Day 16 of 365 —Lifting: How to Maximize Leverage

Most people think squat is a leg workout, bench press is a chest workout, deadlift is a back workout, etc. The truth of the matter is they are all full body workouts!

Let’s start with bench. When you see those people with arches in their bench, they are leveraging their body to drive more power into the lift. Yes you can hurt your back, if you lift incorrectly. That arch allows you to drive with your legs to explode off your chest. “Alex what about those people who have their butt’s 2 feet off the bench?” Well a proper bench is head, shoulders, and butt on the pad with feet flat on the ground. Your butt stays on the bench because you are flexing your core and butt for transfer of tension from your legs to off your chest. This also means the bar path will be at a slight angle. Think of it this way, the amount of force to push something straight into the air will be more than something being pushed at an angle. Disclaimer: this depends on your strengths and muscle imbalances, but holds true most of the time.

Next up, squat. Squat requires your full body for the same methodology that bench does. Your core, shoulders, and arms act as mediums for you to transfer force in an upward motion to drive the bar up. If your body is relaxed you have a decreased transfer of force because your body is curve making the applied force go along a curve instead of a straight line.

Physics is life, I’ve written this in my phone and I want to extrapolate more. I shall release an in-depth overview another day with actual math to back it up. Ill leave out some calculations because I don’t want to account for all variables! ☺