There is one thing you cannot leave out when talking about the bench press: over the long history of evolution, we became animals that move by walking upright on two legs.
In the words of Yusuke Suzuki, bench press world champion and twice winner of the IPF World Classic Bench Press Championships (2018, 2019).
B.A.D. GYM URAWA is a gym built for one lift. Where most gyms cover many exercises broadly, B.A.D. GYM URAWA aims at mastery of the bench press, and the equipment, the coaching and the room were all assembled for it. The principle of the B.A.D. Method - that the bench press is body control - comes out of that choice.
Modern life is built around standing, walking, sitting and using the hands - the shape of an upright, two-legged human. Yet our bodies still carry the structures and movements inherited from four-legged animals.
The bench press sits just beyond upright, two-legged walking. A human being - an upright, two-legged animal - lies down and presses into the bar as if it were the ground, using the palms as front feet. You catch the floor with your feet, catch the bar with your palms, and connect the body in between into one piece. Bringing together the body sense of a four-legged animal and that of a two-legged one, and lifting more because of it: that, in B.A.D.'s view, is the heart of the bench press.
Moving your body is an exchange of information between the brain and the body. A command travels from the brain along the nerves, the muscles work, and the muscles move the bones. How those bones are combined and moved is what we call using the joints. At the same time, when a joint moves, that information travels back to the brain.
Brain → nerves → muscles → bones and joints → sensation → brain
Because you feel well, you move better. Because you move better, you feel more. Building that virtuous circle is the key to raising your technique in the bench press.
Train the bench press long enough and you will hit doubt and plateaus. Every result has a cause. You cannot change a result that has already happened - but you can change the cause of the results still to come.
Rather than trying to change the result in front of you, ask why it is the way it is. The more lost you are, the further back to first principles you should go. First principles are not a set of answers to memorise; they are a yardstick for finding your own.
Long working hours, phones and computers, less chance to move. Convenient as modern life is, it leaves us with a straightened neck, an over-arched lower back, flat feet, stiff shoulders and back pain.
In the bench press you press the floor with your feet, line up everything from pelvis to head, and catch the bar - the ground - with your palms as front feet. Along the way you come to feel, and then own, the spine position that is natural to a human being, a better breathing pattern, and a line of sight connected to how the body moves.
You think, you try something, you fail, you try again. You share the joy and the frustration with people who value the same things. Your body changes, your senses change, and that becomes a pleasure in itself. The bench press is not only about lifting a bar. It is a way to know your own body, widen what you are capable of, and make life richer.
Supervised by Yusuke Suzuki
A command from the brain moves the body; the sensation of moving returns to the brain. Polishing that loop is what raises technique.
Because you feel well, you move better.
Because you move better, you feel more.
The B.A.D. Method is the system for coaching the bench press as body control, established by bench press world champion Yusuke Suzuki.
Set the inner unit and the breathing, order the way force is produced, and only then go to the bar.
Palms and soles, trunk and hips. Learning to use the pull that lives inside the push.
Where the shoulder sits changes how the arm works. The idea of wrapping around the bar.
Eyes and spine move together. Where you look decides how the bar goes up.
Feeling what standing really is makes your bench press stronger. A stable hip means a stable spine.
The technical content of each chapter is taught in person, in the free trial, personal training and seminars.
The method is taught in person.
The technique beyond the philosophy is something to test in your own body. In the free trial we start with a form check and look at how you use your body right now.