Why Do Floor Presses?

I am aware that Joe DeFranco and others consistently prescribe floor presses to their athletes. Why is this bench press variation important and how does it compare to board presses?

It is one more variation in your arsenal. Cant really compare it to board presses because they are two different movements. The floor press is almost like a box squat for your arms. For some people it really helps with the mid range to lockout. But if you are like some of us, the floor press is actually a full range movement,(i.e. the bar touches my chest). Plus it takes the leg drive out of the press without having to bring your feet off the floor while benching which looks pretty gay.

Triceps require massive loads for maximum strength and hypertrophy development. The Floor Press is an outstanding exercise because it allows you to utilize an extremely large load, therefore, the triceps get maximal activation. It amazing how fast a newbie to this exercise can add 75-100 lbs. Once you’ve accomplished that goal, retest your bench. You’ll quickly realize why this exercise is frequently recommended by myself and many others.

Excuse my ignorance, but how does one perform this lift exactly?

http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459799

this article covers dumbbell and barbell floor presses.

thanks.

I have a quick question. I’ve done the floor press numerous times. (pr=365) But I always do them laying down with my knees bent. I know one of the advantages of the floor press is to take the leg drive out of the pressing movement, so wouldn’t it be better to lay down on the floor and keep your legs straight. When my knees are bent I still get some leg drive. Does anyone do them this way? Just curious.

Hey Moose I do them like that. I don’t really get any leg drive though. I do them this way as it’s more comfortable on my low back.
I have never managed big weights on this exercise best is around 120kg (versus 135kg standard bench). I’ve never seen the big increases mentioned by Chad W though. Could I have another weakness (Serratus?) preventing these gains?
Old Dax

Dax-

I didn’t even touch floor pressing until i was benching around 365Lbs. I think it is very important to increase your raw bench as much as possible. When you start stalling in gains, than it is time to start using floor presses, lockouts, etc. I think a lot of newbies to the westside system fail to build a strong foundation before starting it. I started westside my junior year in college football so i had a strong foundation. Since football my workouts were sporadic. I stopped training westside and started to do the bodybuilding thing. Well this wasn’t for me so this past month I have stuck to a westside template. Since I lost a lot of strength though i have to modify it so I’m doing more raw bench pressing. I do Dynamic effort bench press one day and have 2 four week cycles form my ME day. 1st cycle I’m doing Close Grip BP. The second cycle I will do a regular BP. I just finished up week 3 and I’m getting my strength back very quickly. I Close Gripped 335 for 5. Im using a lot of volume on the exercise. As soon as I do this 8 week cycle, I will then start using ME movements such as the floor press. So you could try something like this until your Bench starts going up and use a DB floor press as an assistance exercise.

[quote]moose83 wrote:
I have a quick question. I’ve done the floor press numerous times. (pr=365) But I always do them laying down with my knees bent. I know one of the advantages of the floor press is to take the leg drive out of the pressing movement, so wouldn’t it be better to lay down on the floor and keep your legs straight. When my knees are bent I still get some leg drive. Does anyone do them this way? Just curious.[/quote]

try them with your legs elevated, if you feel as if your are still getting leg drive, but striaghtining your legs out archs your back slightly, which i would assume effects different core muscles in the lift, elevating your legs and keeping your lower back flat on the ground would most likely put the total load on the uppoer torso (chest, shoulders, tri’s etc…)

here’s another article on floor presses:

http://www.elitefts.com/documents/floorpress.htm