- Touching the chest is a mandatory part of the benchpress.
- As long as your ellbows are in somewhat the same angle, your chest does the work, when your ellbowangle is increasing when locking out, its the triceps doing the work. Shoulders are used secondarely troughout the entire excercise
- This means going deeper then 15cm above chest is full on chest
- The amount of stress put on shoulders, depends on how far your ellbows are away from the torso.
- If you make a 90degree angle, you are doing it completely wrong and put huge stress on your shoulder (rotator cuff) and increase probability of shoulder injury
- Try imagining you bend the bar when going down to the chest, with the pinkies going inwards. Your ellbows will move close to the torso.
-> You should allways have your ellbows somewhat close to your torso, to lower the stress on the ellbows. Most human males when conditionned well over years of training can bench between 100 and 200 kg.
I learned to bench by bodybuilders, who do everything completely wrong if it isnt a machine but a barbell. Result was i couldnt bench above 110kg without injurying my shoulders.
Training for 1.5 years with powerlifters now, proper bench form. Benched 150kg yesterday, and i have quite the improvement ahead. Shoulders are absolutely fine.
Wrong shoulder position will limit you to half the potential you can bench. think about it