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Bench Press Grips
Different Types of Bench Press Grips
It is important to note that although there are many different ways to do bench press there are other ways of specifically isolating a muscle group. It must be stressed here that the difference in your grip on the bench press are going to enable a different angle of stress on your muscles.
What this means is that you need to make sure that you are not simple doing the movement to just push the heaviest weight that you can. It has been proven by science that the neuromuscular pathways that are created when you do a movement like bench press will increase a lot faster if you concentrate specifically on the muscle group you are trying to isolate.
Close grip bench press has been rated as the best triceps exercise to improve the strength of your triceps. The three muscles in the triceps make up 80% of the size of your arms but they also make up 80% of the strength in your upper body so they are vitally important.
Just like any bench press movement you can isolate the muscles that are involved with the press a lot by tucking in your elbows as close to your body as you can. When doing a close grip bench this is even more important as your objective is to specifically isolate the triceps and nothing else.
Wide grip bench press is something that you should work up to as it places a lot of stress on your wrist joints when you first start. Obviously the reason one would do wide grip is because you want to isolate the pec-delt tie-ins or rather the outer pec the same as dips would do.
When done correctly it is a great movement that will result in a broader pec which will make your shoulders look wider and give you that classic V shape. Some bodybuilders like to do this with a superset of dips on a day when they are training chest and shoulders but the choice is yours.
Reverse grip bench press has been proven to have a radical effect on the chest development if you have not ever done these movements in the past. It really isolates the chest when you first start out so be very careful to not only have a spotter but also to select a weight that is less than 50% of your max.
The best part about starting this kind of new movement if you have not done it before is that you will see your strength gains very fast. It certainly takes a bit of getting used to but you will find that the gains are quick and all on your chest.
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