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that strength is developed in every position in which the joints can operate. Strength development is extremely specific: muscles get strong in the positions they are made to be strong in, and in precisely the way they are trained. And motion around a joint is usually composed of the functions of several muscles working together in changing relationships as the movement progresses. For instance, a quadriceps muscle worked through 30 degrees of its range of motion on a leg extension machine will adapt to this training by improving its ability to function in that 30 degrees of motion. The muscle will not get much stronger anywhere else in its range. And all the other muscles involved in a squat don’t have a chance to get strong if it is performed through a short ROM, where only the quads work and the other muscles don’t get called upon to do much. If we want to prepare an athlete to use his legs for a sport where he might be called upon to use them in a variety of positions, then he must train through a full range of motion in a way that strengthens the whole range. Any joint about which movement can occur will benefit from having its entire function improved. So, all the muscles that move a joint should be exercised, using a movement that calls into play as many of the muscles as is efficiently and safely possible.

The bench press, like the squat, benefits from a certain amount of rebound out of the bottom, using the stretch reflex phenomenon that is a feature of skeletal muscle (Figure 5-19). It takes practice and good timing to tighten up the bottom of the movement enough that you can get a correct rebound every rep, without actually bouncing the bar off your sternum and rib cage like an object on a trampoline.

Figure 5-19. Several physiological and mechanical phenomena produce a rebound that makes for a stronger contraction. First, the viscoelastic nature of muscle makes it act like a spring – the longer you stretch it (up to a certain point), the more forceful the return. Second, there is an optimal sarcomeric length that results in the most force being generated by a contraction, and this optimal length is associated with a mild stretch. Last, the stretch reflex mediated by muscle spindles (intrafusal fibers) is activated by stretching and results in a more forceful contraction.

A competition bench press (theoretically at least) has no rebound due to the technical rules, which specify that the bar must cease its motion at the bottom before being driven up off the chest. A touch-and-go bench press allows you to lift more weight than a paused bench press. It must be said that a cheated bench, with a heave of the chest, a hard bounce off the pecs, and a bridge with the hips, allows more weight to be lifted than does a strict touch-and-go. Then why is a touch-and-go okay, but a bounce and a bridge are not? It is not always our objective, as noted earlier, to lift more weight, but the touch-and-go is easier to learn than a paused bench because the stretch reflex is such a natural movement; staying tight at the bottom during the pause is a skill that is difficult to master even for competitive powerlifters. The bounced, heaved, bridged, butt-in-the-air version of the bench press uses rib cage resilience and hip extension to aid in driving the bar up, taking work away from the targeted muscles. So a strict touch-and-go is a good compromise, letting you lift more weight but still providing lots of training for the pressing muscles.

You should be able to recognize excessive bounce and know when a correction needs to be made. For both the bench press and the squat, optimum bar speed occurs when the bar moves fast enough to efficiently elicit a stretch reflex and thus permit an efficient drive up. Bar speed is too slow when the descent produces fatigue, as it will if you deliberately lift submaximal loads very slowly. Bar speed is too fast when it actually adds momentum to the load on the bar on the way down, so that you must decelerate against both the weight on the bar and the effect of its excessive velocity on