Rating My Subscribers Lifts | Proper Bench Press Form | Technique Tips 003

YouTube, what's going on? We are back with the 3rd video in the Technique Tips series. Again, this is where you send me your technique videos and I give you the tips. All right, today I believe we got bench press, deadlift, barbell back squat, and RDLs. So we're gonna go over those 4 main things. And remember, I literally do this for you, whether I go over your exact video or not, or just so you can learn about the forms of exercises. And if you want to submit your form to have it gone over on the YouTube channel, then just simply submit your form video to the link in the description of this video. And you will have the opportunity for myself to go over your video. All right, now let's go over the first video covering the bench press. Now I am probably going to butcher your name and I apologize for that. Um, I believe you pronounce it, Gotzeng. And if I say it incorrectly, I apologize, but we're going to go over her bench press right here. And I think she mentioned here, um, so, you know, she, she felt pretty good about it. I think she actually went for a— so this is 95 pounds on the bar. She was going for a bench press PR, but I believe, um, she was trying to do 1 rep and she got 3. So like, first off, let's just fucking go, man. That is amazing. You should be very proud of yourself. Um, I think she also said somebody had told her to go a little bit lower in the bench press. So let's look at it. Um, Okay. Again, for you hitting a PR, this is massive, massive, massively good form. So just seriously huge congrats. I don't think you need to go any lower. It looks like you're hitting right at the top. Like right as soon as it touches your chest, it's looking like it's coming right back up after that. So I don't think you need to go any lower. No, I think you're going pretty low enough. I think there's a few things you could potentially look at here. Number one, especially for girls that might be a little bit short, or guys or girls, but anybody who is shorter, I saw you're kind of elevating your toes here, which I think is a good idea. What I would do though is I would potentially elevate your heels because in a bench press, if you can have your heels flat on a surface and kind of like dig your heels into the ground, that's where you're going to get a lot of leg drive coming from this movement. And leg drive is going to help you lift more weight. when you're doing a bench press. Yes. Even though it's an upper body movement, the leg drive can help you, you know, use your glutes, stabilize your core, keep your lower back down, and then be able to push harder in the movement here. So I might put those elevations on your heels. That's like kind of, you know, not from the actual form right here. Um, that's number one. And number two, the only other real thing I can say is, again, like I said, you're going low enough. It looks like you're kind of packing those shoulders down and back into your back pockets here. It looks like you're having a slight arch in your upper back, which is what you're supposed to do. When you have a bench press. So great job there. You, you do not want your back to be flat on the bench while you're doing a bench press. You want to have a slight arch here, just like she does in her mid to upper back. So great job on that as well. The only real thing I might be able to add is just be sure— I know this was a PR for you, but just be sure to remember to keep those elbows tucked as much as you can. Like on the way down here, notice how your elbows are, are tucked. You might, You can't, you can only move so much in a barbell because you can't actually move the barbell, but you're keeping your elbows tucked, keeping your shoulders down, keeping your lats engaged. But notice how when you come back up, your elbows kind of flare outwards just a tad bit more. And it looks like the shoulder elevates just a tad bit on the way up. This can potentially lead to just some either elbow pain or more so probably shoulder pain over a period of time. When you get down into that bench press and you kind of go like this right here, This is called anterior scapular gliding, which like, you don't even really need to know that. It's just like you rolling your shoulder forward is going to create this like impingement in your shoulder joints. So we want to be able to make sure to keep those shoulders away from our body and keep those elbows tucked as much as we possibly can. But other than that, man, seriously, like again, great job on the PR. Everything else looks spot on and keep rocking and rolling, man. All right. We are next going to have, I believe you pronounce it, Adelina doing her squats right here. So first and foremost, you look like a fricking beast. I mean, look at your leg muscles. My God. Like, when am I going to get my leg muscles to look like this right here? Let's fucking go. Um, you looking solid to begin with. Um, got, I believe, 55 kg on the bar, which she said feels pretty comfortable for her, which is a large amount of weight to begin with. So massive congrats. When we look at like the squat right here, keeping the chin tucked, which is awesome. Not like trying to arch your chest up too much, which is very, very, very good. Um, There's a few simple corrections you could make. I like how you took those shoes off to make sure you have a flat surface with your socks right there. And again, you