How to set up a Bench arch

Okay so now that we’ve established some of the differences between arching and not arching in the last posts this is a post for if you decide you want to start arching or if you want to have a better arch. I’m going to break down how to get a better arch into three main points; upper body positioning, lower body positioning and back tightness.

So for upper body positioning if you want to create a strong arch position you can’t be flat on your back you need to position yourself in a way that your upper traps and neck are on the bench but less of your back is on the bench hense creating a arch position with your back. I’ve found in my past experience there’s two main ways to do this. The first is the way I prefer I perform a glute bridge on the bench and lift myself up doing a row with the bar and then place my neck and upper traps on the bench and position myself from there. The second way that I’ve seen to be effective but I don’t personally prefer is people will sit up on the bench and swing themselves underneath the bar and up onto their toes and place themselves onto their upper traps and neck from there!

Now for lower body positioning; first and foremost you want your glute to be as squeezed as possible this will contribute to more back tightness and a better arch but more so than just squeezing your glutes as hard as you can foot positioning can also help with this as well. The position I like to have my feet to get the tightest possible glutes is to pull my feet back as far as possible so that if I was to relax my heels would be off the ground and I have to physically push them down as hard a possible to force my heels to touch the ground and secondly I like to touch my heels together and point my toes out because I find this really helps me get my glutes squeezed and my back/arch tight.

Finally the tighter you keep your lats the better your arch and just overall bench will be. So how do you get your lats tight? The two ques that I find help me the most are to think about bending the bar and pulling the bar apart to get my lats to fire!

Hope this helps happy benching! Next week I will cover what makes a good warmup for benching with an arch!