Wire in - I’ll stick to doing some cycling and drinking beer. 
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I think so, but I’ll focus on that next time. I notice a big improvement in how ‘rigid’ my body feels. I’m corkscrewing my hands and squeezing my armpits (for lat activation?).
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Yes but again this also pushes your shoulders down away from your ears which puts them in a more stable position and is also another method for loading the chest instead. Most press ups I see tend to load the anterior delts and triceps and not touch the chest at all.
What are scaps?
Ah ok thanks. I’m paying attention to all this, cos I reckon my pushup form is probably pretty dreadful, and I want to focus on them more, as I’ve just moved my bench and squat rack to the garage at my new house, so I’m left with bodyweight and dumbbells for the time being.
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How good do you think your barbell bench press form was?
I doubt that my form is particularly good on anything! I just do stuff on my own at home, without outside criticism, and I’m really just getting back into it after losing focus on fitness for a while, so my strength is somewhat diminished as well. But I’ve lost a fair bit of weight the last couple of months, and am feeling a lot fitter, so my motivation levels are up, with it all.
I always really enjoy bench press though. On some level I guess it makes me feel like I’m “doing weights” on some kind of archetypal level.
Thank you!
Haha, I’ve always hated bench press.
I’ve been using them and finding them pretty tough. Can do sets of 15 now but when I tried without the handles I did 28 and they felt much easier.
I really like it, along with dead lifts.
Form is key, I’ve had several PT sessions over the last 6 months to get the details right.
I can push more weight now than I ever could in my 20s. Surprised at myself tbh.
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To be fair though I haven’t used my bench in years as my training area (garage) is shared with a mountain of crap. I just press instead.
I’m just weaker in the upper body compared with my lower body. This is why I really want to focus on it now.
I’m kind of tempted by the idea of some PT sessions, I have to say.
Ok, cool. Based on what I struggled with in the core exercises and the improvement I noticed, I dowonder whether my shoulder stability/endurance was a real limiting factor before. Perhaps that meant I was in a less stable position, as you say.
Bench press is one of the big 3 lifts and has that ‘how much do you bench?’ status attached to it.
The problem is I think that’s complete nonsense when you observe the real world short range of motion and use of momentum and hip drive to achieve the feat of getting the weight up.
The goal 90% of the time I believe is to train the muscle and CNS and not focus on getting the weight up. However focusing on form, tension, range of motion all mean a drop in weight and a loss of ego so it doesn’t happen.
I mean take the NFL 225 lbs bench press test - watch any video of college players do this as part of the physical tests and you’ll see all the major sins of benching and under professional supervision too 
The most common is the bounce of the rib cage at the bottom and I see a lot of ahem padding to make their stomachs like trampolines!
If you want to know how to bench properly for training then I can explain as this transfers to the press up too.
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I had 4 over a 2 weeks last month and will probs do it again in July. Well worth it, the chap i use is expert at Callisthenics, really knows his shit.
That’s a really great idea, a good coach/ trainer is priceless when technique is involved (and it is).
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In one of the articles I was looking at for age-range push up standards (some tables had 17 push ups in the Poor category for a man my age, Average at best) there was a comment from a PT that said he didn’t believe the tables as most of his clients struggled to manage 5 pushups when they were forced to use proper form.
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My wife is now literally “strong as fuck” and this is down to a good PT, working on fundamentals first and never allowing form to be sacrificed on anything. I think last he checked she was deadlifting ~150% of her bodyweight.
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