When was the last time someone asked you how much you bench? What do you mean, never? But you're an extremely fit, muscular woman. Surely someone must have asked you at some point about your bench totals. No? In all seriousness, we're not surprised. While any man sporting a bit of bulge in his biceps is begged for his bench digits, fit women such as ourselves don't get the same kind of grilling. We'd guess this is because the bench is in the free-weight room at just about every gym we've seen, and that room remains primarily the domain of beefy brutes and wimpy wannabes — all male.

Despite the fact that it's now 2008 and women have made major strides in infiltrating that free-weight room, the bench press is still simply not seen as an exercise women habitually do. We hope to rectify that right here, right now, because while there are many other ways to get a good pectoral workout, the bench press truly can't be beat.

Why You Should Bench Press

There are numerous benefits your physique can reap by adding the bench press to your weekly regimen.

It Provides A Measure Of Your Upper-Body Strength

As it turns out, there's actually a pretty good reason why guys are always comparing bench press totals. The number of pounds you can bench press is an important figure with real significance to fitness professionals. Because the bench is a compound, or multijoint, exercise (it involves not only your pets but also your front clefts, triceps and even lats), it's the universal benchmark for upper-body strength used by strength coaches and exercise physiologists. The more you can bench, the stronger you are and the better overall shape you're in.

It Builds Your Pecs Like No Other Exercise

Even though you use other muscle groups when benching, your pees are still the major target. But because they get a lot of help in raising that bar, you can put more weight on it. The more weight you can press, the more you're overloading those muscles. Need we say that the more you overload, the more you build? No machine allows you to stress your pecs like the bench press.

It Can Carve Out Your Cleavage

Reality check: Bench pressing won't make double-Ds out of your A cups, nor will it give you a surgery-free breast lift. In fact, it won't have much effect on your breasts. What it will do, however, is fill out your chest, which makes those sexy, summery blouses and dresses look that much better on you. And, if you're really committed to your chest workouts and your diet, benching can sculpt the inner area of your pecs, resulting in an aesthetically pleasing peek of athletic cleavage. Plus, because benching also involves the delts and triceps, you'll end up with a more athletic frame and taut, shapely arms.

Pressing Physiology

We've already discussed how the bench press primarily targets the pectoral muscles, but while two muscles have the word pectoralis in their names, only one — the pectoralis major — is actually a chest muscle. The other one, pectoralis minor, is buried underneath its big sister and is mostly needed to move the shoulder j blades. Yet the pec major, despite the fact !. that it's one muscle, has two distinct sections — upper and lower. You can manipulate which part of the pectoral you target by changing the angle of the bench you use. You have three options:

• Incline: Set the backpad at a roughly 45-degree angle. This focuses on your upper chest.
  
  
• Flat: The angles of the back and seat are zero. This targets the lower pecs more and is the most natural-feeling and therefore easiest of the three bench positions.
  
  
• Decline: The angle of the backpad is at a decline of about 30 or 40 degrees. Although this press is the most awkward for beginners to master, you'll actually be stronger on the decline because it demands a shorter range of motion and the large lat muscles are more involved.

Bench Basics

The average Olympic barbell weighs 45 pounds without any plates on it, so before you sidle up to the bench, consider whether you're ready to press that much weight right from the start. Remember, pressing a barbell is vastly different from training on a machine. Keeping the bar steady requires the use of various stabilizing muscles (particularly in your shoulders and core) that you might not have used before.

If you want to take the plunge, consider finding a spotter, or if you're a solo gym-goer, start on a Smith machine, where the bar weighs 10 pounds and is locked into a set path. You'll have to drag over your own bench and make sure you're properly aligned under the bar, depending on which angle you set the bench to (see "Pressing Physiology" at left), but it's a good way to get accustomed to the movement of a bench press.

These Instructions Apply To A Bench Or A Smith Machine:

1. Lie faceup on the bench with your knees at a 90-degree angle and feet flat on the floor, wider than shoulder-width apart. This helps stabilize your body on the bench.
   
   
2. Arch your back slightly, keeping your shoulders and glutes pressed into the bench, and grasp the bar so that your hands are just outside shoulder width. You'll know your grip is correct if both elbows form 90-degree angles when you lower the bar.
   
   
3. Make sure you wrap your thumbs around the bar (which will prevent you from flexing your wrists) and squeeze tightly. This ensures that the force exerted by your pets, delts and triceps travels more efficiently to the bar.
   
   
4. Unrack the bar and hold it, arms fully extended, at the starting position that corresponds to the exercise you're doing: over your upper chest on an incline bench, over your middle chest for flat bench, over your lower chest for decline.
   
   
5. Inhale deeply and hold your breath. Squeeze your shoulder blades together and slowly lower the bar toward your chest. At the lowest position, it should touch the level of your chest that corresponds with the angle of the bench (upper for incline, mid for flat, lower for decline).
   
   
6. To fully recruit all those meaty muscle fibers, you need to force the bar back up as powerfully as possible. Imagine it's as light as a feather and press it straight back up in as quick, strong and fluid a movement as possible. Exhale at the top.

Your Power Plan

In a mere eight weeks, you can go from a benching beginner to a pressing pro with this program. The key is a typical power-lifting technique — which sounds a lot scarier than it is. Basically, it involves progressively increasing the weight you're lifting while decreasing the number of reps you perform each set, starting with 10 reps per set with your lightest load and going all the way down to four reps per set with your heaviest weight. Choose a weight that allows you to finish the prescribed number of reps — no more, no less.

Substitute this workout for your current chest routine, and at the end of eight weeks you'll be pushing up so much poundage that you'll be begging everyone to ask you that immortal question: "So, how much do you bench?"

Muscle Milk Light By CytoSport!

"44% Fewer Calories With 25 Grams Of Protein!"

Learn More!