How to Use Leg Drive in The Barbell Bench Press

If you're not utilizing leg drive in your barbell bench press, you're leaving pounds on the table. Proper leg drive helps push the bar up out of the bottom position so that you can use more weight in your bench press immediately.

 



 


 

Leg drive is a key part of the bench press, especially if you want to push your numbers with heavier weights.

 

Now, I'll be the first to tell you that I'm not a massive bench presser. My structure is actually terrible for the exercise (longer arms, narrow clavicles, no barrel chest) so I've had to really maximize every aspect of it that I can.

With a lot of training, perseverance and technique work, at one point I did manage to bench 350 lbs for a PR (and 225 lbs for 25 reps). I'm nowhere near that now, of course (it was about 27 years ago :).

Driving with the legs is a critical part of maximizing your bench press.

The key point is that you're trying to very powerfully push/slide yourself up the bench at the moment (or very slightly before) that you change the direction of the bar to press it up.

You'll want to watch the video to get the best idea of how this works and the timing.

How to Use Leg Drive in The Barbell Bench Press

How to Use Leg Drive in The Barbell Bench Press

Then drive yourself up the bench with your legs at the moment right before you reverse the direction and press up.

How to Use Leg Drive in The Barbell Bench Press

How to Use Leg Drive in The Barbell Bench Press

To be clear, I'm not a powerlifter and my form here is different than the pause required in powerlifting.

Top benchers do use leg drive, but it comes AFTER the pause...right when they're ready to drive the bar off the chest. Timing it critical.

If you watch a video of really good benchers, you'll see this action.

The glutes don't come up off the bench but the legs drive backwards (like a leg extension), which transfers force through hips, core and upper back to help power the bar off the chest.

This is a method you'll want to practice with just an empty bar until you get an idea of how to push yourself backwards and how to time it. You can use it as a warm-up, in fact.

Driving with the legs like this is more appropriate for lower rep sets (e.g. 1-3 reps). If you try to use a lot of leg drive for a set of higher reps, it will eventually push you out of position. For higher rep sets, just keep a constant backwards-pushing tightness in the legs but don't hammer it on every rep (or save it for the last few tough reps).

To train leg drive, you can use this method with the decline bench. It teaches tension and power transfer.

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