A coach argues against the ultra-wide grip favored by elite powerlifters, recommending shoulder-width positioning instead. A wider grip shortens the range of motion and boosts raw numbers, but a shoulder-width grip builds strength that carries over to throwing, punching, and pushing. Arm length matters: longer arms increase the range of motion and make the lift harder.
Let's talk about grip position because there are a lot of elite powerlifters online who will talk about going very, very wide. As they go very, very wide on a bench press and they talk about this being the ideal way for bench press. Now I'm going to say this is not the ideal way for bench press. It may be the ideal way for some elite bench pressers to go super wide. The reason if you are bench pressing for the sake of bench pressing super wide, the reason why that works is because it shortens the range of motion. But, when we consider that, that is bench pressing for the sake of getting better at bench pressing. That's not going to often have the most carryover of strength. Now, if we're an athlete and we're thinking about this more from a hybrid perspective, as to we want the most bang for buck, we want the ability to, for this exercise, to cross over to throwing, punching, pushing, we are going to use what's called a biacromial grip. The biacromial grip is really, really easy to find. We're going to be like zombies, put her hands out in front. We're going to grab the bar. So I'm going to do that. Okay, hands out in front. That's where your hands are. You're going to— now that's a biocromial grip, right? So this is really nice. Some people look at this as a close grip bench press, but this will have a significant carryover to athletics. When I say athletics, general performance, general doing things that require throwing, jumping, sprinting, that you have a dynamic in nature, not just bench pressing. So for a lot of newbie clients, this is where I like to start, that bichromial grip. So, Kaye, do a couple of reps for me here. Yes, it is going to be a little bit more enhanced in the tricep, but the setup is going to be absolutely the same, right? So you can see how he's pushing himself up, pushing himself up to the bar. Now, another thing with what you see here, Kaye actually has very long arms, so you can see the range of motion as he does this. Bring down, bring down. It's actually longer. So folks who have shorter arms always going to be stronger on the bench press because there's less range of motion. But this also means that Kaye is going to develop strength very, very well through a full range of motion here.
