Having long arms may put you at a disadvantage for benching pressing big weights, but with hard work and smart training, you can still develop elite-level pressing power. Kate (shown below benching 150×3) is a great example: long arms and built to deadlift, but has worked incredibly hard to become a strong bencher.
These tips apply to all lifters, but ring especially true if you’ve got long arms.
1. Develop Strong Leg Drive
Great benchers use their legs to help power the bar off the chest. This is even more important for lifters with long arms because of the increased range of motion. As you press, imagine trying to slide your body backward off the bench – this will engage your legs to help move the bar.
2. Hammer Your Triceps
Lifters with long arms will naturally be more triceps-dominant because the lockout portion of the lift is more exaggerated. Place extra emphasis on strengthening your triceps with bench-specific movements like close grip presses, board presses and triceps extensions.
3. Build Your Lats
The upper back is your foundation when you bench, but the lats are specifically important for lifters with long arms because the humerus (upper arm) must go through such a long range of motion and the lats are responsible for controlling this motion as you lower the bar down. Lat exercises that keep the arms straight (pullovers, stiff-arm lat pulldowns) will build the lowering portion of the bench press to help control big weights.
4. Strengthen Your Shoulders
Longer arms means you’ll go through relatively more shoulder flexion as you press the bar back up, so strong deltoids are a must-have. Build your shoulders with overhead presses, high incline presses and isolation movements like lateral raises with dumbbells or cables.
5. Get a Handoff
Longer arms means you need to set up further down the bench than short-arm lifters. This also makes it way harder to unrack the bar yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask for a handoff with heavy weights so you can optimize your setup.
Long Arms are No Excuse
Powerlifting is so interesting because no lifter is built with perfect leverages for all three competition lifts. If you’ve got long arms, you can still build a big bench with hard work and dialed-in technique. The struggle makes it all that much more satisfying when you hit new PRs.