 Everyone knows the bench press is a huge part of your training plan, but are you wasting your time with it? We're going to talk about it in this video, so check it out. What's up, guys? It's Eric Johnson from Airtate Throws Nation. And in today's video, we're going to talk about things that are wasting your time. Are you hitting that bench press because you've read a zillion things or looked around and the bench press is absolutely critical to throwing the shot put farther or throwing the discus further. Correlation stretch, get the pec moving, clavicular head. You get the pec major, right? Everything stretches out nice in the discus. You're going to feel that here. You're going to feel that big chest, big strike, and that's why you need a big bench. And I would agree with that. And over the years, I have been able to increase bench press max on a number of my athletes with minimal bench press. And how do we do that? And this is what I'm meaning by, are you wasting your time? Now, there's two purposes of today's video. And one of the things I want you to understand is one, if you want to get that bench at bigger and two, if you're doing too much bench, can it actually negatively impact your throw? Well, if you're not training correctly, that is exactly what's going to happen. And here's why. When you are training the chest, one of the things we're going to be doing is you need to have a strong posterior chain. You have external rotators, right? Your scap retractors and your external rotators. You need to look like this. Here's one of your simple tests. Stand up, relax, get up in front of that computer. Your or your phone and stand and relax and just stand here. And where do your hands sit? Do your hands sit like this? Do your hands sit here or do your hands sit here? And here's what I'm going to bet that the majority of you do not sit here. If you just stand and relax, this is where I'm at right now. What's been happening with coach Johnson? Coach Johnson coaches all afternoon and he works at his desk all day and then after coaching. And so what happens is sometimes when that happens, I get a little bit here. I got to hit the gym. I got to open up and I got to fire up the back. I'm going to be doing pull ups, rows, all kinds of different things to kind of counter that. And what is one of the things that coach tends to do? Stand like this. Look a little similar to this. We call that the tech posture. Remember, these are things you're on your phone. You're on your iPad. You're playing guys are notorious for playing tons of video games. Shoulders in this position. Sometimes we're all playing like this. Now you're in this rounded position. Oh, then you say, Hey, it's time to go hit the gym. Boom. I'm going to bench press. So you're already rounded to begin with. You start smashing more bench and this is what happens. So what are we going to do? We got to start understanding that if we want to get that bench press bigger, if we want this to go away, because why is this a big deal in the throw? Because it affects how you rotate thoracically, right? That means that mid spine, lumbar spine, cervical spine, that mid spine is where the rotation. If this starts to get off and this gets off, you don't rotate. You don't create separation. There's a less of stress reflex. And this is one of the reasons why you're struggling. So in this video, we're going to simply talk about make sure you're doing a two to one ratio to increase your bench, increase your posture, and you're going to actually improve your technical learning and you're going to get bigger numbers in the weight room faster and you're going to avoid injury. So first thing we're going to do is we're going to look at some simple things. We're going to do how many we're going to do three things with a barbell that are going to make a big difference. So one, one of the things is understand your simple technical point. If you look at me from the front, you look at free from the side, look at what I just did. This is called supine grip, right? This is your prone grip. If I'm already here, notice my shoulders from that side camera. Now my head sticking forward. I want that cervical spine alignment and scaps back and retracted, right down depressed retracted and I'm here big, tall chest. This is going to help me be able to create better rotation, right? You're going to see that as I come through. I'll leave my feet locked. Look at my rotation to my throwing side. Okay, so you'll see that if I round and my pelvis tilts, now my rotation is going to be less. And so if I'm here and if you see this, this is a limiter in your bench press increase. So what's the first thing we're going to do? We want to get that hand here and we're going to go supine grip. We're going to make sure that we pull those scaps back and down. It doesn't mean scoot your chest up and compress your spine with overextension. It means understand how to stand up straight and pull your shoulders into position. So that way when I hinge and bend, I'm loading the hamstrings and glutes. I'm engaging my erectors and now my scap retractors are going to be able to engage and I'm going to get this nice pulling motion through here. I can change and pull up to