can lift like barefoot or with socks. That's totally fine as well. Um, the couple of things you might be able to look at, number one, I might think about changing your squat width a little bit only because when we go down into this squat, notice how it almost seems like we kind of like run out of range of motion, right? Because remember at the bottom of a squat, We're trying to get our, the middle of our hip joint to be in line with our knee joint right here. And again, so if our knee joint is right here, our hip joint is right here. We can get a little bit lower in this range of motion. The thing you might be kind of like is holding you back is you might want to get a slightly wider stance to create more like range of motion in your hips. And then your toes can get slightly pointed out. If you step a little bit farther out, Slightly point your toes out. That will allow for some more external rotation in your hip, which is going to allow you to get a little bit lower in that range of motion. So I think that would be the potential first thing. And the second thing I would say right here is, again, I like how you're like hinging back first with the hips. I think this is perfect. I think that combined with you getting a little bit lower— I'm sorry, you getting your feet a bit wider apart and slightly pointing your toes out, I think will help. But I will say, I do think you can have even more of a slight lean in your torso because notice how like once you kind of like get right here, you start to go back. Right. I think if you were to just throw your hips back a little bit more, ever so slightly, and let your torso lean forward ever so slightly a bit more, you're probably going to be able to, with the correction of the feet, get a little bit lower in the squat. Because again, it looks, it almost looks like you run out of range of motion about right here. And notice how you almost kind of like tuck your butt kind of like under you at the very bottom there to kind of like start to get back up. I think if you allowed yourself to lean forward a tad bit more and your hips were a little bit farther back in this range of motion, again, combined with the feet that we just talked about, I think that would make a big difference for this movement. Because remember, you don't have to like completely keep your chest upright. You can have a slight lean in your torso and that's absolutely fine. Um, other than that, I think this movement looks really, really, really good. And again, for the amount of weight that is on the bar, You should be very proud of yourself. Right? All right. Next up we got, I believe Tess Lee is how you pronounce it. So, um, hope I said it correctly. We're going over some RDLs right here. And to be quite frank with you, her RDLs look really good. So she has a nice neutral spine right here, which is awesome. She's keeping a soft bend in her knees right here. She's pushing her butt back to the wall behind her, which is perfect. She's not going down too low, which is a very common thing. We've gone over RDLs a few times in this technique tip series. Um, She's not going down too low, which is perfect. She's tucking her chin, which is perfect. There's so many good things I just pointed out to you. I hope you guys are seeing. The only thing I would say to potentially correct right here would be one slight thing, which would be right now, notice how like there is some, a slight rounding in like your upper back right here. Nothing crazy, but a slight rounding in your upper back. What I would really think about doing is when you're holding these weights, Really think about shoving your shoulders down into your back pocket, creating space between your ear and your shoulder. Create this space right here and activate and turn on your lats because that is what is supposed to be holding this weight. I think that is going to, number one, fix that posture just a tad bit more, and then number two, honestly allow you to have— honestly lift heavier weight because When you can brace your lats and you can have your lats hold onto that weight a bit more, your lats are way stronger than your arms are. So you're not trying to hold the weight with your arms. You're trying to hold the weight with your lats. And I almost want you to also think about if you had like a tennis ball, I thought I had someone around here, but if you had like a tennis ball and you put it between your armpit and you're shoving your shoulders down, you're trying to squeeze that tennis ball to a degree. That's how I want you to think about shoving your shoulders down into your back pocket and not letting your elbow like, flare out to the side like this right here, almost like having your elbow pit kind of like facing the wall in front of you just a tad bit more. So I think that one slight change, Tess, I think that would make the movement literally perfect and, uh, keep lifting heavier weight, man. All right. All right. And last but not least, we have Maggie here doing some deadlifts, looking like an absolute unit. Um, I mean, seriously, like what the fuck, man? You look fucking awesome. Um, when it comes to her deadlifts here, she had mentioned she was having, um, some slight lower back discomfort. after some of the deadlift sessions, not with this one in particular, but some of the deadlift sessions. So if we kind of like take a look at watching some of the, some of the form here, right? Again, aside from like