What am I doing wrong with my bench press? I’ve been keeping my elbows tucked in and bringing the bar to my lower chest, and I can almost lift the same weight with dumbell bench press. With dumbells I lift more bodybuilding style emphasizing more of my chest. I rarely feel my chest when using a barbell. Also my military press seems unusually strong in relation to my bench press. Is there anything I can do to correct this?
What his your hand position like? The wider your grip the more chest you hit.
Well, there’s powerlifter style and then there’s bodybuilding style regarding bench press.
The elbows tucked in is PL. Flaring your elbows out is BB. With the tucked in style, it’s building some good anterior deltoids strength, which helps with your military press.
Like John S. says, wide grip will hit your chest more. So will heavier weights. Put the “elbows out” style into this scheme, bringing the bar down mid chest. then do incline press and decline press, finishing with some peck deck (all totaling 30 reps per exercise) and you’ll be sore.
Be careful using elbows out, if you use any decent weight for a long enough period of time, you will trash your shoulders.
I use a fairly wide grip.
I’m not really concerned with not “feeling it” in my chest. I really just want to move more weight. I just can’t understand why I can lift as much with dumbells as I can with the bar. I don’t know if it’s a strength issue or a form issue. Should I just work with light weight for a while and focus on keep my shoulder blades together and elbows tucked?
[quote]pvoosen wrote:
I use a fairly wide grip.
I’m not really concerned with not “feeling it” in my chest. I really just want to move more weight. I just can’t understand why I can lift as much with dumbells as I can with the bar. I don’t know if it’s a strength issue or a form issue. Should I just work with light weight for a while and focus on keep my shoulder blades together and elbows tucked? [/quote]
Possibly the ROM with DB’s is less? i.e. you’re lowering to touch your chest with the 'bells, which means the bars of the DBs are 3" or 4" higher than the equivalent BB bench.
How long have you been doing barbell bench?
Try pause benches.