The common phrase heard in high school weight rooms across the country sounds something like this, "There's no bench press on the court/field". This is usually followed up by coaches or personal trainers advocating functional movements or worse yet, olympic lifts for the upper body.
The notion that the bench press is useless for enhancing scholastic athletes' strength and performance is antiquated. Contrary to popular ideas, the bench press is as functional as any other movement.
As a strength community, personal trainers focus too much on making a strength training move look as close to an athletic position as possible. More often than not, this leads to wasted time and under-accomplished weight lifting sessions.
Instead, trainers should consider the entire goal for the athlete and how to best get there.
What type of strength training experience does the athlete have? If they are relatively new and uncoordinated, then the bench press is actually safer than sticking them on machines or giving them a set of dumbbells that they'll drop.
The base of an effective strength and conditioning program is relative strength, meaning how much power does the athlete possess. Pushup variations are fantastic strength builders especially when the athlete wears a weighted vest or is draped in chains but the athlete will likely quickly hit a ceiling in strength potential.
The bench press allows unlimited potential gains.
The bench press does have a prominent place in any strength program, although it can be potentially harmful to athletes' shoulders. New bench-pressing athletes won't see this issue pop up for a few years but it is something to watch out for in throwing athletes like quarterbacks and pitchers.
There are other effective means for training the upper body and thankfully medicine balls have become popular lately. Medicine ball spikes and throws allow for both upper-body power and explosive strength development. Starting all high school athletes out with kneeling medicine ball throws against a hard wall allows them to successfully train their core to generate power through their upper body while also working a degree of stability.
Medicine ball pushup variations with either one or both hands on the ball require a great deal of shoulder stability strength, as well as core balance, and are a great option. The same for overhead tosses with the goal to get as much vertical height on the throw.
Jimmy Smith, MS,CSCS is a strength and nutrition coach. For more information visit his site, http://www.basketballstrengthworkoutsandnutrition.com
