The Guillotine Chest Crusher

Pressure Cascade · Mechanism

Okay, the name sounds terrifying, and honestly, the exercise kind of is. The Neck Press — also known as the Guillotine Chest Crusher — is an intermediate barbell exercise where you lower the barbell to your neck instead of your chest during a bench press. Yes, your neck. The area where your throat is. The area that you generally prefer not to have heavy barbells near. But that's exactly what makes this exercise so effective — the unusual bar path changes the angle of pressing and hits your upper chest in a way that nothing else can.

You lie on a flat bench and perform a barbell press, but instead of lowering the bar to your mid-chest, you lower it to the base of your neck, just above your collarbones. Your elbows flare out more than in a standard press, and the bar path is longer, which means your chest works through a bigger range of motion and your shoulders are more involved. It's like a bench press that decided to go to drama school and came back more theatrical and more dangerous.

This exercise is strictly intermediate because lowering a loaded barbell toward your throat requires excellent shoulder mobility, rock-solid control, and a spotter who is paying attention — not scrolling their phone, not chatting with their friend, but actually watching you because if something goes wrong, it goes wrong in a very neck-adjacent way. But done correctly with appropriate weight and a reliable spotter, the guillotine press builds incredible upper chest mass and front delt development. Lower to the neck, press with power, and build a chest so thick that you'll rest your chin on it when you sit down. Just make sure someone's spotting you, because this is one exercise where "I got this" is not an acceptable philosophy.