Hey guys I was reading a few articles a while back and saw them again today about bench press. They say that it can help boost big gains by bringing the bar to your neck. I used to do these and they seemed to help some but has anyone else had experience with doing these?
This excercise is dangerous for your rotators, however is very useful for the tendon next to your delt/armpit. If you need a little extra pec width or the indent right there, the safest way is to make sure you do some rotator excersices prior to your pec training, do a full pec training, and do these to finish, 2 or 3 sets with light enough weight (I don't recommend more than 135lbs) and high reps (10-20).
Keep in mind its a shaping excercise as oppose to a building excercise, so you will see bodybuilders doing these once in a while, but its to tweak all that muscle they already have. Also I have trained many individuals who have a hard time to growing their pecs and this is always a great excercise for them.
There was a mention how this puts stress on the upperchest more than the lower, but doing incline bench close to the neck will hit your upperchest, you can go much heavier, and your rotators wont be in as much danger. However the form on that is confusing to most, if your a powerlifter you most likely want to smash the bar off your chest and get it all the way back up. If your just bodybuilding do a slightly closer grip than your normal bench, hold the bar directly verticle from your chin/neck not your chest,go straight down towards your neck and when everything feels tight stop (rear delts, chest, tris), for most people this is right below the chin, and then go directly verticle again (not forward even slightly) squeezing your upper chest over those colarbones, and shortly stopping before lockout (lockout will take the stress of the pec)
Hope this helps you a lot, and anyone else who was really inquiring about this.