If you take my courses or listen to me lecture about the technique of the barbell lifts, you will hear hours of discussion about leverage, moment arms, compression, and muscular extension. It may be very confusing for a lot of you without a basic mechanical understanding. However, if you are standing when articulating the bar, then every weird little technical adjustment exists only for a single purpose... To keep the weight (of your body PLUS the barbell) balanced perfectly over the middle of your feet. For a bunch of you, it will simply be enough to imagine a perfectly vertical line passing from the middle of your foot, through the barbell, into the sky. As you move the bar, keep it in the that line, and your form will be incredible. This works for squat, press, deadlift, clean and snatch. Don't get me wrong, all of the other stuff is important, but putting in this context may help it stick better.

The bench press is the most dangerous lift most people will ever do in the gym. This is primarily because it is a relatively heavy load that is held and moved above the head and neck, but secondarily because it is a lift most people are familiar with and therefore tend not to treat with the respect that it deserves. With just a little bit of critical examination and preparation, we can turn the bench press into a completely safe way to train the push movement pattern however. Here are some ways to make the bench press safer: 1. Never use a thumbless grip. A thumbless grip is called a 'suicide' grip for very good reasons. Lifters do this in an attempt to articulate the bar over the bottom of the palm, directly over the bones of the wrist and forearm, to eliminate the moment arm at the wrist and the unnecessary wrist extension that may occur. This is an admirable goal, but it's not worth dropping the bar on your neck and killing yourself. Besides, you can achieve the same hand/wrist efficiency with the 'bulldog' grip, a slight interior rotation of the wrist, allowing the fingers to compress the bar into the point over the wrist bones while still allowing the thumb to wrap around the bar. It may take a few days of practice and some stretching, but it's worth it. 2. If you're not 100% sure that you're going to complete the lift, then use a spotter or lift with guards. The possibility of catastrophic failure and losing control of the bar, although rare, is always present. Spotting is a simple process and asking for it takes a few seconds. You can also use rack guards, the same ones that can catch the bar during the squat. These should be set up at a height where, during a correctly arched bench press, the bar can't touch them at the bottom, but were the lifter to relax, the guards would take the bar from the lifter. 3. Unless you have a spotter, some guards, or are not a particular kind of lifter with muscle tremors or weakness, never, ever put clips on the bench press. The clips keep the plates from sliding off the bar during the lift, which sounds like a really good idea until you realize that the only defense a lifter without a spotter has against death by barbell asphyxiation has is to let the plates slide off the bar so the lifter can un-pin him or herself. Lifting with clips and without a spotter has literally killed many athletes.

*Disclaimer - I am not a doctor, and I am not qualified to treat, prevent, or cure any medical condition, if you believe you may be experiencing a form of medical emergency, please disregard everything I say, and immediately seek out qualified medical attention* I've hurt myself a lot in the gym, and my clients have hurt themselves a lot in the gym too. The vast majority of these 'injuries' are normal byproducts of using your body in a physical world, and if you didn't get these aches and pains from squatting or deadlifting, you would get them from mowing the lawn or helping your buddy move his new couch. There are a very, very, small number of catastrophic physical injuries that occur during strength training, but it's never happened to me, or to any of my clients, and I believe these terrible events, like broken bones, or completely severed muscle bellies, can only happen due to unwise decisions in the gym, going far off program, lifting way too much weight, and paying very little attention to advice I give about technique and it's application to your lifting. Honestly, I don't worry about these at all. BUT, strains, pulling muscles, pops, sometimes in the groin, hamstring, low back, or elbow, WILL happen. They happen to everybody and they will happen to you, too. If they don't happen in the gym, they will happen somewhere else. The important question you need to ask is: what do you do about it when it happens? The very first step when you feel something happen is to not panic. The biggest mistake I see lifters make, including myself, is allow the small injury to disrupt your training and prevent you from exercising. The most common tweak that occurs is in the low back, due to the nature of bipedal locomotion, and I've seen dozens of lifters take that as a sign they need to chill out, stay home, and return when their back feels better. The problem(s) with this are a) your back may take weeks to feel all the way better if you stop moving it, which sucks and b) that amount of time is now being spent allowing you to weaken instead of continuing to grow stronger.

Is any extra equipment necessary for strength training? No. lol short post today... Necessary? No, but useful? Very. The most efficient way to get stronger is to use incrementally loadable, ergonomically articulable, instruments like a barbell. If you're going to train with a barbell, there are tools that make that safer and easier. In order of importance... Squat shoes, with perfectly flat bottoms, Velcro straps across the top, and a slightly elevated heel will increase the quadriceps' capacity to help in the squat while also preventing force loss through squishy soles. Lifting belts, with uniform widths and thicknesses, will generate hoop tension that will contribute to intra-abdominal pressure doing the movements, allowing you to better utilize your abdominal musculature and keep your back safe. Wrist wraps will squeeze your hands when they flex or extend too much, giving you excellent intra-set feedback about how neutral your wrist angle is during the pressing movements. There are a lot more options, but if these three are the only pieces of equipment you get, you can extract a lifetime's worth of training without missing a beat.

Some people love it, some people hate it, and some people use it as an excuse to take lots of extra rest or to not train at all... DOMS (delayed onset muscular soreness) usually pops up about 24-48 hours after concluding your exercise. Many people's instinct when they feel pain or discomfort of any kind is to stop training, and rest, until all or most of the pain has abated, unless you're one of those people who take DOMS as a positive sign of a good workout. The reality is, DOMS is caused by very specific phenomenon that can be managed effectively with a little bit of consideration. Although unavoidable, it doesn't have to be severe, last very long, or occur frequently. DOMS is caused by these two things: A) Novel physical stress - some kind of exercise or some amount of volume that is very NEW to you and B) The eccentric portion of the exercise, or the lengthening of a muscle under load, this is the descent of the bench press or squat, for example It should occur to you quickly, then, that once the exercise is no longer NEW, or if the exercise does not contain an appreciable amount of eccentric loading, it will not stimulate muscular soreness. Practically, if you start a program, and it makes you sore, all you have to do is NOT STOP and the soreness will go away. If you rest because you are sore, and therefore wait longer before you train again, some detraining will occur, and the exercise will produce more soreness that it would have otherwise. A final point, although it's good for you to remember that I am not a doctor and I am not qualified to prevent, treat, or cure any medical condition you may have, I have coached >1000 people through all sorts of pains and discomforts associated with training. 99% of the time, the more the person moves, the faster the pain/discomfort/soreness will go away. This makes sense when you consider that movement encourages blood flow through the damaged muscles and this will facilitate more rapid healing. So bear in mind that soreness is not a price you pay TO TRAIN, it is a price you pay to STOP training.