Why I Don’t Bench Press Anymore
There’s a high chance of tearing apart your chest while bench pressing. This is called a ‘pec tear’.
And a ‘pec tear’ is just one of many reasons why I don’t personally bench press any more.
I understand that this might sound like heresy. For most avid lifters, the bench press is the holy grail of exercises.
In my view, the bench press is largely ineffective and dangerous. Here’s why:
1. The problem with physical exercise
The bench press is a suboptimal exercise.
To understand why that is so, we first have to understand the problem with physical exercise.
The area of physical exercise is a new field of study. Yes, humans have moved and been fascinated with exercise for a long time. Yet contrary to a lot of very established fields, such as engineering or physics, a lot of how our body operates is still unknown.
There are few objective truths in physical exercise. There are no ‘iron rules’ in physical exercise.
Pose the Socratic-question to gym goers: “Why do you exercise the way you do? Which objective truths do you base your exercise decisions upon?”
And not dissimilar to Socrates, you will hear disappointing answers or earn gazes of incredulity.
Truth of the matter is that most people have unfortunately no clue what they’re doing on the realm of exercise.
This is why most people get their knowledge from either one of these two sources:
1.1 Broscience
This is usually listening to the opinion of a genetically gifted person or a steroid user in the gym. That might look like he/she knows what he/she is doing – but in reality, don’t.
1.2 Science
Science has replaced religion – and it the process of it doing so – it has inevitably become one.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a ‘tin foil hat’ wearing science denier. I’ve read hundreds of actual studies in my life – although I’m not personally a researcher (sci-hub made it possible).
After reading hundreds of studies and meeting a few researchers personally though, it became utterly obvious that science is not what I thought it was.
There’s a few problem with general science:
1. Researchers are incentivized to get as many citations as possible.
A citation is another researcher citing their work, therefore giving the initial work additional credibility. The problem with this is obvious: A truly new idea will go against the grain – and therefore invite few citations if any. This incentive structure therefore creates group think.
2. The most research is found in 2 areas:
#1: The area with the highest density of talented people, and:
#2. Where there’s most economic interest.
The most talented people rarely become an exercise physiologist. Instead, they’ll go into medicine. That’s where most studies are found.
In medicine again, most reputable studies are found in pharmacology – not in the art of ‘building muscle’. Why? Because there’s more economic interest in those fields.
In other words, pharmacology research pays, exercise research doesn’t.
Having outlined these 2 options available (broscience and generic science), it’s obvious that both are flawed.
Luckily, there’s a third option available to us though. And that is:
1.3 Physics/ First principles
Here’s how it works:
We tie the information from a well-known field (physics) – and apply them to an unknown field (exercise).
This works, because our organism is subject to physical laws.
To give you an example: None of us is flying. Not me, not your neighbour, right? That’s because we’re all subject to the same laws of gravity – which is a physical law.
This is also called first principles thinking.
The phrase ‘first principles thinking’ was coined by Aristotle. Who urged his students to boil problems down to their constituent parts – and then reason up from there.
2. How to use first principles thinking to make educated exercise choices
Now that we know that truth is found in first principles thinking. And that out of the 3 options available, physics is truly the only option to rely on, let’s see how it applies for the bench press:
In general, we want to focus on exercises that:
- Give us the best muscle building results, in the least amount of time, effort and with the least injury risk
The best exercises therefore combine 1. Efficiency and 2. Risk minimization.
2.1 What makes an exercise efficient?
For an exercise to be a sound use of our time, it needs to stimulate our muscles better than other exercises available.
Now, is the bench press efficient? You bet it is.
Let’s imagine a 200lb bench press. A 200lb bar will put 100lb of weight on each arm.
Our upper arm multiplies this force (because it acts as a lever). It multiples it by 7x, to be precise. Currently we have a total amount of 700lbs that act on the chest area.
Muscle sometimes deal with a mechanical disadvantage.
Meaning: At certain positions, muscle can’t correctly pull at the bones around them.
In the bench press, this is the lowest point of the movement (when the bar touches the chest).
At that point, the chest muscles have a severe mechanical disadvantage. This is estimated to multiply the force by 6x.
The total amount of weight on each chest muscle therefore is 4,200lbs.
2.2 Injury risk
In general, the more weight there is on a muscle, the higher the musculoskeletal injury risk.
As we’ve previously seen, there’s a significant amount of weight on the chest muscles. That weight is also distributed around the joints and bones – which will increase the effect of wear and tear over time.
As serious trainees, we should stop asking ourselves:
Which exercise will allow me to train the heaviest? But instead, which exercise has the potential to be effective without requiring heavy weight?
Combine this with these two additional observations:
1. In general, weight lifting is a safe sport. The only deaths reported due to weight training arise from the bench press. This is: Due to incorrect form – or too much weight – the bar slips off and crushes the chest area of the trainee.
2. The most common complaints of trainees is shoulder pain. This usually results from an impingement. The impingement results from an overdevelopment of the frontal muscles, and a proportionally higher force applied in the front of the shoulder – compared to the back.
3. The Alternatives
Overall, I’d classify the bench press as a 7/10 exercise. It’s a good exercise from an efficiency stand point. It’s a suboptimal exercise considering the injury risks.
Better exercises, according to Douglas Brignole, which inspired the writing of this article with his book ‘The Physics Of Resistance Exercise’, are: