chance to press the most amount of weight for our bodies, for our form. Again, you can look at Sean if we're talking about Sean Noriega, he benches like an absolute forklift. He's not only a technician, which he's known for but he's absolutely a tank. I have no doubt that if we do change these bench rules he's still gonna blast up big weights with adjustment cause the dude's just an insanely hard worker and stupid strong. And he doesn't get a lot of leg drive. You don't see a heaving style motion or an accelerated bench with his quads getting more tension from off of his chest. Again, versus like a Dan Green. And typically when you are more arched you can't do this cause your arch would disappear if you had any lax in your system but my point being that these small changes you can't just adapt them and automatically get strong. It's the same way as talking to a huge conventional puller and say yeah man just pull Sumo and he's gonna pull 50 pounds more even though some people think or is true to some people a Sumo deadlift is more advantageous. Again, there are different styles and there's different reasons to it. It's not just a plug and play type situation. There's many factors that go into us lifting more weight. Although I messed up and whipped these things out of order again we got no script, no PowerPoint or textbook leading me here. It's just what's between these ears. One take, Mike, they called me. They don't call me that, I wish they did. Talking about my hips and how to kind of fix that. If you cannot find a way to get your hips, excuse me, your knees below your hips on the bench there's multiple things we can do. So one is just get your hips a little bit looser. I recommend warming up better. Whether that's a walk, a lunge, uphill walk. My personal favorite is something like a lunge or getting some blood into your lower body and also stretching out those hip flexors which tend to be the tight point. Some people will bench in heels if they are a flat foot bencher that may also allow you to get those knees a little bit lower which will allow you to flex those quads and also keep your buttocks on the bench. The other one is just how we adjust our stance. Most typically it's not always, you'll be able to move your stance further out in kind of a Y style and that will allow you also again to keep those feet on the floor, knees below your hips and buttocks on the bench. Again, it all depends because there's so many things involved. Our overall leverages, our mobility and how we use our feet onto the ground but the longer leg folks might be able to, if they're flexible, tuck them things way underneath and still stomp their heels onto the ground but if you're a little bit longer legged moving out in a Y can help the most. I got a bench session today. Hopefully you guys can see how I suck or how I've improved. I'm going to bench a little bit heavier today. Some squats. I appreciate you so much for following the Journey More Training footage on the way. Comment below, let me know what you guys want to see what you want to hear, give you my hot takes. It's not the end all be all but I've been in this game a long time. I've been lucky enough for the last 10 years to hang and chat and lift with some of the greatest minds and strength conditioning. Some of the best athletes in the world in strength sports. So a little bit of experience on my end and I would love to share with you as long as well as my personal experience chasing the barbell, chasing strength and starting this Journey Third Street Barbell clothing coming soon. I appreciate you. Sal and Mike, I'm out of here.