Shoulder mobility and benching

When you finish doing some heavy bench how often to you find yourself thinking you could have done more? Or how about when you get up and your shoulders start stinging or pinching? There's a fix for all of that, and most of what I'm about to tell has come from researching mobilityWOD and from personal aches and recoveries.

note how shoulders are back

First off when benching a lot of the time we make a simple mistake. As the spotter takes the bar off our shoulders raise up in the socket. That reduces the amount of force we can generate, our goal is to have the head of the humerus as posterior in the glenohumeral as possible. In other words when benching you want the back of your shoulders to be rolled in and sunk on the bench.

After conquering that stumbling block we have to make sure that we can naturally keep our elbows more inward for better mechanics and drive. There are going to be a lot of guys benching with their elbows flared and telling people to bench that way. Don't listen to them because that's how a shoulder injury can catch you. If your goal is a bigger chest do Dumbbell bench and do it with proper form. So number two in benching is keeping elbows in and not flared.

Shoulder Mobility can really help improve your bench and recovery time. For starters make sure to properly warm up all ranges of motion within the shoulder. That should allow for proper lubrication of the AC and glenohumeral joints. Post exercise a cool down can help with recovery and increased ROM in the long run. Take a Pressure Ball [follow link for the how too on making a cheap one] and dig out all of the knots in the scapula, traps, and lats. Each knot you find you should spend enough time on to feel the muscle release. Fair warning all of that hurts until you finish.

If you have a band or a good friend to help you apply opposite direction forces try this.