Barbell Guillotine Bench Press

Chest · Barbell

How to do it

This is a bench press with the bar coming down to your neck instead of your chest, elbows flared close to 90 degrees from the torso. Use a medium grip, the one that leaves your forearm vertical at the bottom. Lower very slowly — twice as long as the way up — until the bar sits a couple of fingers above your neck, pause a second and press. The chest stretch is huge, which is why it works. And exactly why: **light weight, and always with pins or a spotter**. The classic mistake is taking it to failure or setting up without safeties; here the bar falls on your neck, not your chest.

Variants

The drawing shows one way of doing it, and the technique above describes that one. Almost every exercise has variants — standing or seated, the grip, the bench angle — and is still the same exercise: if you do it another way, write it in the exercise note and you will have it every time you train it.

Also works: Shoulders, Triceps

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