How You Can Use the Spoto Press to Crush Your Bench Goals

SOMETIMES THE SMALLEST changes can deliver the biggest results in the gym. Sure, it’s important to switch up your routine by swapping in new exercises occasionally, but it’s also well established that little tweaks often work just as well (if not better). Subtle adjustments like altering your grip, stance, or even the pace of each rep can be the springboard that launches you out of a training rut and reinvigorates your gains.

Nowhere is that truer than in the barbell bench press. There’s a reason it’s a mainstay of most men’s training programs and a card-carrying member of strength training’s “big three” lifts: Few other upper body exercises mobilize as much muscle or build as much lean mass. But a consequence of its storied status is that it can be overused, with lifters performing it the same way set after set, week after week, month after month, and year after year.

Eventually, guys stuck in the same cycle will hit a plateau. They might look to all kinds of wild approaches for a fix—which is a shame, because a possible solution to their struggle can be simple. By stopping the bar before it reaches their chest and pausing before finishing the rep, lifters can elevate their pushing (and muscle-building) power.

That “hold and hover” transforms the standard bench press into the Spoto Press, named after elite powerlifter Eric Spoto. He used it as the cornerstone of a training regimen that helped him crush a 722-pound raw bench press in competition. Follow his lead to maximize your push.

What Is the Spoto Press?

UNLIKE A TRADITIONAL barbell bench press, which involves lowering the bar all the way to your chest, the Spoto Press entails lowering the bar until it’s an inch or two above your pecs and then holding it there for a beat (one to two seconds) before pressing back up to the starting position. Everything else about the exercise is the same as a standard barbell bench press. That brief hold at the bottom makes all the difference.

Pausing the lift when your pecs are almost fully lengthened eliminates the stretch reflex, which is the natural tendency of a muscle to store energy briefly when stretched (much like a rubber band). During a standard bench press, the stretch reflex helps you drive the bar out of that bottom position. Removing it makes that job a lot harder. You’re going to struggle through the last couple of reps of each set. That’s a good thing; the harder your muscles work, the faster, stronger, and bigger they’ll grow. It’s also why most trainers recommend that you reduce your typical bench press load by at least 10 percent when performing the Spoto Press (more on that in a bit).

The “active suspension” (as kinesiologists call the pause) at the bottom of each rep will also increase your time under tension (TUT), a key hypertrophy stimulus, as well as prevent you from bouncing the bar off your chest (an all-too-common form faux pas) while helping to eliminate a sticking point that plagues many men: The transition off your chest when your mechanical advantage is the lowest. By taking away the inclination to bounce, and you’ll put more of the onus on your triceps, too.

And as you’re reaping these benefits, the Spoto Press will also force you to control the bar through its entire trajectory, helping to ensure you execute the movement with perfect form. That demand also makes this variation slightly different than a board bench press, another technique used by powerlifters to help hone their lockout power.

How to Add the Spoto Press to Your Workouts

YOU CAN SWAP the Spoto Press in for the standard bench press in your strength programming when you’re looking to bust through a plateau, or if you’re aiming to ramp up your reps to a new goal. But because you’re pausing at the bottom of each rep, you’ll want to reduce the load a bit, tailoring the amount of the reduction to your primary training goal.

First, learn the lift. If you’ve never done it, start with a load you can control; think of doing three to five sets of six to eight reps with 50 percent of your one-rep max. Then, you can get more nuanced.

If the skill you’re targeting is strength, shoot for three to five sets of three to five reps at 75 to 85 percent of your one-rep max (1RM). You should also rest three to five minutes (notice a pattern?) between each set to allow sufficient recovery for peak performance in every rep.

Hypertrophy requires a slightly different approach. If your focus is muscle growth, perform three to four sets of six to 12 reps. As the rep count increases, the weight on the bar should decrease slightly, so load it with 65 to 75 percent of your 1RM. That will allow you to crank out all of your reps with proper form and maximize your growth potential.

How to Do the Spoto Press

You’ll follow most of the same cues for the Spoto press as you would a standard barbell bench press rep. Check out the video below to get set, then adjust for the shift in range of motion and the pause.

• Lie face up on a flat bench holding a barbell in the rack above you with a shoulder-width, overhand grip.
• Brace your core and drive your feet into the floor to contract your quads and glutes as you squeeze your shoulder blades together.
• Unrack the bar and hold it above your chest with your arms straight. This is the starting position.
• Breathe in as you lower the bar to within an inch or two of the middle of your chest.
• Pause for one to two seconds and then drive back up to the starting position as you breathe out. That’s one rep.