As we highlighted in a recent post, one of the biggest complaints about the Smolov Jr program is that it leads to injury when benching.  We believe the problem isn’t so much with the Smolov protocol, but rather the use of poor form when benching.  In our post on the topic we pointed you to an article on T-Nation outlining 10 things you can do to improve your bench press form.

One of the pointers from that article was to ensure you are properly pinching your shoulder blades back during the lift.  This can actually take considerable training to get right, but is one of the key elements to preventing injury.  In the video below, Dave Tate from EliteFTS, demonstrates a couple of ways to train this position.  If you’re impatient, go ahead and skip to about 1:45 into the video for the good stuff.  Ok, now get to it and keep your bench safe!