A few months ago I wrote a post on why incorporating barbell glute bridges prior to an upper body day (namely, bench pressing) may be a nice way to help “potentiate” the glutes to fire to better help with performance.
I wrote it and people loved it. I had no idea so many people would share it.
One of the more comical responses to it was from my boy Dean Somerset:
“If you’re one of those D-bags who bench presses with your feet in the air:
1. Punch yourself in the face. Hard.
2. Read this article and realize that leg drive is necessary (NECCESSARY) to have sufficient stability and neural drive to press up some realistically heavy weights.”
His comment brought up an interesting “debate” (which I don’t really feel is an actual debate; at least to those who put rationale thinking into practice) on the whole “bench pressing with the feet in the air” parade, which led me to write this article for Stack.com that went live yesterday.
It’s a short one (something like 600 words), and may serve as nice ammunition for those reading who have that buddy or friend or colleague or coach from 1985 who’s adamant that doing so is safer or that it isolates the pecs more, and need something to tell them to shut up.
Stop doing this, please. Just stop.
UPDATE: I should mention that there is one thing that’s dumber: bench pressing with a thumbless grip – like THIS. Now THAT’s pretty much like playing with fire.
