Mastering the Bench Press, Deadlift, and Squat: Techniques and Training Insights

[Music] I think between bench, squat, and deadlift, bench is the most like

bodybuilding. You're going to get bigger arms, chest, and shoulders, and back and get a bigger bench. Well, technically

squatting is like half and half. It's like 10. Yeah. What are you teaching them with the technique, though? For the

for the technique, uh, what I'm getting at there is your technique just needs to be efficient so that you can handle a

lot of volume. Okay. is kind of what I was getting at with that. Um, what I described earlier like with the bar

path, um, I do think there's plenty of different ways that you could bench because if you have a different

disparity of chest, front delt, or tricep strength from one person to the next, different builds, some people

retract their shoulders straight back. Some people retract and pull down or depress. Other people kind of shrug a

little bit more. Um, and so there's a lot of ways that you can bench. Um, but I, yeah, I think the common thing that I

see, and this is probably from people read the internet and they like, I should bring the bar low on my chest to

shorten the range of motion. So if I bring it even lower, it'll be even better. And so the most common fault is

bringing the bar too low and then pressing it too low. I say too low, I mean like over your lower chest or over

your upper abs. Um, when you see people thrust the hips off the bench, I think that's most commonly because you have

the bar going too low and you're trying to sort of like tilt it back over your chest to where you have more leverage.

Um, so I think that's that's a really big one I'll ask. Do you feel chest soreness

when you bench? Usually as sort of like a follow-up question if I think they've probably kind of taken the bar path too

low. So, that's a that's a big one for me. It's like your bench has to be, you know, it's got to be efficient. You got

to be tight, but you you need to make sure you're strengthening your chest. Um, if you're not strengthening your

chest, that's not the end of the world because it it could be that then you need to use a second bench exercise to

build up the volume that better hits your chest, like incline maybe. Um or for some people the if the bar path is

too low then you know fixing it with like a feet up bench you know um like the the Larson press is kind of popular

but for a good reason because if you like I said if you touch the bar too low and then you thrust your hips to kind of

fix the bar path you take your feet out you're going to stop bringing the bar too low because you're going to get that

negative feedback pretty pretty pretty quick and then you'll feel okay I'm actually my chest is doing the work more

because my chest is actually getting loaded on the on the lowering phase and not, you know, just at the last second

as I'm trying to, you know, get the So, yeah, I think that's that's a that's kind of a I don't know. It's just

there's little mistakes that are typically taking the chest out of the lift, I think. Um, now, of course, you

can use too much chest, but most of the people that I see, they have an idea like of getting tight, and usually that

means they wind up using kind of too low of a bar. Um, another sort of thought with the, uh,

you know, the shortest path is the best. Um, I'm sure everyone listening to this probably heard of Julius Maddox. He's

like the strongest bencher in the world. When he benched at our um, boss of bosses, he lifted on one of the like we

got the elite bench now. He's the only person I've ever seen put the bench up to number seven as far as the height.

and he's benched the most weight of anybody ever. So, the range of motion is the greatest on his. Mhm. And the other

thing that you'll see on a lot of guys who are really big benches, they'll actually sink the bar in their chest.

And so, you'd say, "Well, that's more range of motion. How could that be better?" And you watch them, you're

like, "Oh, it's it's obviously good." But the the trick there again is how much strength you have at your chest.

That's kind of determined by what's the muscle length of your pecs, your triceps at that position. Well, if you're

massive and when your triceps and chest are stretched further, they there's a point where stretching will kind of

increase tension more exponentially. So, you're the passive tension of the muscle that's really big um increases a lot and

that's where that deeper position gets a a higher higher tension on those muscles and so the trade-off of going further is

outweighed by the the speed that you can develop from the more forceful contraction. Um, yeah. And that's not to

say that there isn't like a technique to it, too, because obviously you need to be solid on the bench. So, once you do

drive it up, you're staying in contact with the bench and you're putting it in a position where you're stable enough to

like push through the lockout. So, um, when I watched when I watched Julius, I was just like, man, this guy looks like

he could press any weight off his chest. The question is, can he stabilize it at the lockout or is it going to just kind

of, you know? Yeah. you know, and then, you know, when he benched at Army, he benched 738

and it was like, again, the speed was there, but it was just like the lockout was a little bit it's a little bit

rocky. It was it was it was solid, but it was like you could just tell like that was the the limiting factor, not

the weight on the chest. Yeah. Um and then like we we worked out together one year at the um I think the Olympia and

uh I had just done like a dead workout. we go to workout together and we're doing a bunch of rows and um like I'm

