This is a wicked good article, and I’d suggest changing the title to “The Full Motion Myth” or something more specific than the current title, to inform more people of the potential dangers of going full-range.

I found out the hard / painful way that going to a fully dropped position while doing weighted dips was overstretching my shoulders… which then led to shoulder pain during bench presses. To continue doing BPs, the solution for me was partials.

It is particularly easy to screw up shoulders while dipping because, unlike other exercises, you can rest in the dropped position, sending way more than body weight through your shoulder while at its end of motion, placing a huge strain on the frontal shoulder tendons.

I’d suggest that anyone with shoulder issues who wants to do bench presses use supports so that the bar never goes below a partial position, e.g. forearms parallel to the floor. Similar for any other exercise – It takes only one rep in bad form, i.e. limbs in an adverse position, to cause an overload injury.

Great plain-language article. Now change the title! :-)

Greetings jason!

haha

This is adding on to what i said in my previous post: I don’t know enough about muscle building or physiology to suggest the exclusive use of static contractions. Your writing about range of motion as it pertains to muscle building definately made me think.

Donnie

Very good article. If someones goal is to simply build more muscle. Why could’nt they simply perform static contractions of different exercises. I’ve talked to Bill Desimone a little about this. He feels that some range of motion is good (in a safe range) to disperse the force on the joint over a broader area. I not sure if you are familiar with him. He recommends performing lifts in the muscle or muscles biomechanically strongest range. I do understand that if you participate in lifting competitions you would need to perform the lifts through the competition range to develop the skill. Just wanted to get your thoughts on all this.

From what you have said here, is it reasonable to assume that since I am more interested in muscular developement I would be better of just using a barbell floor press instead of flat benching whenever I am putting a barbell chest excercise in my program?

Or is barbell floor pressing more of a tricep specific excercise?

Thanks and great article.

http://www.vewdo.com/5_worst_strength_exercises.html

Some of that article might be unrelated to this article but there are similarities also e.g. the lower half of bench press is criticised in both articles.

Also, it would be great if Jason can provide his valuable comments on the article on the above weblink.

Kind Regards,

Naveen

Great Article! Packed with useful muscle-building as well as injury-preventing info. Thanks.

I read this an year ago and have read it many a times since then, don’t remember the count ! Its so useful that I’d request you to bring its hyperlink in the Popular Posts menu on the left of homepage (it is indeed a pity it s missing from there).

Kind Regards,

Naveen

If you want to tell someone how much you legitimately bench press the bar must touch your chest. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t count. If you are just using it to move some weight and get jacked then you can stop a couple inches above the chest. But if that is the case I would usually recommend dumbbells instead of a straight bar.

The fact of the matter is that full range of motion bench pressing is quite stressful on the shoulders and if you don’t need to do you probably shouldn’t. At least not too frequently.