To Bench or Not to Bench...

A few days ago, a thread was started over at mma.tv about Bench Pressing. The basic question (and I'm paraphrasing) the poster had was that he had seen a lot of people that claim the Bench Press was a good strength-building exercise, but he had also seen a lot of people in the fight game trash the Bench, and wanted to know if it was really a good exercise or not.

Here is what I posted:

My thoughts:

-Benching (w/a barbell) in and of itself is not a bad exercise. It is not necessarily the most "useful" exercise, as the chest doesn't (necessarily) play a large role in striking/grappling.

-Benching is not exclusively a chest exercise. Depending on your grip width and your Range of Motion, it also GREATLY bring the frontal deltoids and the triceps into play.

-Benching can wreak havoc on your rotator cuff if done too much, too heavy, and/or too long. However, you can say this about many exercises - not just Bench. You also need to make sure that you do rotator cuff prehab, and keep it strong (something a vast majority DON'T do). Also, elbow positioning can take much of the stress off the rotator cuff.

-People who say that Benching will make you inflexible are just plain mistaken. While it may not necessarily not have the greatest/longest Range of Motion, it is not responsible for you losing flexibility. Overworking the Bench, without equal amounts of work on the back's horizontal pulling muscles can result in lack of flexibility. And a lack of stretching/flexibility training is an even bigger cause of a lack of flexibility.

-Also, people who say that they lost a lot of endurance b/c they started to Bench are also mistaken. They may have lost endurance when they started Benching, but the Benching itself more than likely wasn't the reason. It was *how* (i.e. - set/rep scheme) the Benched that resulted in a lack of endurance.

-Too many people think the Bench is the measure of all that makes you a man - how good of a fighter you are, how strong you are, how well you can score with chicks, etc. And this is just plain wrong. However, as in vouge as it is in many circles to want to praise the Bench, it is just as in vouge in other circles to criticize the Bench and those who do it. It's kind of like Bodybuilding - people are either for it or against it, but either way, they're completely over the top about it.

-Benching is LIKE ANYTHING ELSE. It can be a good and integral part of an OVERALL strength, conditioning, and flexibility program. It just isn't the entire program.

Wiggy - MMA Training

My next article for MMA Weekly will discuss exercises/methods - such as the Bench Press - that are "popular" to trash or look down upon. This happens not necessarily because the exercises/methods are that bad (they might not be optimal, but they're not useless), but because it's "cool" to trash them. Examples other than the Bench Press would include curls/biceps training, certain isolation movements, and bodybuiding training.

Got anything else that you think should be on that list? Leave a comment.

Wiggy