Category 1: isolation movements
When you break it down, the front delts, chest, and triceps are the muscles that most directly “push” the weight up during a bench press. Therefore, if each of these muscle groups become all simultaneously capable of moving more weight, you would think more weight can be moved in the bench press as well.
1.) Delt raises
The delt raise should be done straight in front of you with dumbbells, but a little bit to the side. This is done to mimic the actual movement you make during the bench press so the correct muscles will be worked.
2.) Tricep pulldowns
The problem with most tricep exercises is that sometimes they impose a high risk of elbow injury. From my experience, elbow injuries are relatively safe using the tricep pulldown cable machine, preferably with the rope pulley device. Keeping the elbows healthy is important so you can really push yourself on this exercise and do heavy weight for a lot of reps and sets.
3.) Cable flys
The chest muscles activate heavily when the hands exert pressure from the sides of your body inwards. This is why I prefer cable flys as to other traditional chest exercises, such as dumbbell flys. During a cable fly, the weight is being moved from the sides of your body to the middle of the body in front of you. This ‘sideways’ movement activates the muscles of the chest in a way many exercises do not. Also, I found with good form this exercise presents a low risk of injury.
4.) Pullovers
I found that the body can handle more than just cable fly’s for the chest. I like pullovers as a second chest exercise because it works the chest muscles so that they move in a much different direction. As a result, if you combine cable fly’s with pullovers, you are pretty much working all muscles in your chest to some degree.
Category 2: compound movments:
A human being can push a bar forwards, upwards, downwards, and any degree in-between. When a bar is pushed forwards, certain muscles push the weight, but are not worked unless the bar is being pushed in a slight upward or downward position. For this reason, to maximize your strength in the flat bench press, the goal should be to be simultaneously at your strongest in each of these exercises.
5.) Dips:
The trick to this exercise is making sure you go down the same distance with each rep. The distance you go down makes a very big difference in the amount of weight you can lift during each rep. For this reason, I usually put an object about 1-3 feet high (e.g. a box or foam roller) below the knees so that the knees hit the object when proper depth is reached. To avoid injury on this exercise its important to train with light weight most of the year, while doing heavy weight only when you are getting close to a meet.
6.) Dumbbell military press:
The dumbbells should go down about the same distance each rep to ensure progress is being made over time. This can be tracked by either touching the shoulders at the bottom of each rep or using a reference point in the mirror (for example, your ears) to see how far you go down. Small jumps should be used so small increases should be made in weight as the months go by.
7.) Behind the neck press:
The most progress I’ve made with this exercise has been when I work up to 1 set of 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, or 10 reps, while going for a ‘personal record’ each session. I found that good long-term progress can be made on this exercise by training it only once every other week
8.) Incline bench
I bench two times per week. One of these days, I do incline bench. The other day, I do flat bench. I train these two lifts the same way, which means I do the same amounts of reps and sets on each leading up to the meet. .
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