How To Warm-Up For Bench Press Before The Bar | Powerlifting Tips For Beginners
What is the Purpose of a Warm-Up?
The purpose of our warm-ups is both to get the blood flowing and activate or “wake up” our muscles to prepare for the main movements or focus for the day.
This should be relatively light weight; if we’re going based off of RPE’s, this should be somewhere between and RPE 2-5.
With your warm-ups, you don’t want this to be crossing the line into challenging “working set” weights, so be sure that you’re not going too heavy with the warm-up movements and also make sure that you’re not doing too much.
We can break our warm-ups into different sections:
Foam rolling
Light cardio
Warm-up sets before the bar
Warm-up sets on the bar
Today we’re primarily focusing on the warm-up sets before the bar.
Because our warm-ups are meant to focus on what we want to activate, its a good idea to know what muscles we’re using in the bench press!
Which Muscles Do We Need to Activate for Bench?
In powerlifting, we use our full body for the bench press. These are the muscles that we’ll see activate in our competition lifts for powerlifting, especially on a heavy day:
Chest
Triceps
Shoulders
Back
Glutes
Quads
Because the second half of your warm-up will be on the bar, we won’t put as much focus on the anterior chain, or chest, during the first half of the warm-up.
Of course this is circumstantial; if we’re struggling with activating certain muscles or we have some sort of imbalances, we’ll program in different movements specific to each person.
Here are some of the movements that help us to prepare for full body tension and activation during the bench press.
Keep in mind there are many other warm-up exercises you can do other than what I’ve recommended here!
Bench Press Warm-Ups Before the Bar
Optional: 5-10 minutes of light walking or bike
Optional: Foam roll any tight areas before benching such as the upper back, glutes, or hamstrings
Banded rows: 3:33 (in video)
Banded face pulls: 5:02 (in video)
Lat pull downs: 6:12 (in video)
Paloff press: 7:19 (in video)
Hip openers: 8:13 (in video)
Active shoulder stretch: 9:03 (in video)
Choose 3-5 different warm-up exercises and perform each for 1-2 sets of 10-15 reps. Our main focus isn’t necessarily how many sets or reps, instead, we want to just focus on activating and preparing our bodies for benching.
It should take about 10-15 minutes to complete these exercises.
Conclusion
Warming up for bench is important in preparing ourselves for heavy lifting. Don’t overcomplicate it and definitely don’t try to turn this into a workout. Warm-ups are relatively simple and don’t be afraid to experiment with which exercises help you to better activate and prepare for your heavy bench sessions!
