Are you looking to target and build up your triceps strength and hypertrophy? Well, look no further! To achieve this, a close grip bench press can be the perfect addition to your workout plan. This exercise is a form of bench press, the major difference is based on where you set your hands. As the name suggests, your hands are placed closer together than usual. With this article, we’ll help you learn a little more about the basics of a close grip bench press.
How to Ensure a Correct Close Grip Bench Press Form?
What you need for this exercise are a barbell and a sturdy bench. Listed below you’ll find out how to do this exercise properly while maintaining the correct form:
- Firstly, you have to set up the close grip bench press machine. Once done, you have to lie back flat on the bench and keep your legs firmly planted on the ground and apart.
- You have to place your hands shoulder-width apart. You can move your hands a little bit towards the inside if you’re more comfortable with that. If you’re a beginner and want exact placement for your hands, the distance should be the same as 5 fingers towards the inside of your general grip.
- To ensure that you protect your scapula and that your formation is tight, you have to pull your shoulder blades a little back.
- Next, ensure that your grip is correct and works for you. Test it out a bit and lift the weight a little to see if your triceps are being engaged. If you are feeling the strain and your triceps are contracting, then it works. If not, try moving your hand grip around to find the most comfortable position for you.
- Now once you’re comfortable with the position, lift the bar and ensure that it is currently positioned right above your clavicle. To provide a little more support, make sure that you press your feet directly into the ground. This helps in maintaining the tightness of your body.
- Hold the body tight, with your elbows and arms next to the body, as you pull the bar down to the chest. Keep pushing your feet to the ground, and make sure that you feel the burn in your chest and the triceps as well.
Exercise Sets As Per Your Needs
This exercise is meant to target your upper body and arms as well, but you can alter the sets to match your requirements and needs. All you have to do is understand your physical limits and add whichever set of reps suits you and your needs the best. Written below, you will find three types of sets of close grip bench presses that one can do, sorted according to the different requirements that this exercise can fulfill:
- You wish to build your muscle mass
This close-grip bench press can help with targeting and toning up a person’s upper body. To do so, you would require about 3–4 full sets of 8–12 slow and controlled reps. If done properly, you can easily build up your chest area with this exercise.
- For building your strength
A close-grip bench press benefits your upper body by helping you with strength training. Doing approximately 2 to 3 sets of anywhere between 5 and 8 reps can give you significant results.
- Enhancing your overall stability
This exercise also helps provide your upper body with the balance and stability it needs. To increase your stability, you would need to do 10 sets in total, and that too at timed eccentricities. This ensures that you get the best results from doing this exercise.
Close Grip Bench Press Benefits: Why You Should Do it
The close-grip bench press is a great option not just for your arms but also for your upper body’s strength training. This type of bench press, if added to your routine, can help provide you with the much-needed strength gains. This can enhance your overall routine and also help in jacking up various other pressing moves that you might be doing, like the push press, the jerk, etc.
While doing the close grip bench press, triceps will be targeted since you are required to keep your elbows close to your body at all times to ensure proper posture is followed. For the hand positioning to work and target your triceps, your elbows should be as close to your body as possible. This exercise, while targeting the triceps, also ensures that your arms get visible bigger and more muscular.
If doing similar exercises puts too much strain on your shoulder muscles, worry not because the close grip bench press is meant to ease this pressure. The way you grip and how you change it help distribute this pressure more evenly across the body. This can be a great alternative to the usual bench presses that you might be used to.
Conclusion
This kind of bench press is much more beneficial if you’re looking to target your triceps. The close-grip bench press helps in muscle training, strength training, and building stability as well. You can also alter the frequency of reps according to your requirements for the exercise. It is also a much better option if the usual bench press routines end up causing you shoulder pain, as the hand positioning helps distribute this strain across your body more evenly.
