How to Bench Press Tip Warm Up Thoroughly

3.  Warm Up Thoroughly

Make sure you before you lay down on the bench, you warm-up not only your anterior (chest, shoulders and abdominals), but play special attention to your upper posterior musculature responsible for not only engaging movement, but also stabilizing it, ie. rotator cuff, triceps, serratus anterior, rhomboids, traps, lats.

Benefits of a Thorough Warm-up:

• CNS excitement
• muscle activation
• prepares joints, muscles and connective soft-tissues for activity
• negating poor posture and excessive short range of motion (ROM) movements of the day
• mental preparation
• improved performance
• reduce injury potential

Here are some exercises to help with your warm-up for an upper body training session.  Face pulls, pull-ups, tricep press downs, t-bar retractions and hand walking on foam are a great way to warm-up the upper back.

Face Pulls

Face pulls activate and target the shoulder retractors (rhomboids and trapezius) because each face pull should be preceded by a scapular retraction.  The two two pictures depict a typical face pull.  The bottom two pictures demonstrate the second type of face pull.  It engages an external rotation at the end of the movement, targeting the teres minor, infraspinatus and posterior delts.

Hand Walking on Foam

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