the rib or I could pull up to the chest, but I know how that's going to affect my shoulders. So this is why we encourage our throwers and everybody lifting to pull here. We want to pull back and this is going to engage the back first, then the biceps and the delt become the secondary muscles that are helping assist. Right? So really important. Now, simple exercise you can do to to mix it up. You can do a split stance, take this position here and when you row a barbell, you kind of by default, if I start pulling it here, you're going to change the tilt. You see how it's going to kind of start rocking? So if I pull up here again, notice it's too much shoulder too much bicep. If I pull here and pull back to the hip, notice how the bar is kind of sliding and I'm getting that really nice scap retraction. Okay. So remember we have supine grip bent over row. We're going to come to the knee, nice flat back, set the hinge. We're going to set here with a split position and we're going to hold that bar and we're going to be able to see this and we're going to be able to row here and you're going to see how I'm going to be able to. It's going to kind of force me into the position to row back and keep that bar and a nice stable line. Now our third movement we're going to do is we're going to be able to drop into the position. We're going to go a little wider. We're going to notice I'm going to get my ribs down to the thighs and we're going to be able to pull here. So now we're going to work kind of that upper back motion and we're going to be here. Now if I'm doing it right, I'm loading the hamstrings simultaneously. So you notice me from the side camera. You notice a pretty straight back position, right? I'm loaded up on the hamstrings and I'm going to take that. If I got weight on the ground, I'm going to be pulling here and I'm pulling it right under basically at the base of the pack, elbows nice and straight. And so now a few stood me up. I'm getting this motion here. So here I'm pulling more of the scaper tractors. Here I'm pulling everything back, opening it up again. And here I'm getting that nice row to the hip again, three simple exercises. So let's talk simple numbers. If we're looking at, we want to do, you know, you're doing five sets of bench in your workout. You should be doing 10 sets of rows. So if we did five sets of supine grip, bent over rows and then we did our split row with the same barbell. Now we would have our 10 reps and we could go increase the reps because typically the weight that's going to be used on the back, right? When we're bench pressing, we could probably put up 225 easier than you're going to do a single arm row. So we're going to increase the reps because our weight is going to be likely less. Now here's the thing, make sure that your technical positions are good just like you're just like you're throwing. But the key is you quickly want to be doing enough posterior chain work so that you're increasing the strength in those accessory lifts that help you hit that bigger bench. When I can hold the bench into place, I'm going to be able to push harder on here. If I fail up at the top, I probably need more tricep work and that's part of that posterior chain. So if you're benching, make sure that your back work, your row work, right? In your tricep and posterior delt work is all being included in there. So many athletes. I've come across so many strength training programs and they're going to, we're going to, we're going to smash the bench. We're going to do bench press. We're going to do closed grip bench press. We're going to do incline dumbbell bench. We're going to do decline bench. We're going to do dumbbell flat and they're just murdering this and then they're walking around like this and they wonder why they're adding five or 10 pounds to their bench over 10 weeks. Whereas we can commonly see 50, 60, 70 pound jumps because we're really focusing on structural alignment, which is going to ultimately help you with your throwing as well. So it's two fold. So this is what we mean when we started this video. Are you wasting your time with strength training? Are you wasting your time on the bench? This is how you're wasting your time. Make sure to get in that post of your chain as a rule. We recommend two to one ratio. So there you go guys. Hopefully you like that. If you're looking to design your ultimate throws training program, we have a course specifically designed to do that. It compliments the throwing chain reaction system. And as I mentioned in this video, you have the strength component and how it affects your gains in the weight room and how it's going to affect you technically in the ring. When I demonstrated how we're going to improve thoracic rotation. This is really simple. This is a reason why sometimes your gains are really slow technically as well because your structure is limiting that. So guys, thanks so much. If you like this video, be sure to hit that like button. Subscribe and share this with somebody you know is benching too much wasting their time. And let's help improve the sport and check out the throwing chain reaction system and our ultimate throws training program and I will see you guys on the next video.