Starting Strength

compromise your efficiency by adding to the distance the bar has to travel to lockout. This effect can be illustrated by examining what happens during a shoulder shrug and the distance it adds to the bar movement.
    Lie on the bench and pull your shoulders back into full adduction, with your chest up in a good position and your back arched. Put your arms up with straight elbows in a position that simulates the start of the bench press. Note the position of your hands. Now shrug your shoulders up off the bench so that your shoulder blades come out of adduction, and note the difference in position. There will be a 4- to 6-inch difference in the distance from your hands to your chest from shrugged-back to shrugged-up. This is the extra distance you have to push the bar if you don’t keep your shoulders back.

    Figure 5-22. Note the extra distance traveled by the bar when the shoulders are shrugged forward at lockout.

    During a longer set (more than just a couple of reps), most inexperienced people will let their upper back deteriorate out of the shrugged position. If this happens, each rep is a little looser than the previous one and the bar must travel a little farther each time. At the end of a set of five, reset your shoulder blades and chest-up position. If you are able to move them much at all, they have come out of position. Your goal is to be able to do all your reps without losing the set position.
     
    Neck
     
    The function of the neck muscles is to maintain the head’s position and to protect the cervical spine during the loading of the chest and upper back as the bar comes down on the chest. The neck muscles therefore function isometrically to maintain position, in a role similar to that of the lower back muscles during the deadlift. But unlike the back muscles, the neck muscles should not transfer power along the neck to help with the lift. In other words, you do not use your neck to bench press. Do not push your head into the bench, even if you have been told that it will create a stronger rebound off the chest. It very well might, but this is an excellent way to injure your neck. You need to learn how to tighten up your neck without pushing on the bench with the back of your head. As a practical matter, this involves holding your head about a quarter-inch off the bench during the rep; think about touching the bench with your hair instead of with your head. If your head is held off the bench, your neck muscles are tight. It is tempting to use the neck to push the bench, as it adds contracted muscle and tightness to the upper back area, but it is too dangerous a habit to let become established in a novice lifter. If you become a competitive lifter and decide that pushing your head forcefully into the bench is enough help to your bench press to warrant the risk, fine. But save that for later, when you’re in a better position to evaluate the cost/benefit situation.

    Figure 5-23. The preferred position of the neck and head during the bench press. Cervical injury can result from pressing the head into the bench under very heavy weights, and this position prevents the improper use of the neck muscles in this situation.

    Likewise, do not get in the habit of shifting your head so that your eyes can see one side of the bench uprights when you’re racking the weight. Doing so requires that your fatigued neck rotate under a load, and this is just plain old dumb. You know where the rack is, and if your grip has been set correctly, your elbows are locked, and your spotter has been instructed even a tiny bit, the bar will get back into the rack just fine without your having to look at one side of the uprights.
     
    Lower back, hips, and legs
     
    The bench press is an upper-body exercise, but since the lifter’s feet are on the floor, everything between the feet and the upper body has the potential to be somewhat involved in the exercise. The lower back and the hips and legs are thus the connection between the ground and the upper back. Strictly speaking, the kinetic chain begins at the bar and ends at the upper-back/bench interface; the legs are not in the kinetic chain because the movement can be performed with a large percentage of 1RM with the feet up in the air. Since the movement itself is not dependent on the feet and legs, they are not part of the kinetic chain ( kinetic = movement, chain = components ), in the same way that the arms are not part of the kinetic chain of the squat. But the correctly