Why do people feel the need to bench when getting into bodybuilding & fitness? In my opinion, you don’t need to if you don’t want to. Benching is the most overrated workout. I don’t really do it too much. I enjoy most workouts, but one work out I can’t stand doing is the bench press. Every time I work out at the Greenwich Y a lot of guys and even some women want to bench. Why do people think bench press is the only chest work out there is? It’s because benching is easier to learn and people don’t like doing other chest workouts.

There are plenty of great chest work outs other than the overrated bench press. I prefer: dumb bell presses on a bench, dumb bell flies (on the floor or bench at the gym). I also like cable cross overs and push ups.

While benching is the king of all workouts, it’s also the most dangerous and evil workout. Sorry but it’s true, I’ve thought I explained this before? There are too many people that bench without spotters at the gyms, you see it all the time, it’s ridiculous. Only once in a while you see smart people benching “with” spotters, but it doesn’t happen often.

I plan to stay away from benching completely I think. The barbell benching I’m talking about.

When you’re doing a professional sport like bodybuilding competition, the Olympics or wrestling/boxing/mma, that makes benching okay to do. Benching is not for amatures, in my opinion.

There are plenty of other chest workouts people. There are other chest workouts that work your chest harder than the bench. I think dumb bell flies work the chest harder than the bench. Push ups also can work your chest hard.

I can’t do 100 pushups without stopping yet, for now I can do only 40 – 50, but that’s alright. The less reps you do, the more muscle definition you get. That’s one thing people fail to think, they think they can get more muscle definition by training to failure all the time. The bench is not cool. The bench will totally burn you out if you do that every week.

Kev