A Case for the Bench: Why the Bench Press is a Functional Exercise
The bench press is a movement that tends to get demonized by functional fitness “gurus” and even many strength and conditioning coaches and athletic trainers because it’s a movement that’s considered to be not “functional” and even damaging. This train of thought is short sighted and pedestrian, and has led to a bunch of articles and videos about how the bench damages the shoulder, isn’t necessary and should be thrown out of your programming in leu of other movements. This will not be one of those articles, instead I’ll lay out my case as to why the bench press is actually a functional exercise. We’ll start off by explaining what the industry defines as functional exercise.
What is a Functional Exercise?
The fitness industry has gone through some interesting trends over the years. From using the HIT method as a strength development program (it’s not one), to devoting three quarters of a session doing mobility work, to everything being “Westside influenced” to the CrossFit craze of the past decade, and even to the use of stability balls as a staple for everything from dumbbell presses to lunge variations and squats and calling it functional fitness. While these trends tend to run their course, functional fitness seems to have stuck around for the long haul. While there’s absolutely merit to some “functional” movements, the overwhelming majority of what goes on with functional fitness is anything but functional. Functional fitness really took its toll on the industry and if you ask me, set us back from a public perception standpoint. It clouded what the average person understands about fitness and really turned off clients and athletes to what actually works. You see, the majority of the exercises functional fitness trainers were pushing were a bastardized mixture of rehabilitation exercises with actual training exercises. They didn’t fully accomplish either task of rehabilitating or strengthening, but they looked different and they were difficult. It’s a great marketing strategy and a way to separate yourself apart from the competition, but it’s a poor choice to base your training methods or principles around.
What the industry defines as a functional exercise is any movement that has carryover to your every day life. They focus on balance, core strength development, and often many other circus tricks in an effort to increase your movement capacity for life. The exercises are full of rotational as well as single limb movements in order to create an environment that makes every movement a total body movement. This is why balance apparatuses were added into the mix, because they feel like they work balance and your core, and most people could use more balance so it’s “functional”. The problem is that they really don’t increase balance (some will work your core though), they teach poor positioning in an effort to find stability.
For example, having a client perform reverse lunges on a BOSU ball creates an unstable surface for that client throughout that movement. They’re going to have to spend more energy finding stability because of the unstable surface and viola, its functional! The problem is that this client is more than likely going to see their foot fall flat, have a valgus stress at the knee, an internally rotated hip and an over-extended lumbar spine in an effort to create some sort of stability. This positioning causes the client to rest on their joints as opposed to utilizing the proper musculature to find that stability. While this is now a technically a stability exercise and thus “functional”, you’ve now lost everything that makes the lunge what a lunge is, and you are engraining garbage patterns that will carry over to the field of play and more than likely lead to non contact injuries. Every exercise can be functional, the exercise in this example just so happens to only be functional if your client is moving around on a water bed trying to find poor positioning. The take home here is that functional fitness is essentially meaningless, it means nothing so it means anything.
Functional for What?
Any time you include movements or stressors within your programming you have ask yourself what the benefits of including this movement are, AND how detrimental it can potentially be to yours or your client’s development. There’s a cost/benefit ratio for every movement/load/stressor and you need to take that into account when you put together training programs. Within this cost/benefit ratio lies the functionality of the movement when it comes to the transfer of your training to the field of play, or life in general. When you look at it from this perspective literally everything can become functional. From the deadlift, to jumps to even the bench press, it’s all functional as long as there’s rationale for including it and you can argue the merits of its transfer to the field of play. Functional circus tricks rarely have carryover, and thus aren’t very functional.
From the Local Joint Action to the Global Movement: The Bench Press Defined from a Movement Perspective
We’ve all bench pressed before, or we at least know what it looks like because we’ve seen someone else do it. You lie on your back and push a barbell towards the ceiling. Seems pretty simple, but when you break down what happens at each joint there’s a lot going on! From the feet up through the hips, into the torso and through the shoulders, there’s a lot of muscle actions that contribute to this movement. Here’s a list of what happens at each joint throughout this movement.
One thing I want you to keep in mind as you’re reading this list is that benching should honestly be one of the most uncomfortable movements you perform. Your body should be rigid from your upper back all the way down to your feet, If someone was to try to push you off the bench you shouldn’t budge. That’s how tight and rigid your body should be!
Feet/Ankle: The feet don’t really create any force during the bench, but they’re planted firmly in the ground and are the place where the force we’re generating at our hips and knees end up going through into the ground. A lot of people have a panic button when they start to struggle on the bench press, and they’ll start to dance with their feet. Fight this urge and continue to keep them firmly planted in the ground. Your feet should be planted firmly underneath your knees, creating a 90 degree position at the knee.
Knees: The knees are very stable in the bench press. When driving into the ground you’re going to extend through the knees isometrically. What this means is that you’ll attempt a kicking motion with both knees, BUT there won’t be any movement as they’ll stay in the same 90 degree position. You’ll be pushing down and forward at the same time in order create leg drive that will help contribute to force production in the bench press.
Hips: The hips are locked, and externally rotated. This will help to create tension and torque in your hips that allow force to transfer from the ground into your press without dumping that force before it ever gets to the barbell.
Hip/Knee/Ankle alignment is important is usually reserved for lower extremity exercises, however we would be remised if we did not touch on it here concerning the bench press. What this means is that you should be able to draw a straight line from your AIIS (Anterior Inferior Iliac Spine: the hip bone on the front of your hip that sticks out just a little bit. It’s where one of your hip flexors attach) down to the knee and into the ankle. This position is important in movement, and paying attention to it in the bench is a great cue for movement on the field.