I'm pretty strong but I was kind of matching him on the rows and I was thinking okay I feel like he should be

able to do do more than me on this stuff but I mean his his bench just kept getting stronger and the thing that you

could see is that you he would get it where it's like the lockout got more predictable and more solid. So then you

can you can't really utilize your triceps if your shoulders are kind of swimming. Yeah. you know, you got to be

able to have one solid object to push against before you can, you know, push that weight out. So, that was uh, you

know, that's something I I will also emphasize with the bench. Like, if you struggle with the lockout, I think a lot

of times it's not a limitation of just pure tricep strength, but more like is your form good enough where your

shoulders are staying locked in place when you go to actually lock the bar out or the lat strong enough to stabilize

the Yeah, certainly the lats are Yeah, that's kind of that critical muscle. Um, most of the guys who I've seen who are

um, you know, kind of middleweights who bench like a ton, their their lats are always totally jacked. It's uh, they're

important, you know, kind of important for all three of the lifts when it comes to never train your

lats too much. Yeah. With a deadlift, how do you go about coaching that? Um, that I would say all different ways. Um,

I think the deadlift is interesting in the sense that, well, like I said, benching, I would say, is like 90%

getting bigger. Mhm. Squatting is like half and half. You need bigger legs. That's half

bodybuilding, and you need a stronger back and technique, which is not requiring that you're just huge. You're,

you know, how you lock in your upper body can be dramatically better without gaining a lot of weight. Um, so there's

a sort of like a very big skill component to it, but I think deadlift is the most dependent on like skill. And

the reason I say that is you could sort of simplify your form and just keep your back locked in like a, you know, neutral

or extended position. But then the reality is you're basically just doing a half squat. You're squatting the weight

up. So if you're good at that, great. But if you want to lift more, all the best lifters, they pull with their backs

rounded. Um, and so in a squat, you could think of it as a compound lift where you are really loading your knees,

your hips, and your back, but your back's not articulating. It's staying locked. So that's only a limited number

of joints. But in a deadlift, you're loading your knees and your hips. But then you've got, you know, five lumbar

vertebrae that can be in articulated different positions. You got the 12 thoracic vertebrae. So you have many,

many more joints that you could articulate. And if you can do it with mastery, you can increase your leverages

really really dramatically. So you can get a lot of strength on your deadlifts without um just getting bigger. Um

so that that leads me to my thought of like, okay, well now you need to learn how to kind of consistently put your

back in the best position. Um, the way that I sort of think of it is your knees need to kind of be over the bar so that

you have the quads loaded to a degree. Some people a little bit more or less. Um, whether you pull sumo or

conventional, your hips need to be kind of forward to the point where like your knees are over the bar. Um,

in order to get in the best position though, if your spine is like extended, you know, like a squat, well, that makes

your spine effectively like longer. So, the position that you can move your hips into is either going to have to be

farther back or lower. And therefore, lower means you're you're basically squatting the weight up. Farther back

means more loading on your lower back. Um, and so to me, you want your hips to be able to move forward and above the

bar more. And therefore, you know, your shoulders have to be exactly the length of your arm above the bar. You can't

change your arm length. So, therefore, the the spine has to conform to kind of link those two positions. So, that's a

it's very complex version. If you said that to a beginner, it's like, yeah, the first thing they're going to do is

probably hurt their back. So, you've got to uh Well, there's bracing involved with this, too. That's right. So, you've

got to learn how to embrace that position. Yeah. And that's the trick. It's like it's uh it's accepting, you

know, the the challenge of the lift for what it is, not sort of being overly afraid of like, oh, deadlifts are

dangerous. You can't round your back. That's not really really true. I mean, um there's

degrees of flexion, like in a literal sense. If you round, if you flex forward a couple degrees, that's different than

