The Stretch Reflex: To Bounce or Not To Bounce
Dec 12th, 2007 by Mehdi Tags: Exercise, Strength Training, Weight Lifting
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Bounce. Image credit: Mowling.
Galapogos’ reply to How to Bench Press with Correct Technique:
The bencher in your video should lower the weight with more control, and not bounce it off the chest that much.
Just touch & go for the stretch reflex to kick in would be ok. Some recommend a pause – mandatory for Powerlifting meets – to get rid of the stretch reflex effect. The eccentric seems to be faster than the concentric, especially on the later reps.
Bouncing vs. No Bouncing. This is the video Galapogos points to, it’s my brother doing the Bench Press. He bounces the weight on his chest on each rep.
Here’s a video of me doing the Overhead Press. I don’t bounce the weight off my upperchest, each rep starts from a dead stop.
The Stretch Reflex. When you lower the weight on the Bench Press & Squat, your muscles are stretched. Energy is stored in these muscles. By bouncing off your chest/hamstrings, you can use this stored energy & lift more weight.
The Deadlift & Overhead Press both start from a dead stop. Weight starts on the floor with the Deadlift. Weight starts on your chest on the Overhead Press. You can’t bounce on the first rep, you can’t use the stretch reflex.
That’s why I never bounced on the Deadlift & Overhead Press. You can’t bounce with heavy singles, so why doing it with reps? Better is to do multiple reps like heavy singles: starting each from a dead stop. At least that’s what I thought.
Benefits of Bouncing. I was exchanging emails with Mark Rippetoe regarding Starting Strength 2nd edition. I told him I was frustrated with my Overhead Press. I’ve only added 5k on my max this year. His advice:
If you start taking your breath at the top for reps 2-5 and rebound eccentrically out of your armpits at the bottom, you will find that to be immediately worth 5k.
This goes against what I’ve believed & did so far. I thought about what he wrote & did some research on using the stretch reflex.
- Harder Muscle Contraction. Try a vertical jump with & without a dip. Muscles contract harder when preceded by a stretch.
- More Weight. You can use more weight by bouncing. Get stronger on your 5 rep max & you’ll get stronger on your 1 rep max.
To Bounce or Not To Bounce? I now do 5×5s with over 50kg. I also hit a PR of 62,5kg for a single, which is 10kg away from a body-weight Overhead Press. I think it’s the result of the Timed Total Tonnage approach & bouncing.
I don’t believe you should always bounce. However it’s a good idea to alternate between bouncing & pausing to get both benefits: more weight using bouncing, strength from a dead stop when pausing.
Don’t bounce if you’re a beginner. You need to stay tight & be fast when the bar hits your chest. Else you’ll lose strength because of bad technique.
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There’s a big difference between the “bounce” you get from the stretch reflex and bouncing the bar off of your sternum. It looks from the video that your brother is actually bouncing the bar off of his sternum, using the support of the ribcage rebounding from the impact to start the next rep. To take advantage of the stretch reflex, the bar should just touch your chest and immediately come back up. If your chest compresses from the impact of the bar, you’re bouncing it off of your sternum and it’s unsafe.
It looks worse on the video than live actually. Anyway, it’s not that the bar falls on his chest, that’s about 65kg he’s lifting. He would have hurt him a long time ago if the bar felt on his ribcage, especially doing reps like that.
Mehdi — sounds good. If you’re seeing him in real life and the bar isn’t bouncing off of the chest, then he’s good. It might be the angle of the video that just makes it look bad.
I think it’s just the shitty quality of my camera
I’ll get a new camera next year 
Just what Lucas said, the bounce is in the muscles and not actual physical contact of the body with the bar. Kinda like when you stretch a rubber band and it tries to snap back to its original size- just as an analogy. I’ve seen guys hurt their sternum by actually bouncing the bar off of their sternum instead of using the bounce in the contracting muscles.
This is a great article on utilizing that bounce.
Interesting article, I have never heard about stretch reflex, but i was conscious of it when doing
doing Overhead Press and Bench Press, I also saw some guys at the gym doing it just like Magnus Samuelsson and Mehdi’s brother
doing it on the bench press. I don’t have the power to explode the bar out of my chest like that, at least no now. Will I be able
to do that if I bonuce?
Start light to get used to Caim. You’re reversing the movement quickly when using the stretch reflex, that’s also a skill to learn.
I believe what Rippetoe mentions is using the stretch reflex, not really “bouncing”. I mean, a little bit of bouncing is fine…touch and go. But I do agree with Lucas that the video looks like it’s a lot more bouncing than that. The stretch reflex should come from your shoulder/elbow joints. It’s the elastic property of the connective and muscle tissues there. It shouldn’t come from the elastic properties of your sternum/chest. Besides the obvious risk of hurting yourself (especially with heavy low reps), I also don’t think it has a favorable cost-benefit ratio.
This is me benching about half a year ago - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DedYd_xPpbE This is what I believe utilizing the stretch reflex for the bench press should look like, and I’ve already received several comments from friends that I’m “bouncing”. I do believe it’s a lot less bouncing than what your brother was doing though.
Just my 2c.
Well again: it looks worse on the video than in real life. The weight doesn’t “fall” on his chest, he quickly reverse the movment.
If he keeps applying progressive loading, increasing the load every workout, he’ll bounce less. He could only hurt himself if he’d jump from 60 to 100kg, but thanks to progressive loading we can avoid this kind of silliness.
Strong bench btw Galapogos, congraz!
How about applying this logic to deep squats? Does the same apply at the bottom of the squat to power back up? Or is that just a good way to blow out a knee?
@Matt
Same thing applies to the Squat where you can bounce from the hamstrings. Never from the knees! From the knees = bad. But you can bounce from the tension build in the hamstrings on the way down. Not bouncing would be pausing at the bottom of the squat which is harder.
i don’t agree with this method and think it is stupid, a slight bounce might be ok, but hammering the weight on your chest is gonna cause problems…and your putting way too much force on your rib cage. i read you can put up to 3-5x more force on your rib cage while bouncing, meaning u bench 100 pounds, you put 300-500 pounds of force on your rib cage.