Barbell bench press: How wide should your grip be?

★ Posted on 12-11,2024

< strong>Bench Press: How wide should your grip be?

The bench press is a great move! It can help us build strong upper body strength and thick chest muscles that everyone envies!

The bench press rack will never be idle in the gym! Everybody loves the bench press!

But it is not easy to do a good bench press. You need to master a lot of training techniques and details to ensure that your bench press becomes high-quality, safe and effective

Today we are going to talk about one of the many details of the bench press: how wide should the grip be!

All athletes, whether they are bodybuilders or weightlifters, believe that the most important factor limiting their bench press strength is shoulder injury!

The reason why shoulder injuries occur in bench pressing is often due to the bench pressing style of veteran athletes: too wide a grip, and the barbell drops close to the clavicle!

At the same time, we know that a grip that is too narrow will involve the triceps too much and increase the range of motion, which is detrimental to the bench press!

Fortunately, there is a simple, straightforward way to determine your correct grip width. The answer lies in the golden number 1.5.

Simply measure the distance between the two acromions. Then multiply this number by 1.5.

The numbers don’t lie

The bench press grip is directly related to the angle of your shoulder abduction! What we have to believe is this: Certain positions can put too much stress on your glenohumeral joint.

When your upper arms are outstretched and at an angle close to 90 degrees with your torso, this is a "dangerous" position for shoulder injuries.

When gripping the barbell at 2 times shoulder width or wider, the shoulders are forced to abduct more than 75 degrees and straighten more, however, when gripping the barbell at 1.5 shoulder width or more Hours, the shoulders will be placed at an ideal 45-degree abduction angle.

The ideal position of the shoulder should be 45 degrees abduction angle

Why is it ideal? EMG analysis shows that this angle is the one that allows the greatest amount of force to be transferred to the middle of the barbell. Also avoid too much stress on your shoulder joints!

Don’t the wider the grip, the more stimulation of the chest muscles?

It is often argued that a wider grip activates More chest muscles are involved, actually not. Bench pressing with a wide grip has more risks than rewards.

In a study published in 2007, researchers found that the risk of chronic and acute shoulder injuries increased when the shoulder was closer to 90 percent abduction during bench presses

The researcher went on to say, "Research has also confirmed that changing the width of the grip, from 10A shoulder width of 0% to 190% will not have a significant impact on the recruitment of the pectoralis major or anterior deltoid muscles.

In other words, using a wide grip (larger than 1.5 times your shoulders) does not stimulate the pectoralis major or anterior deltoid muscles any more.

Final Advice

The potential for shoulder injury during bench press training is too great, grabbing the bar and choosing a bad position can kill it Your joints and your gains.

Find your best grip, which is about 1.5 times the width of your shoulders. At the same time, when the barbell drops to the bottom, your forearms are perpendicular to the floor, and the angle between the upper arms and your body is about 45°, while maintaining Upper back tightness.

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