four, five, six degrees at any vertebrae. The loading increases dramatically as you get, you know, into

kind of a deeper flexion. And so, let's say, for example, you got five lumbar vertebrae and you round your whole

lumbar spine forward by 15°. If you do 3° at each joint, that's pretty good. But if you do like seven or eight

degrees at one joint uncontrollably, it's dangerous. Yeah. Uh it's where at best it's just unsustainable to like

train that way cuz you're loading too much pressure on one, you know, one spot. So that's where I think the the

best lifter is you can distribute the load on your spine. Um your lats are also kind of pivotal for distributing

the load on your spine. Your lats uh kind of fan out. You know, they go from your arm, which is loaded by the weight,

across um I'm not I mean pretty far up the thoracic and they go all the way down to your pelvis. um not the the

muscle, but the fascia. So, um yeah, your lats are kind of like, you know, if you see one of those like uh suspension

bridges with all the cables hanging down, your lats are the cables. They're distributing the load on each one of

your vertebrae. So, if they're weak, you're not distributing the load efficiently. You're just hoping for the

best. So, when you set it up, how do you go about getting in that position, but then

getting everything tight before you pull? Yeah. What I what I would sort of say is getting in the position, you

should look like your armpit is directly above the bar. That's that's the position that you should be lifting

from, not behind the bar. Yeah. Not further over the bar. Um, when the lift starts, I think there's a number of ways

to think of it. Some people will think of kind of leg pressing the floor. Some people think of kind of sitting and

standing. I don't think there's one way that's the only way to do that. But I think there is a there is a certain

timing that has to be balanced with your aggression. Um like you literally cannot rip the bar off the floor so hard that

you're already locked out. Like that's that's not I mean we think that way but that's not possible. So if you can and

really the the main thing that I think about as far as the bracing is taking my breath and really just flexing the abs.

For me it's the lower abs more. Um, just in my own personal experience, I tend to overarchch the lower back. Um, but I

think the the key is repetition. If you do the reps, normally when you do reps, if you execute the form well, you should

be able to do one, set it down, and then get into the correct lifting position more immediately on the subsequent rep

and maybe even more aggressively as you kind of build up fatigue. So if you use the right kind of weights to do volume,

you should build efficiency as you go. Be like any other sport. If you went to the basketball court and you shot five

free throws, you would hope that you get better as you go by practicing, not worse cuz you're too tired. Well, isn't

the second rep going to put you in a better position the first, which would bring up the question of how many times

do you That's not going to be the reality of a meet where you only have the one. Sure. I would say a better

position. Not because I mean when I do reps, I never do touchandgo reps for deadlifts. So it's not literally putting

you in a better position, but from a um like a CNS standpoint, your body knows what position got the weight off the

floor. Yeah. So you can get into that position immediately as opposed to like having to feel it out. Um and then on a

third rep, if you start to feel fatigue, you're like, you know, I could I could lift this again, but I'm wasting time by

moving slower. So you can optimize your sort of like your speed as you go into these reps. So that's u that's for

building volume and I think volume builds your strength. Yeah, of course you need to do some heavy lifting so

you're you know geared up to do a well on the first rep because yeah, powerlifting is a one rep sport. Um but

using using volume has been like a like a huge game changer for for me. I mean, I'd always did sets of reps, but to be

able to kind of pull back and do workouts with like a top set of deadlifts and then sort of like a volume

block of deadlifts behind that, um, I I found that to be extremely important. Um, and as far as being able to brace in

sort of the unique sort of conformity or the conformed position of your spine that I think, you know, each person has

to figure out for themselves, um, doing the deadlifts is kind of tough to replace. So, you know, doing a bunch of

back extensions does not teach you how to position your back. It just strengthens the muscles. Um, so yeah,

I've always relied on doing a lot of uh stiff leg deadlifts and good mornings for kind of back strength and I I kind

of mimic some of that that rounding when I do those. But to actually do a lot of sumo deadlifts or actually do a lot of

conventional deadlifts where your back is having to deal with that rounded position, I feel like that's kind of

tough to replace. How has your training then changed to how you train now? Uh I'd say the biggest thing is um now I

will do a top set of deadlifts. That could be like a single, a triple, a set of five. And then I will follow that

with sort of a a working weight where I'll do multiple sets of, you know, like four or five, six reps, something like

that, and I'm building, you know, 15, 20, 25 reps in a workout. Um, yeah, I find that to be extremely productive.

