Saw a total bro bench 235 yesterday. Quarter inch rom and bridging. Then he went over and leg pressed 2 plates, mirror flexing and shadowboxing between sets.

Saw a guy about my age (28) come into the gym who was slightly fat but well-built, it looked like he could bench 250 for reps. He comes in with this 40 something lady who seems fairly fit. She proceeds to instruct him step by step on all his stuff and it becomes apparent that she's his trainer. They do DB flys with 10#, seated presses in the smith machine, 20# DB shrugs, 30# ez curl, etc, and he's dopily following along.

Speaking of bridging bench, a guy who looks almost identical to a friend from college always seems to bridge his benches. Tbh I don't really know how bad that really is but w/e. He sets up with I dno, 190-195lbs without a warmup and proceeds to take 3 cracks at his first rep, bridging more and more until he gets the rep. Then he proceeds to do a couple more with even more bridging. Then I think he does another set or two with that weight but with added assistance on the bar.

However, why is bridging bad again?

pretty sure it lowers the range of motion by lifting your body closer to the bar?

^^ thats one reason why they do it.

bridging is necessary to get to the maximum weight.
every competetive benchpresser does it.
as soon as your butt leaves the bench, its bad (and somwhat dangerous for your back) and an incorrect lift in a competition.
the former bench-worldchampion, who was the owner of my old gym, said that you can "push with your legs" like this. nowadays he makes second place in germany time after time, losing to a russian who wears ballet-shoes for his attemps, cause he has better contact to the ground, hence can "push with his legs" a bit better. ( has better tension in his whole body).

the more bridge there is, the more lower chest is involved and the less ROM he has to work through, obv.

try a very wide grip and bridge a lot, let the bar down a bit under your nipples and the ROM is really short, esp. when you have short arms and good volume in your upper-body.

edit:
next post's video shows exactly what i said.

Most likely they are adopting some form of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHHGtQn0V5I

Works in the powerlifting world, but doesnt do a lot for real world applications. You can easily pick up 50-100 lbs by adopting this technique.

Or even better :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QnwA...layer_embedded

So there is nothing inherent in bridging that would make injury more likely or cause issues?

I understand the leg drive is the biggest reason to do it. I guess it helps lower the ROM a bit but if you have a good arch in your back it doesn't seem like it makes a huge difference in that respect.

this^

Yugo - bridging can be bad for your low back if you arch it too much

And contrary to what you've heard an inch or two can make a HUGE difference.

the ex-champ/owner did squats every week and called it one of the most important assisting exercises for benching.
every inch is a huge difference when doing singles.(lol)

i need to add that i dont do flatbench myself anymore.
since years i only do incline barbell and other stuff.
all i say is what he told me. he won 1984 under 90kg world-championship benchpress for DDR (east-germany), though.

By my estimation, this conversation should have ended a while ago.

its has ended.
he posted in my lock (good, helpful post) and we are cool now.
we both bluffed with the ignore-list, i think.

back to business.

I, for one, am very relieved that this internet feud has ended.

I'm not worried about my own bridging, I'm worried that I could utilize it as an affected tool to help move my bench higher more.

Yeah an inch or two makes a big difference but I'd find it hard to believe that the guy I was watching was getting the extra weight he was seemingly getting out of it just due to the decreased ROM. But I may be wrong...just seemed the amount of extra leg drive would make more of the difference. But I obv am not very experienced with bridging. I probably haven't even accidentally bridged more than a quarter inch off of the bench imo. Let alone a couple feet like this guy was doing.

This guy was benching in the power rack, but he would just drop it down to the pins and start the lift from there. Would this actually be helpful in developing strength from the bottom of the lift?

GGO: He was doing it from about 2 feet away from his chest, so the lifting was maybe 5 inches of movement

Pin press

Pin press is primarily for lockout/triceps strength.

I managed to tweak something in my lower when I tried a new 1RM this week, I have never arched/lifted my ass that much but its gone now so it probably wasn't anything serious.

Guy with sweat pants, sweatshirt, knit cap on... mind you it hit 104 degrees today.

A+, baby.

I think he's exorcising

if he would keep his spine in line so his butt lifted up it would basically be an inverse row which is what i think he was trying for but apparently doesn't have the upper body and core strength to do it that way.

Superb.

he's squatting

That's a woman imo