Saturday 12 June, 2004
Viva la France!
I know that when it comes to triceps exercises, there is no substitute for French Press (Which I guess would be called ‘Freedom Press’ in US now?). But I’ve always had one problem with this move: both my wrists and elbows hurt like hell when doing this exercise, forcing me to use light weights and therefore reducing the efficiency. I’ve replaced the French Presses with close-grip bench press and weighed dips, but I always felt I was missing out, since every time I asked for advice for training my lagging triceps, I was urged to do the French Presses.
Just a few days ago I was introduced to Incline French Press. The idea is simple –you perform the French Presses just like lying French presses on flat bench, except you set your bench to (slight) incline. Note that in the picture below the angle of the incline is really severe –only small incline is enough at least for me.
Now I feel no pain anywhere when doing this exercise and I can pile on the poundage like never before.
Why didn’t anyone tell me about this move ten years ago?
Posted by Dragon at 12 June 01:18, 2004I swear by Close-grip bench presses, but this looks interesting enough to try. Definitely one of those exercises you don't see everyday.
# 2 - Dragon (on June 13, 2004 09:11 PM):
Close grip are great indeed, but I do my tris after chest, so I don't have power in my pecs for heavy sets of close grips after all those flat bench presses and dumbell flyes. French presses fit the bill perfectly.
# 3 - Antti (on June 13, 2004 10:56 PM):
In my current split, I also do tris after chest. Sometimes, If I do flyes, the inner pecs indeed become a problem when doing close-grips, like you said. But I've managed to keep the close-grips in the pic with a simple adjustment: I widened the grip. It's now just fist and a half narrower than my shoulders. This way, I can still keep the poundage somewhat respectable for my pre-exhausted tris. So technically, it's now not-so-close-grip bench press, I guess.
# 4 - Dragon (on June 13, 2004 11:13 PM):
Interesting. My gut feeling would be that with wider grip the excercise would mainly target the pecs. I suppose it will depend on your build as well. I'll give it a try sometime.
# 5 - Antti (on June 14, 2004 07:27 AM):
Just one final note quickly : ) For me, they still hit the tris. I don't even have to worry about the position of my elbows, I let them wander all over the place. So yeah, it's a build thing - like just about everythinh in weight training, I've noticed.
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