Um, when I switched to training conventional, I did a training block where and and for conventional, every

time I would go to max, I would get so amped up that I would pull and like really extend my back and that would

just ruin the form. So, when I finally learned how to kind of cue myself to like lift and then let my head drop just

slightly to kind of release some of that extension on the upper back, I would do it fine on normal reps, but when I got

to the max, I'd always get kind of over amped and couldn't execute it. So, um that was good. But I also started doing

a lot of pause deadlifts. And I think we did talk about this the last time I was here, but u the pause deadlifts were

really really instrumental for me in building my conventional strength. Um, and they work really well for sumo. I do

them a little bit differently. For conventional, I will lift to the kind of upper shin and then pause there. And I

actually I'll pause for at least 3 seconds, like very long 3 seconds. Not uh like you can't rush or you're kind of

undermining the hypertrophy effect, I think. And at the same time, I would allow the bar to kind of settle. So,

you're sort of seeing like, can I let 10% of the tension off and let just my erectors hold the weight, you know? Um,

and then I would always pull explosively from that paused uh, position. So that was just really good at just hammering

the lower back. And um, you know, if you do five sets of five with a 3se secondond pause, you're having 75

seconds of tension, time under tension just in that position where you're right below the knees, which is kind of like

the toughest part, you know, in most people's uh, the part where you're you're forced to hold the weight in

front of your knees. So, it's the furthest away from your hips. For sumo, however, I would always pause just as

the bar is breaking off the floor. Uh, because I think in sumo, getting that perfect position at the start is like

you can't you can't compensate for that. So, to be able to just wedge your hips into place to the point where the bar

breaks the floor by an inch, hold it there for for me just for one second on sumo because it's not a question of like

erector strength. It's more of a question of just getting the hips to wedge. Uh so one second pause and then

explosive from there. Um but I use them on uh both and very very very effective for building form and also very

effective for building strength when you're able to repeat the motion like over and over and over again. Has your

squat had to change over the past uh my squats changed from injury I would say. Yeah. Um, I have a hip impingement and

over the years it has become more and more impossible to kind of like internally rotate my my right hip. So,

um, I basically just narrowed my stance. I still kind of keep the knees wide, but my feet are closer. They're probably

more like shoulder width now. And yeah, just kind of side steps the problem for now.

Uh, you know, a little more quad involvement to squat closer, maybe a little more lower back involvement than,

you know, getting to use the hips more. But I mean that's a it's kind of a fine price to pay to kind of lift you know

the next yeah the next like you know decade or so. And then your bench your bench training is it relatively still

the same? Um I don't train bench as frequently now. Um I had like a a pinched nerve in my neck that kind of

sidetracked my tricep strength a lot. And it you know I'll do it when I feel like it but for the most part my my

training schedule is pretty limited. So, I just use the time to train more squats and deads and just a little bit of bench

here and there. But, um, yeah, my squat and deadlift feel like they're as strong as ever. And, uh, so I'm just like more

fun. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, not really as uh, you know, driven with the bench. It's just there's kind of like a limit

to what I'm able to handle with my left tricep. So, has it been getting better? Uh, no. It got better for a while. And

it's like it's really not like a kind of like a muscular issue. So, um, at one point it basically caused me to kind of

strain my shoulder cuz it's just like, you know, I'm trying to change the loading pattern. So, it's kind of that

was a little bit frustrating. Um, yeah, I I have some sort of thoughts of what I can do about it, but I'm not

really acting on those right now. So, yeah, it's just not really part of what I'm doing in the training that much

right now. So how do you how do you periodize the training over the year then? Um right now I have been in the

last year I've probably had two times where I did not train for several months and then you know two stretches where

