We're pretty close to finishing up the rough outline of our barbell prescription for Masters,

Adults over 40.

Make sure you check out our videos on the squat, deadlift, and press prescriptions.

Today, we're going to talk about the bench press.

The bench press is perhaps the most ubiquitous of barbell movements, if you go by the

total number of people who do it. This means it is also the one that produces the largest

amount of average stupidity per rep. The bench, through no fault of its own, is responsible for

the lion's share of injuries in the weight room.

But if you understand the why and the how of the bench, it need produce neither stupidity nor

injuries. It's like any other medicine. You use it the right way and for the right reasons,

and it can be powerful. You use it the wrong way.

Hi, I'm Jonathan Sullivan and welcome back to Grey Steel. You'll recall from our video on the press prescription that a press

is a movement in which a load is pushed away from the body. In the bench press, a load

is held in the hands while the athlete is supine on a bench and the load is lowered and then

raised. The bench comes in lots of flavors, some more useful and less silly than others.

There are dumbbell bench presses and reverse incline bench presses and narrow grip bench presses

and dynamic effort bench presses, lots of variations.

We prescribe some of these variations for certain indications, including mobility limitation,

shoulder or elbow problems,

or as useful adjunct to training the standard bench for more advanced athletes.

But in the starting string system, our focus is on the plain old vanilla bench press,

in which the lifter lays supine, feet flat on the floor, grip wide enough to make the

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