Lifting Form

I'm constantly having a debate with people about benching technique, some say stop 2 to 3 inches short from touching your chest, where I say go for the stretch and touch your chest. Now I do realize bringing your arms and shoulders that far back with big weight on the bar IS performing an unnatural movement, still I believe your just not incorporating all the muscle fibers without it.

Same as standing rope extensions for triceps, some guys stop right when their forearm is parallel to the floor, I however, bring my hands all the way up to almost my shoulders, then bring them down for a full extension. Although bringing them parallel keeps constant tension on the muscle, I just don't feel I'm incorporating all the fibers.

What do you guys think?

I believe in touching your chest, especially for maxing out. Stoping short of touching just doesn't give you any bragging rights.

I appreciate a large ROM.

depends on ROM, i know a guy with a huge well sculpted chest and he stops 2" short simply because his shoulders pain him to go right down

Yeah, my PT told me to never touch the bar to my chest. But I still don't listen. Go hard or go home.

All the way down, IMO, unless you have shoulder issues. I've had a torn rotator cuff and a torn labrum, so I don't do a full bench very heavy (on my DE days, I do 315lbs with 90lbs of chain working on speed, then I do a 7th set of 315 to failure with no chains). But when I go very heavy, I usually do either floor presses or board presses. When it comes time to max, though, its a regular, full, bench press with a brief pause at the bottom. Whenever I hear someone's bench press numbers and I hear that they aren't going all the way down, I don't consider that a true bench. Hell I can do in the mid-high 500s on a 2 board press (approx 3" above the chest) but my actual bench (right now) is in the low 500s.

I'm speaking from a powerlifter/strongman point of view. So I would assume its different for that bodybuilder.