Jay Cutler stepped away from competitive bodybuilding, but hasn’t forgotten the techniques that built his legendary physique. In an August 14 video, he shared a bench press tip that prevents the shoulders and back from rounding.
“If you’re rounding forward and only trying to push the weight, the chest isn’t doing what it should be doing.”
The bench press is a bread-and-butter option for just about every bodybuilder. As a compound exercise, it recruits multiple muscle groups, including the pecs, delts, and triceps, making it a valuable movement for building muscle.
Throughout his career, chest growth was never an issue for Cutler. His high-volume training approach helped him eventually catch and defeat eight-time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman. While he’s retired from the stage, Cutler still remembers the exact form cues that helped him master pressing.
Jay Cutler’s Tip for Better Bench Pressing
In the video, Cutler had two important tips to keep in mind: Create an arch and push the chest out so it’s the highest point of the body.
“If you’re bench pressing, whether it be barbell, dumbbell, you’ve got to create an arch. Instead of pushing and rounding the shoulders and rounding the back, the chest has to stay at the highest point of the body.”
For ongoing progress, he recommended targeting the chest with different exercises and angles, all while maintaining that arch movement pattern.
“You need to push out, and you need to contract. That’s the biggest suggestion I can have with chest. Of course, the volume and the angles, inclines, declines, flat bench, flies, cable crossovers, that kind of stuff. You wanna hit it from a variety of angles but more importantly, create that arch.”
He said it’s also important to pop the chest out during repetitions and use weight you can control:
“Pop the chest out. Use weights that you can control. I see too many people in the gym bench pressing too much. Just do the volume and do what works and feel the muscle work; don’t just do it to push weight,” Jay Cutler said.
This wasn’t Cutler’s first time discussing bench press technique. He actually revealed that he avoided flat bench pressing altogether because it leaves the body vulnerable to injuries. Cutler went as far as to call the flat bench press ‘the worst exercise.’
“I took flat bench pressing out once I got — I want to say in the money. Once I started to financially support myself through bodybuilding, I couldn’t take the chance of a flat bench because everyone I know that’s done a flat bench has torn their pec on the bench press, okay? Everybody.”
Having built an Olympia-winning physique, Cutler is an open book when it comes to his training strategies. Any time he trains chest, he makes sure the pecs are receiving the work and not the surrounding muscles.
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