How To Overcome Your Pesky Bench Press Plateau

Now, within the realm of strength-based exercises that will improve your bench press, you’re looking for a few things…

Unilateral and Contralateral Movements

Unilateral movements are movements performed exclusively on one side of the body-the goal is to train each side of the body to be evenly stable and strong.

For example, a single arm chest press with a dumbbell is a great warm up exercise for the barbell bench press.

During this movement, you would focus on engaging the core to prevent torso rotation and create even muscle activation throughout the chest and arm. 

With a single arm movement you will have more of an inclination to let the torso and shoulder wobble so you will have to focus harder to control…starting your workout with this focus on stability will improve the stability and power on the heavier barbell lift later.

Unilateral movements are also used in Corrective Exercise to help correct muscular imbalance that increase risk of injury.

Learn more on my Corrective Exercise Blog.

Contralateral movements are exercises that use opposite sides of the body for the purpose of functional training.

During movement, the body never isolates muscle and joint work-instead, it disperses the force across a (usually diagonal) myofascial sling to create balance.

My favorite example of this (and perfect for a bench press warm up) is a single leg hip thrust to contralateral chest press.

Perform as such:

1. Grab a dumbbell that you can chest press in one arm.
2. Come to a bench and prepare for a hip thrust.
3. Take the dumbbell into the right arm and lift the right leg off the floor-left leg stays.
4. Press the left foot into the floor and thrust the hips up, keeping only the upper back on the bench.
5. Keeping the hips lifted, perform a chest press with the right arm.

You may feel the inclination to twist, and to prevent that your core is going to clench really quick…That’s the purpose of contralateral training.

Whether you realize it or not, when you press forward with one arm your body will try to help stabilize itself by pressing into the back of the opposite hip.

This effectively activates nearly all the muscles from your right chest to the back of your left hip, and if you’re not trained functionally for that, you will end up hurting yourself as you lift heavier.

This is why you may hurt the left side of your lower back by throwing or lifting something with your right arm.

Cue the single leg hip thrust to contralateral chest press-not only does it train stability strength, but it also serves to strengthen the functionality of your myofascial slings and prevent injury.

Endurance-based movements to increase bench press PR

Endurance is defined as your ability to spend extended amounts of time under pressure.

My two favorite ways to build endurance that will improve a bench press is to implement isometric holds and compound sets.

Isometric holds are simply sitting in one position (with muscle activation) and holding it.

For example, here are some Iso Holds that get included in my client’s chest workouts:

• DB Anterior Hold
• Chaturanga (Bottom of Push Up) Hold
• Vertical Plate Press Hold at top
• Single Arm Plank Hold

Isometric holds build stability and endurance simultaneously and they are great for strengthening not only the muscles but also the joints!

Compound sets are when you perform two exercises for the same muscle group, back to back without break in between.

These are my favorite Compound Sets to Improve Your Bench Press:

• DB Chest Fly + Vertical Plate Press
• Push Ups + Tricep Dips
• Anterior Arm Raise + Decline Bench Press
• Alternating Side Plank + Incline Chest Press

The goal with the compound sets is to keep the chest/ tricep/ delts under pressure and working for an extended period of time, even if swapping exercises.

By very forwardly challenging your ability to endure back to back chest exercises, it will increase your muscular endurance which will support you building more strength.

My recommendation for endurance-based movements is that it be it’s own workout instead of as part of the warm up or the heavy lifting.

These exercises can be tiring and you may not be able to lift heavy after having performed some of these. 

Alternatively, you may also not have the endurance to perform these exercises safely, after having lifted heavy.

Power Movements and Tempos to Build Strength

Power and plyometric movements are explosive movements that are performed with a lot of force and speed.

Clap push ups, for example, is a power movement because you explode upward with force and speed to lift yourself off the floor high enough to clap.

Without weight, power movements are calisthenic muscle-builders: they yield a hypertrophy response similar to heavy lifting.

With light weight, they are great for adding lower impact strength training and muscle building to your program.

Now obviously we can’t jump in a bench press and we don’t want to start throwing weights (please don’t) so what do we do instead?

We play with the tempo of the movement!

Try this:

1. Prepare for a bench press at 30% of your max (you can increase later if possible and desired.
2. Unrack the bar and slowly bring it down towards the chest to the count of 3.
3. Hold the bar hovering above the chest to the count of 3.
4. Quickly and explosively press the bar back up to the count of 1.

It should feel as though you are prepared to throw it (but obviously will not!).

Like with endurance movements, I recommend that power movements are part of their own workout, separate from the heavy lifting.