One is the utmost level of strength that you have from here to here, and mostly it's going to be applied to your chest in that range of motion. Secondly, your ability to explode and create velocity in that range of motion is probably pretty poor. A bar that's not in motion is a bar that's going nowhere. As soon as you lose complete velocity of that bar and it reaches 0, you're likely not getting up for another rep. So what do we do? We have a 5, 5, 5 protocol that we use. The idea here is, you're going to load up the bar as heavy as you can, set on the pins in that bottom portion. That sticking range, that sticking point range of the exercise. The idea is that you're not going to be able to push this bar anywhere. We're going to perform something called and overcoming isometric that will allow you to recruit as many motor units as you can to assist the contraction, but not be able to move it. Obviously, isometric; it's not going to go anywhere.
You're going to push as hard as you can for the first five seconds to be able to recruit as many motor units as possible. Then for the next five seconds you're going to maximally push as hard as you can. You want to try to push this bar through the roof, but it ain't going nowhere. But don’t worry, good things are happening. After that you're going to take a five second rest. This whole 15 second protocol, you repeat 10 times. Now, if you don’t have pins, but you're bench pressing at home, you just don’t have pins or a rack holding the bench press in, don’t worry about it. Just stand up as soon as you're done, head over to the wall, apply the same principles you would in any good bench press.
Elbows tucked, 45 degrees, pushing through – not leaning your torso in, but actually pushing with the hands into the wall so you can engage your chest. As soon as you're done – whichever method you use – you come back to the bench press, strip off, down to 50% of your one rep max. Now we have to work on that velocity. You're going to perform explosive reps in the bottom 1/3 range of motion. Now, I'm not just talking about performing reps, explosive reps. We're trying to accelerate every single rep of that bar of my chest in that bottom range of motion. You go until you can't either accelerate anymore – so it's starting to move slow – or of course until you reach failure. This entire protocol can be done three times through, each time you train your chest. Guys, as always, the secret is this: you've got to do it and put in the work if you want to see the changes from it. I can guarantee you this: fast changes lie ahead of you if you do because this area here has been waiting for you to address this are here.
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