Men’s Fitness.com shows you how to perform the neutral-grip bench press to boost your gains on the bench.

The strongest, smartest lifters don’t bench-press with their upper arms 90 degrees from their sides. They tuck their elbows in on the descent to get more power and reduce the risk of shoulder injury. Performing the neutral-grip bench press for eight to 12 weeks will help you get comfortable with the technique.

1) Grab dumbbells and lie back on a bench. Squeeze your shoulder blades down and together and arch your lower back. Position the weights at the sides of your chest with palms facing each other.

2) Press the weights straight overhead, keeping your wrists in the same position.

Why It Works
Pressing with the palms facing each other, rather than pointed toward your feet, will naturally cause you to keep your elbows close. Soon, you’ll do it with the barbell, too. This takes excess pressure off your shoulder joints and increases your mechanical advantage, allowing you to lift significantly more weight.

Check out Men’s Fitness.com articles for more helpful workout tips.

Follow these 10 steps by Men’s Fitness.com to gain more strength (and essentially, more muscle).

1.) Own the “big four.”
The squat, deadlift, bench press, and shoulder press are the best strength-building exercises, period. The chinup and row are great moves too, but don’t make them the focus of your workout — they can be assistance lifts to complement the bench and shoulder press, keeping your pulling muscles in balance with the pressing ones.

2.) Use barbells first.
Forget all the fad equipment. The barbell is king, the dumbbell is queen, and everything else is a court jester — it may have its place, but it’s not essential. Start your workouts with barbell exercises, such as the “big four,” as described above. Barbells let you load a lot of weight, and lifting heavy is the first step toward getting stronger. Once your heaviest strength exercises are out of the way, you can move on to dumbbell and body-weight training.

4.) Maintain a log.
Write down your exercises, sets, reps, and the fate of each workout. Keep track of your best lifts and the most reps you’ve done with a certain weight on an exercise. Constantly strive to improve those numbers.

7.) Add weights slowly.
The main reason people plateau and stop gaining strength is that they go too heavy for too long. Abandon your ego and do your main lifts using 10% less than the most weight you can lift for the given rep range. Increase the weight each session — but by no more than 10 pounds — and stick with the same lifts. You’ll rarely plateau again.

To see the entire list of 10, click here.

A lot of beginners (and veterans of the gym for that matter) like to do a variety of exercises and a variety of different movements in efforts to gain muscle. But as the article notes, keeping it simple is key. Doing compound movements and keeping track of your gains is crucial. After that, everything else is just additional.