Starting Strength

bar.

    Figure 5-8. View from the trainee’s position on the bench. The position of the bar is referenced against the ceiling. Note the focus; the eyes look at the ceiling, not at the bar.

    Note carefully the position of the bar against the ceiling. You will lower the bar to your chest, touch the chest, and then drive the bar right back to exactly the same position. Stare at the place on the ceiling where the bar is to go. DO NOT look at the bar as it moves; do NOT follow the bar with your eyes, but just stare at the ceiling. You are going to make the bar go to that place every rep.
    With the bar locked out over the shoulders, have your spotter touch your chest a few inches below (inferior to) the bar’s vertical position, at about the middle of your sternum. Have him push hard enough that you can feel it after he takes the finger away. This tactile cue will quite effectively identify the point on your chest to touch the bar. If there is no spotter and you are benching alone inside a rack, unlock your elbows straight out to the sides and then allow them to drop towards your feet a little on the way down. Just a little. If you do this correctly, the net effect will be the same as the spotter’s touch – the bar will contact your sternum a few inches below your clavicles, and therefore below your shoulder joints. Note that the precise position the bar should contact the sternum will vary with the chest up position of the lifter on the bench, but the middle of the sternum, a few inches below the clavicles, is a good place to start. The goal here is to produce a bar path that is not vertical, for reasons which will be discussed in detail later.
    With this in mind, look at the ceiling, unlock your elbows, lower the bar to the chest, touch it without stopping, and drive the bar back at the point on the ceiling your eyes have trapped. Try it for a set of five reps. You’ll notice immediately that if your eyes don’t move from their fixed position, the bar will go to the same place every rep.
    This little eyeball trick works 90% of the time the first time it is used to produce a correct bench-press bar path. Even if you are “poorly coordinated,” you should be able to do a fairly good bench press within a couple of sets by using this technique. “The groove,” as the bar path is often referred to by bench pressers, is the first and most frustrating problem that novice trainees will experience because the tendency is to follow the bar with your eyes. By focusing your eyes on the ceiling, you can eliminate this problem the vast majority of the time. If the bar finds the groove automatically, as it does with this method, you can direct your attention to other aspects of the exercise that might be a problem.
    The key to the whole method is staring at the fixed position and not at the moving bar. If you use a fixed reference point for the bar position, you can make the bar go to the same place – and therefore through the same path – each rep. If you follow the bar with your eyes, you have no way to direct the bar to the same place every time because you are looking at the thing you are moving and not at the place you want it to go. This is the same principle used to hit a golf ball or a tennis ball: the implement moves to the target (the ball), and the target is the object of the fixed eye gaze. Granted, tennis balls move and golf balls don’t (until they’re hit), but the principle is the same. The brain coordinates the hands to take the implement – the club, racquet, pool cue, or bat, or the sword, sledgehammer, axe, or barbell – to the target, because the target is the reference for the eyes. When a tennis ball moves, the head and eyes move with it, rendering it a stationary point. Fortunately, most ceilings don’t move in most weight rooms, so our task is easier than McEnroe’s, but it is similar in that we are driving an object in our hands toward a stationary thing we are actively looking at. There are similarities between seemingly diverse activities, all of which involve movement directed by the eyes. Whether the object of the movement is stationary or in motion, the implement in the hands goes where the eye gaze is focused.
    Do another set of five with the bar, reinforcing your eye position, and then rack the bar. This is done with locked elbows, after the last rep is finished, by moving the bar back to the uprights, touching them with the bar, and then setting it down in the hooks. Should you have