 Question is from Justin Cone 805. When I bench regular or incline, I don't feel a lot of activation in my chest. Any tips to feel it more? Yeah, so when you're thinking about pressing with a barbell, you want to understand the action of the pecs. So what the pecs are doing is they're pulling your upper arm, so up above your elbow, closer to the midline of your body. And through that action your arms are pressing the bar up. Now your triceps and your shoulders are also involved. But knowing that the chest bring the elbows together, what you could do with the barbell is, when you grip the barbell, create some internal tension. Like you're gripping the bar and you're trying to bring your hands closer together. Maintain that tension as you're benching and you should feel more activation in the chest. So I'm actually glad this question came up because I got tagged a bunch of times on a post that a really smart trainer posted. From what I could see, I shouldn't say really, I don't know him. I looked through some of his content before I commented and thought he seemed to be putting out, for the most part, pretty solid information, but I really did not like the post he did for this reason because I would argue that the number one reason why clients of mine could not feel chest press both inclined or flat bench in their chest and they felt it predominantly in their shoulders and their triceps is because they're protracted forward and they're pressing with their shoulders and their arms and they're not engaging the chest. And so the thing that this guy was talking about, this is the type of stuff that annoys me in our space, is he was kind of cracking down on the trainers that cue the state, keep your shoulders in a retracted position and lock it in that position and do a chest press. Now that's a cue that I actually teach a lot and the reason why I teach that is for the exact reason of this question right here because most people just don't even have that concept. They don't realize they already have kind of forward shoulders, they get under a chest press, it's a pushing forward movement and so they never even get their shoulders back. They're just pushing the bar. And then of course the body defaults to the most common pattern for them which is shoulders and triceps to do the pushing motion and they don't know how to retract, depress the shoulders, then begin the pressing motion. Now his argument was that's a terrible cue to teach clients, you don't want to keep the humorous stuck in that position and it should be able to be fluid from back to front. If that's all the only exercise you ever did, maybe. Right. A lot of exercise. Yeah and not only that but it's a high level cue that he's taking something that I think benefits the majority of people is teaching them to learn to retract the pressure shoulders and hold in that position to press, to learn how to then engage the chest properly. Then when you have that, then you can freely allow the shoulder to move from a retracted to a protracted position. This reminds me a lot of teaching the seated row. So you've talked about this before on the show where when I first teach a client to do a seated row who doesn't know how to retract the shoulders. A lot of times I would get there and I would pin their shoulders back and I'd keep them in this kind of fixed position to get them to understand how to squeeze the back. Now when I have an advanced lifter I allow them to exaggerate the protraction forward and then retract because the lats are responsible for part of that and since we're doing a back exercise I want to take it through full range of motion. So with a more intermediate to advanced lifter I cue differently than I cue with a beginner. So know your fucking audience. And so when I get tagged on stuff like this and people are wanting to have me like rip it apart because they probably contradict something they heard me say or us say on the show. It's not that the guy is wrong. And this is the same thing that we had recently when we talked about Eugene's post and we just talked about somebody else's post recently. I don't disagree with these guys. They're presenting science based information that is correct. I'm just because of my experience I know what I've had to deal with 99% of the time and that's not the majority. And we're always trying to address the majority, the average person. So if you're a high level advanced client like yeah allowing the shoulders to retract and go to a protracted position till you find but in my experience somebody who cannot feel their chest when doing a chest press it's because you already suffer from a little bit of upper cross syndrome and your shoulders and your triceps take over the movement. You need to learn how to retract to press the shoulders and press. Yeah you got to peel it back. You got to take it back to mobilizing the shoulder like Adam's talking about and then add the proper mechanics so you get in the proper position of it. Now we apply isometrics through that squeeze so we're really trying to enhance the squeeze of what we're trying to get out of the chest and then we lightly load so we mimic the exercise so you actually learn the proper mechanics as you're going through the bench press then we add the load as the stimulus on top of that. So it's like a layered building process of then being able to properly engage the chest while you're going through a bench press. There's something else that a trainer or you might want to consider if you're a beginner. Sometimes you don't feel the muscle because you don't have a lot of muscle there and this is I remember going through this as a kid. It's true. This is true. It's like a dick statement. No no no you ever train. You don't feel your chest bro. You don't feel your chest because you ain't got one. It's probably like concave. Do you guys remember this when you first started working out though? You didn't feel the muscle because you didn't really have a lot of muscle there. Well not only did you know it's not that you didn't have a lot of muscle. The muscle's always been there. It's that you haven't learned how to use it. Well you got to build some of it. Yeah but I mean like other than a push up or any you know bench press bar where in your life do you use your chest like you should. Like if you if you just push somebody if you're somebody who's never worked out and you shove somebody most people would shove them with their shoulders in their arms but you would get what you would generate way more power if you knew how to throw those hips in there. Oh yeah and pull the shoulders back and then and then throw so the chest could get involved in that movement but you just don't know how to perform that and so yeah not only do you have a weak chest like you're making the point but it's because you don't know how to you haven't learned how to activate it. But yeah I mean again try this easy tip you know pull the shoulders back like the like the boys were saying grip the bar real tight let your elbows flare out and then imagine like you're going to slide your hands together don't let them slide inwardly. Yeah don't let them slide but squeeze inwardly as you're lowering and as you're pressing and then you'll start to feel you should feel more chest activation.