you need to feel the tension: a principle that's truer than you think

[Arch0wl]

I've had to re-teach myself this principle time and time again. every time I feel myself getting too comfortable with a lift I need to remind myself to be able to feel the muscles being used in the lift or else I'm probably fucking it up.

in other words: at the end of the day, you're doing the lift right if you can feel the muscles working. if you can't, be skeptical.

I had a huge problem with bench press for a very long time, because I listened to guides that told me to place the bar at my nipple line.

ignore guides that tell you where to find the ideal bar spot -- like, say, on your nipple line -- and concentrate on where you can actually feel it working your pecs. this applies to glutes for squats, lower back for deadlift, and so on. I recommend going light on deadlift almost always.

in my case, for bench, I had to go somewhat below my nipple line and bring the bar quite a bit away from the starting point -- the liftoff feels somewhat uncomfortable because the distance between my shoulders and ideal bar spot is pretty substantial, but nonetheless this is the bar path that lets me do the most reps.

so remember

if u can't feel the tension

ur fuckin up descension

[Reach]

Very true, especially if you're concerned about hypertrophy.

If you're powerlifting, well, whatever allows you to move the most weight.

Once you get really good at feeling the tension though you can get bigger with less weight than you would think. That's not to say you can use baby weights, but you can make movements pretty damn painful on the muscles with less weight if you focus on proper contraction.

This is especially true with muscles you can contract with other muscles or where you can offload the tension onto your tendons. This is extremely true with:

1. calves: tension can be offloaded onto achilles if this exercise is performed too quickly, if you don't complete the top ~1/3 of the ROM or if you bounce the weight.

2. benching: the chest activates in the bottom ~1/3 of this lift, yet most people don't spend any time here and or make things worse by utilizing a bounce off the chest. The chest becomes an accessory at that point. An easy trick for people that can't feel it in their chest is to just switch to paused bench for awhile with a long pause. Pausing takes the slack out of the muscle spindles and the chest will be forced to maximally contract to get the bar moving again.

3. squatting: myotatic reflex in the posterior chain can allow you to bounce out of a squat pretty easily. An essential skill for powerlifting but if you're bodybuilding you can take 1/3 of the weight off the bar and just do a pause squat and you'll be in infinitely more pain afterwards (and you'll get much more ham and glute hypertrophy, since utilizing the reflex takes the tension OFF the hams and glutes whereas pausing puts it ON them)