The bench press has gotten a bad reputation. The name alone evokes a meat-head stereotype and countless lists of "exercises you should STOP doing. There is a recent, sweeping anti-bench philosophy under the pretense that the bench press lacks functionality and is over-utilized in training. And I am in agreement...kind of.

Like all things worth doing, practicing quality repetitions paves the way for success. This is especially true for pulling a bar from the floor in weightlifting. Pulling a bar from the floor without proper positioning, bracing, or tension places you in jeopardy of developing bad habits—or worse, running the risk of injury. Here are Coach Jace’s 3 Tips for getting your pull right. 

Being "jacked" is in. The 80's bodybuilder-style action hero is back and dominating in blockbuster films. Even the action figures of children's toys are starting to take on comically collossal appearances in size and mass. And I'm not knocking it. In fact, I think this newfound popularity of a muscular appearance is pretty cool. But there is the key word, "appearance." There seems to be a slight disconnect between what being strong LOOKS like, and what being strong ACTUALLY means.

The shoulder joint is the most mobile joint in the human body. It's tasked with a variety of challenges in daily living that require both a large range of motion and high levels of stability. In sports like baseball, volleyball, and swimming, high degrees of force are generated through the shoulder. Well-developed and balanced musculature is needed to keep a healthy and fully functional shoulder for competition. The shoulder joint is highly predisposed to injury due to the demands placed on it in everyday life, throwing and overhead actions in sports, and performance training. 

With enough training time under your belt, the gains seem to get harder and harder to come by. Eventually you'll have to implement more variation into your training to continue driving adaptation. If you haven't hit a PR on the squat in a while, a few specific squat variations can help you continue to improve without altering your training too much or interfering with your current program. The variations below are easily implemented and can be just what you need to mix up your training stimuli.