Maintaining a 5 point body contact for proper form and optimal strength

Maintaining a 5 point body contact is key for proper form and optimal strength

A follow up on my post the other day on getting a lift off when doing any barbell pressing movements to ensure proper shoulder health. I wanted to add another tip or thing to do when doing dumbbell and barbell pressing movements.

One thing you want to make sure you do in pressing movements is have and maintain what is called a 5 point body contact. That is having your head, upper back, buttocks, left foot and right foot in contact with the bench or in the case of your feet, the ground.

You can go into any gym and see people when they start to struggle in a pressing movement lift their head up or lift their rear off the bench or lift one of their feet up in the air. If you lift any of these areas up during the exercise you will lose strength as it will decrease your neural drive (the drive or signal from the nervous system to the muscles that tells them to work). The body needs a good neural drive to generate maximal force. There are trainers and strength coaches that teach their clients to drive the back of their head into the bench in pressing movements to further increase neural drive. Notice here how my client Justin has a 5 point body contact while doing an incline dumbbell press.

There are other things to consider and factor in when doing pressing movements to ensure proper form and proper recruitment of the right muscles that I’ll save for another post as it would take too long to include them in this post. Maintaining a good, 5 point body contact though is a good starting point in ensuring correct form and optimal strength and muscle fiber recruitment. #benchpress #dumbbellbenchpress#inclinedumbbellpress #muscle #nervoussystem #neuraldrive #strength #lasvegas#personaltrainer #strengthcoach #exercise #exercisetips #fitness #fitnesstips#fitnesstrainer #workouttips