Torso: The torso is rigid. We want a slight extension in our lumbar spine (you’re not a competitive powerlifter so there’s no real reason to create extreme levels of extension throughout your spine in this movement) and we want to maintain interabdominal and thus interthecal pressure by drawing in air and attempting to push the air out with a closed airway (valsalva maneuver) to help protect the spine and increase rigidity for force transfer into the barbell. While that sounds like a lot, most coaches will just yell out “stay tight!” in an effort to get you to maintain rigidity so if that helps, think of it that way.
Upper Back: The upper back is also rigid in the bench press. The shoulder blades are squeezed tightly together (retracted) and we’ll have a slight extension of the thoracic spine making our chest as big as possible. While this creates a safe position for the shoulder when bench pressing, it doesn’t allow the shoulder blades to move freely throughout the movement which is why we need to add in dumbbell, overhead and pulling movements into our programming when bench pressing. We need a firm base in order to produce and transfer as much force as possible from the bench (through the ground) into the bar, and this rigidity will assist with creating that firm base.
We want to fight the urge to protract (lose rigidity in our upper spine) through the pressing of the bar, and in order to accomplish this it sometimes helps to think of pushing yourself away from the bar, and not pushing the bar away from you.
Shoulder: This will be the first joint that is NOT rigid throughout this movement. While the glenohumeral joint is still “stable” there’s obviously a dynamic aspect to the bench press when it comes to the shoulder. The stabilization of the glenohumeral joint is beyond the scope of this article, just keep in mind that it’s happening throughout the movement. During the eccentric portion (descent of the barbell) of the bench press the shoulder will externally rotate, extend and abduct. During the concentric portion (the pressing of the barbell) of the bench press the shoulder will internally rotate, flex and adduct. Understanding these actions at the shoulder will allow you to better program your volume to counteract these movements and not “overtrain” or “overstimulate” the musculature in the shoulder. The pecs are a prime mover of the shoulder during the bench press, as they are a flexor, adductor and an internal rotator of the shoulder when in the bench press position.
Understand that while there are components of external rotation, extension and adduction of the shoulder, it’s also important to understand that those actions are happening in an eccentric manner. These joint movements are controlled by the internal rotators, flexors and adductors during both the eccentric and concentric portion of the bench press. Proper pulling, external rotation and extension volume needs to be addressed in order to keep the shoulder healthy when using the bench press in your programming.
Elbow: The elbow is incredibly important in the bench press. While the triceps are the work horse of the lockout and assist in stabilization of the elbow through the decent of the bench press, the biceps are fairly important as well. The biceps act as a stabilizer for the elbow (and even the shoulder) throughout this movement, and are firing the entire time.
Wrist/Hand: The wrist and hand are rigid throughout the entirety of the bench press. Squeezing the bar as hard as you can will not only assist in grip strength development, but it will also allow you to maintain stability in the wrist keeping it in a neutral position. The wrist is a major site for force dumping in the bench press, and maintaining a tight grip on the bar will help minimize that.
Maintaining a neutral wrist position is important in the bench press. Flexing the wrist could cause you to drop the bar on yourself, and extending the wrist can make you dump a lot of force as you’re pressing the bar. We want to keep an elbow/wrist/bar alignment to prevent this force dump and what could eventually be injuries as you get stronger. You want to be able to draw a straight line from your elbow, to your wrist and into the bar without deviating. Much like the hip/knee/ankle alignment, this is also an important cue for transfer onto the field of play.
What Makes the Bench Press So Functional?
Now that we’ve established the joint and muscle actions within the bench press we should look at how these actions create carryover to the field of play. Here are some real life examples of how they carryover:
Force Transfer: The bench press is a total body transfer of force exercise. You’re pushing into the ground (via the bench and your feet) and transferring that force into the barbell causing it to move. Force transfers happen on the field of play, and in life in general. Jumping, running, throwing, shooting, walking up the stairs, etc. all involve delivering force into the ground and then transferring that force through your body and possibly into an object. Increasing your capacity to perform this function via the bench press will have carryover to every aspect of your life.
Jump Height/Sprint Speed: Arm action when jumping and sprinting helps to create a training effect from increased ground reaction force. The act of throwing your arms towards the ground on the descent of the jump helps to force your body to overcome more force, and thus increase jump height over time. In addition to this, the flexion of the shoulder during the concentric portion (the up part) of the jump will help to contribute to jump height as well. When sprinting this arm action will have the same effect! It’s fair to conclude that having a stronger bench press can lead to higher jump height and faster sprint times.
Learning to maintain rigidity during the bench press will also have a profound effect on your ability to maintain a good position when it comes to your torso during jumping and sprinting. When jumping, we’re delivering force into the ground and we need to be reactive off that force to allow it to travel through out entire body without dumping any force along the way. Benching (along with many other exercises) can help cue you to maintain that rigidity.
Throwing: Believe it or not there’s a high correlation between peak power on the bench press and throwing speed. Back in 2007 a study named “Relationship between throwing velocity, and bar velocity during bench press in elite handball players” was published in the International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance. They concluded that throwing velocity was directly correlated with maximal strength and peak bar velocity in the bench press. While it’s not know why, I believe it’s fair to conclude that there is evidence to show that an increase in bench press strength will lead to bench press power, which will in turn lead to increased throwing velocity. Understanding that the pecs are an internal rotator in the overhead position can help you to wrap your head around why and how that can be concluded.
While it can be argued that only benching is probably a bad idea, it should also be noted that only pulling is probably a bad idea as well. The bench press probably gets too much praise at times, but it really gets entirely too much demonization when it comes to physical preparation from a lot of coaches who don’t know how to coach it, and they don’t understand how to program along with it. While it’s true that the bench press isn’t necessarily the best choice for every athlete, I think it’s something that should be included in your arsenal when it comes to coaching and programming.