I've trained for like several months also. So right now I've been training for probably like four months and I'm

really just training about twice a week. This is really more to do with like the constraints on my my schedule and uh

whenever I train I'm you know doing some combination of squats and deadlifts or uh squats and like you know quad

training or squats and some back training. Um and that's that's been pretty enjoyable. I I feel like my

ability to hit an all-time best in the squat is is there. Um, and like last last uh May or April, I squatted 804

with the uh safety bar and that was like a pretty big, you know, wonder max PR like I think uh 15 kg higher than I'd

done. Um, yeah. And the deadlifts, they feel like if I wanted to peak those and test out where I'm at, I probably could

uh make a PR with that. So, for now, I'm uh I'm not looking at a certain meet, you know, but I'm I'm like lifting in

the animal cage this weekend. So, I'm gonna do some reps with the safety bar squat, which is it's kind of like right

up my alley. It's just kind of like how I like to train a lot of times. Doesn't part of this make you think that maybe

you need to take a couple months and just not train at all? I've done that. I Well, I know, but it

many times you you find these [ __ ] up correlations. Maybe it's a correlation. Maybe it's causation. Who the who knows?

That that time away allows you to get stronger when you come back. But when everything's going well, the meatthead

doesn't want to take the time away. It's definitely tough to take time away when you're training. One thing I've

definitely learned over time is like when I've had to take time off either for injuries or other things, I'm always

able to gain my strength back. And like I said earlier, you know, it gives you the chance to like kind of go back to

the drawing board and and sort of make sure that you like what you're doing in your training, you like how your

technique looks on all the lifts or or maybe you just want to kind of do like a different focus. You know, one of the

things that that I I think is really underutilized is doing something other than like the

competition lift as the main sort of focus of a training block. Um, for example, you know, you always low bar

squat and so you're like, maybe I'm going to use the safety squat bar and that's going to be the primary focus of

my squatting for the next like six to eight weeks or something. You know, it's obvious you can do that with like, you

know, your sumo deadlifter. I'm going to do conventional for a big block. Um, but I think those kind of things are

underutilized. I think on the bench it's fairly easy because I I've always liked having sort of a main day where I'm

doing the regular bench. But then I also if your secondary day is like let's say on the secondary day you say I want to

focus on and you have to pick kind of the chest, the shoulders or the triceps. Well, whatever you pick as your first

exercise of the day, you pick one that you know it doesn't really matter what you sort of ascribe it to. But if you

say, "Okay, well, the next six weeks I'm just going to do I'm going to do my second day. It's always going to start

with incline bench, and then I'm going to always, you know, do like a [ __ ] ton of dips or something." Um, and then, you

know, 6 weeks later, you're like, "All right, now I'm going to always do shoulder presses and close grip bench."

So, you can sort of I feel like on the bench, it's easier to kind of There's more options. Yeah. So, it's easier to

kind of u pick one thing to like say, okay, I really want to get my flat dumbbell bench up. So, that's going to

be the first exercise of a certain day of my training. I'm not going to do it after bench when it's kind of like, you

know, maybe good, maybe bad. I'm going to do it as its own thing and then see what happens. You might make a lot of

progress that carries over to your, you know, your main lift when you give your main lift sort of a back seat. I think

it it also gives you a mental refresher. Yeah. when you're just like not constantly stressing about like pushing

your main lift up and then what if you have a bad day you're kind of like a man all this work and I'm just backsliding.

Well, it also helps speaking as a washed up meatthead. It also helps because when you do this your whole life and say you

try to do some stupid [ __ ] like bodybuilding training or all this other stuff that you don't really like,

training becomes really boring. Sure. Because you're really not training for anything. And so then you can just pick

some stupid variation like a high box spider bar and say I want to do x amount of weight on this but you know you can't

do it now but it's going to take it's if if not more it might take nine months cuz I got to get back in shape you know

there's all these other phase then you have an anchor point you know where as lifters that's kind of what we all grow

up with there's this anchor point of Yeah. But it doesn't always have to be those lifts. Yeah. Exactly. you know, if

it could be something that's going to complement those lifts and you get a mental break, you get all these other

things. And if you end up not being able to do one of the lifts for whatever re injury, whatever it's going to be for

the rest of your life, then what are you going to do? Train for health? You know,