Maggie's amazing muscles that she has, um, we're looking at the form here. We're looking at kind of like where she starts her hips. We're looking at where the bar goes. We're looking at where she locks out everything, right? Honestly, again, moving a tremendous amount of weight here on the bar. So you should be very stoked about that. Some, Slight back rounding. So here's what I would say. When we're looking over this movement right here, getting a very good kind of like push off the ground right there. As she starts to kind of like come up, I mean, the weight is moving very easily. So like, we know you have the strength and you have the power. I think if there's a couple things you might be able to look at, and again, I think Maggie asked about, you know, at the top here when she's like locking out her deadlift, you know, should she bring her hips forward so much? I think it's not bad to bring your hips forward kind of as you are, as you're locking this weight out. The thing I will say is you want to be stacked, right? Notice how right now your head is back here, your shoulders are over here, your ribs are over here, and your pelvis and your hips are over here. You're leaning back, right? Your joints are not stacking over each other. We would like to have your joints stack over each other at the, at the top of a deadlift. And so how you're going to fix this, it's very simple. Just simply make sure to keep your core braced. And when we talk about like lower back pain during a deadlift, especially when you're kind of like, you know, using this lockout movement here, what's going on is because you're kind of like leaning back, you're putting some extra pressure on your lower back right here. So when you stand up, I want you to think about being explosive through your hips. But I also want you to think about standing tall like a statue. Don't let yourself lean back and flare your ribs up like this. Keep your ribs pulled down to your belly button. Keep your chin tucked to the wall behind you. Keep your shoulders down. Like just stay over top of your body. Don't, um, it's not bad to use your hips, but don't use your hips so much to where you end up going too far forward with your hips. And then leaning too far back with your upper body. Make sure you stay strong and braced at the top of the deadlift to have everything stack over each other. So that would be the first thing right there. The second correction you could potentially look to make is you're doing a great job, by the way, everybody can see this. She's doing a great job of bracing her lats. Notice how she like pulls that bar almost like into her a tad bit and her lat. I just talked about this in the last, in the last video, she's pulling down those shoulder blades, shoulder blades into her lats, which is awesome. Though notice how when she's doing the movement, notice how her, her, her mid-back rounds and her lower back rounds just a tad bit, but more so notice how her knees are locking out just a little bit too early. What we would potentially look at doing here with this movement is I want you to really think about bracing your core as hard as you humanly possibly can, because we can make sure to keep that core bracing to not let it kind of like lose. As you start to come on the way up. And I think number 2, what you might be able to do is again, notice how, because your hips are starting a bit higher, when you're pulling this weight off the ground, your knees are locking out a bit too early, which is causing your hips to rise before your chest is starting to rise. So what I might do is actually think about like squatting a bit more in this deadlift, because if you can stay forward, For a little bit longer, right? So like while you're doing the deadlift, stay forward and don't lock your knees out as much on the way up, like in as, uh, or as early on in the movement. If you can stay forward a tad bit longer and not lock those knees out, I think that will allow you to have your chest— I'm sorry, your chest and your hips rise at the same time a tad bit more, which is then going to allow you to number one, keep your lower back safe. And number two, over the long haul, be able to lift a little bit more weight in this deadlift right here. Because again, if we go back and look at like this rep right here, our hips are rising a little bit before our chest is rising. Like right now your hips are almost locked out, but your chest has a long way to go. Right? So if we can stay forward in that deadlift a bit longer and not shoot our knees back and our hips up too much, I think we can make a big difference right there. So Don't think about pulling the weight up. Think about pushing the ground away from you. Then number 2, I might think about even then having your, uh, the starting position, maybe start with your hips just like just slightly lower and your chest a little bit more facing the wall in front of you. Just a tad bit more, nothing crazy. But I think that will allow you to then have your hips rise, have your hips and your chest rise. In the same motion. All right. All right guys, that was it. Technique tips, 4 videos down. Hope you enjoyed. Again, remember if you want me to look over your form videos, there's a link in the description below. So feel free to fill that out. If you enjoyed the video, please feel free to drop a comment below. Let me know you enjoyed it. If you have any further questions, let me know. All right.