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This is caused by many reasons and can Potentially cause injury, but you're also leaking power. So it's gonna take away from not only hypertrophy, but Strength in your top end of your bench press power Why do elbows flare early and what I mean by that is kind of when you're benching maybe you're in a good groove a good path and right away those elbows flare out and then you're stuck kind of Squeaking out the top end of the bench. It often happens on heavier loads rather than lighter loads as well as when you Mess up your bar path and positioning isn't good. What's really going on is our shoulder joint is super mobile and Kind of with elbows firing early is a similar thing to kind of knees slamming in in the squat except for The shoulder joint is more mobile than our hip joint So it's kind of ball and socket deal and it can kind of go in every direction, especially if you have hypermobility Whereas obviously our knee joint is also ball and socket, but it's restricted from our lower body trunk and how the Hip socket is actually wrapped around the ball. So hypermobile joint awesome We can reach apples. We can eat we can do all these ancient human things that we needed to survive But hypermobility or a mobile joint isn't always the strongest So we have to find stability to then be able to transfer Force from our muscles our pecs into the bench moving the bar away from us We always want our elbows from the unwrapped all the way down and all the way through the entire execution of the bench To remain underneath if not just in front of the barbell Now if your elbows ever end up behind the barbell this to way towards your face You're not only putting a lot more stress on your delts with that elbow flare Which will happen and also you're just leaking power We're not in the best leverage to lift the most amount of weight And we obviously want a bench press we want to make the gains both hypertrophy and strength We want to lift the most amount of weight to reach both of those goals So throughout the unwrapped all the way down That's why people say tuck your elbow now tucking your elbows is going to be relative to how you're built if you have longer arms Maybe you have a little bit less of an elbow tuck if you have wider grip less of an elbow tuck if you're a little bit Stumpy or a little shorter a little bit closer grip. You'll have more of an elbow tuck Regardless that upper back position is always going to be tight and elbows are always going to be underneath and in front of the Barbell how do we do that? Well number one mistake is kind of that upper back tightness So upper back tightness is we're always talking about squeezing our shoulder blades together that scapular retraction And not only do you do that on your setup keeping your sternum high You need to do that through the entire set keeping that back tight and the entire rep even under a one rep max It's similar to kind of the Valsava where you're taking a big breath We unwrack and you're holding that breath the whole time to stay tight We're squeezing those shoulder blades back and down now what that does is flex our traps Obviously flexes our rear delts all these things, but with the usage of proper leg drive and positioning of the bench press It'll keep our upper body stable pinching the shoulder blade back down into the socket will now allow us to have a platform to push into the bench and It'll allow us to use our triceps shoulders pecs all of that in Continuity to move the barbell and transfer the most amount of power possible if you have a loose back in that Shoulders kind of untucked in a position like this while you're pressing now my Shoulder joint is mobile as it's supposed to be but not during heavy loads and it can kind of go anywhere We'll get into this position elbows behind the barbell and we can't transfer the power So number two is the transfer of power and how we need to position our elbows with the bar So even when you unwrack, which I always suggest You know, maybe 50% or more getting a liftoff getting a liftoff doesn't mean you're weak Getting a liftoff doesn't mean that you can't lift the weight getting a liftoff just purely allows you to be in the safest and strongest position possible Because when you're have that tight back and you get an unwrack by yourself Sometimes those shoulders untuck but if you have a tight back and you get the unwrack You let your your teammate or your lit training partner lift it for you and you're just gonna hold number one thing besides the liftoff and Just thinking proper setup and getting our proper setup to squeeze our scapulas I always have new athletes and myself when I'm warming up or even super-set it with my bench press workouts We're always gonna do pull-aparts and face pulls this not only warms up the joint It allows us to work kind of our rotator cuffs and our rear delts and our upper traps some of the muscles that sometimes get neglected But it'll allow us to feel the sensation of squeezing that back and proper positioning in the bench setup And a band and what you want to do is use it about grip width of your bench You can also go in a little bit as you get stronger But what you want to do is flex your lats and push your shoulders down Stir them up as you're beginning and then all you're gonna do is pull that into you arms locked or slightly bent And you're gonna pull those rear delts together in the back and pull the band into your chest almost like your benching Now when we're benching we're gonna do a very similar thing But now the difference is it's obviously a metal steel iron barbell instead of a rubber band and when we do that We want to bend the bar not only into our chest, but also this way pulling our pinkies together This is gonna automatically keep our shoulder joint more stable that elbows flared now My shoulders all flared if I can pull it together pinkies together With the back scapular attraction now I can pull that pinky under and now I'm flexing my lat flexing my pec And flexing my delt and that's gonna all those three muscles together Maintain that shoulder stability throughout the lift So I'm bending those pinkies together bending the barbell as I'm pulling it as a row, right? So we got lat rear delt pec delt all locked in Pinkies together rowing it into myself and on the way up. We're gonna do the opposite I'm gonna still keep the scapula retracted, but I'm going to flare my Elbows just slightly as long as the elbows are under the bar and in front Flaring is gonna allow that bar path to go in an arc now an arc to bar path is is optimal for most Straight bar path is moving it away from your levers We want to move it back up towards our eyes towards the rack towards our main movers But as we mentioned an early flare is our shoulders flaring What we're all trying to do is keep that scapula retracted and just flare our elbows If you can see my elbow flare is very different than a full shoulder flare and the issue that I see the number one Mistake that we've been talking about for the last six minutes Hopefully you guys are staying with me is that your elbows flare is the result of your shoulder flaring now If we keep that lat tight peck tight scapula retracted, and we just control our elbows We'll be in an optimal position to press the most amount of weight while keeping our shoulders safe Hopefully that helped you guys out be sure to subscribe to me the one and only links should be in the description I got vlogs. 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