Why the bench press may be dangerous for most people

The rule that most people follow when benching is to "touch the bar to their chest". That is a rule from the sport of Powerlifting. Who wins Powerlifting competitions? Those who were born to bench. Those with deep rib cages from front to back and with short forearms. When these gifted individuals touch the bar to their chest their elbows have not traveled below the level of their shoulders. This is important, because the pecs attachment to the humerus still has a force angle to create torque (rotation).

A person who has a narrower rib cage and longer forearms will find that their elbow travels below the level of their shoulders and the pec loses its force angle creating more translation at the shoulder joint instead of rotation, causing compressive and shearing forces to the labrum surrounding the glenoid fossa as well as to the articular cartilage of the joint surfaces.

In other words, most people who bench press are slowly degenerating the integrity of the shoulder joint in their attempts to get strong, fit, big, or whatever. That's not opinion folks, its physics. Anchor the thoracics and scapulohumeral joint to a bench and now the shoulder follows Newtons laws rather than acting as a tensegrity structure (as I understand it to be). That is why most people who bench look like they are performing gravity assisted CPR rather than an exercise.

Why the deadlift may be dangerous for most people

A weight gets heavier the greater its distance from the axis of rotation. Since the spine is not a solid bar but is made up of segments, a person deadlifting must create enough intra-abdominal pressure and intrathoracic pressure to effectively make a solid bar out of the trunk to keep it from bending, or from shearing between spinal segments.

Unless a trainer has x-ray eyes, they know nothing about the starting physiological state of the spinal joints. Does the person already have antero-listhesis (a condition in which a vertebra has slipped forward in relation to the vertebra below)? Does the individual have degenerative disk disease? Is the musculature surrounding the S-I joints balanced? If not, can you say “exercise induced trauma”?

Many people become champions despite their training, not necesarily because of it. How many prior champions still do their sports and have become a master? Most spend the rest of their lives nursing the injuries created in training, not in competition.

Prescribing deadlifts to those wishing to pursue it as a sport is fine as long as the trainee understands and accepts the risks that they are taking. But to present it as a tool for general strength development is highly questionable.

The rules for the deadlift and bench press come from a sport. Those rules eliminate the majority and favor the few genetically "gifted" individuals who were born with the structure to survive those rules long enough to compete. However, even those "born to bench" have to give it up once their joints are trashed.

That is why you see very, very, few "Oldtimers" without wraps and belts externally stabilizing their joints, because the internal stabilizers have been degenerated or destroyed.

Why I am uniquely qualified to tell you so

I absolutely, completely, understand and empathize with you and with anyone else who tries to explain concepts that in the future will be considered common sense, but for now would make people think you are a fringe dweller.

How would I know? Because I was part of the problem. I have either directly or indirectly trained or lectured to literally thousands of trainers, therapists and/or doctors on topics including the biomechanics of exercise, exercise prescription and programming, exercise physiology, etc. I served as a lecturer, research reviewer, consultant, etc. for companies and organization such as NASM, ACE (IDEA), AFAA, Cybex, Bowflex, the PGA, the YMCA, and on and on. We thought we were cutting edge, blah, blah, blah. Before that I had accumulated thousands of hours training clients one-on-one. I have also produced instructional videos and I helped start a certification program.

I left that world at a time (2000) when there were two main camps: the bodybuilder and all of their variations, and the functionalists and all of their derivations. I started to believe that they were both traveling down evolutionary dead ends, with their biases not even apparent to themselves (ourselves).

It is now six years later. I have 5000 more hours of formal education, a doctorate, and I am now a licensed and practicing Chiropractic Physician. Instead of hanging out in a gym and helping athletes when they are the shining stars of the gym world, and helping clients who want to be like those athletes, I now get them when they become a casualty of their training.

I face the same challenges that anyone else does once they are exposed to any truth. You can never go backwards without feeling like a hypocrite. Try teaching something that you don't believe to be true. I feel that, if I can't convince myself that what I am saying is true, I somehow become smaller for continuing to do it.

No one has to be the ambassador for "truth." It is a choice, and often times an uncomfortable one. Our ability to understand the "truth" evolves with our own personal evolution and with our evolution collectively as humans. But just as the race of Neanderthals were evolutionary dead-ends, I personally believe that the bodybuilders and functionalists will deadlift and bench press themselves into extinction.

Of course I am being a bit dramatic, but I am only just beginning the GPP phase up the THP with the goal of being able to publicly articulate my understanding of this new paradigm. I must be prepared to be wrong or to piss someone off. It won't be the first time, and I am positive it won't be the last.
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Mitch Simon, D.C.

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