Thoughts on the bench press: triceps

Do this as an experiment:

Get on the floor and bang out some push-ups.  Now take your hands and position them close together so that your palms and fingers and thumbs form a triangle of empty space.

Now do pushups with your hands in the position above.

The point I'm trying to prove is you should be weaker with your hands in the triangle position than with your hands spread out in a regular normal pushup.

Now apply this principle to your bench pres training. Get underneath a bar in a bench press position and take both of your hands and move them close together in the middle of the bar.  Now bench press. 

You should be significantly weaker in this hand position than in the position with hands spread wide on the bar.  If you believe in the mantra "you're only as strong as your weakest link", you will notice if you have weak triceps you can't bench press much weight. This kind of close grip bench pressing will hit your weak triceps and stimulate them to their full potential.

Bench pressing in this close grip position will also adress weakness in the wrists as well.  Because the wrists take on an unnatural bent inwards and backwards position, they get taxed as well due to the awkwardness of the hand placement on the bar in this style of close grip bench press.

Since this style of close grip emphasizes the triceps, you will have to incorporate a front deltoid exercise such as the decline bench press. The decline press taxes the front deltoids for the simple fact no leg drive is activated in this movement because your feet are bound underneath the foot holder on the sit up bench. Additionally, it's best to angle the sit up bench to its highest position to deemphasize leg drive and provide the opportunity for the front deltoids to take on the brunt of the work in the decline press.

If you're going to do accessory work, the triceps and front deltoids and pectorals should all be worked at the same time.  This is why so much frustration is experienced when expecting gains in the bench press when all you're doing for accesory work is cable tricep pushdowns.  This type of movement is useless to bench press gains because it misses the front delts and pectorals.  The successful strength trainer and strength gainer will know that the only accessory conducive to bench pressing strongly is one that involves triceps, pectorals and front deltoids simultaneously.