Think I've figured out why my bench is weak - please analyse...

[JayBee]

Ok,

For those who might remember, I made some explosive progress over the space of only a few weeks, in squats and in leg-press, (45-degrees), doing 3 sets of 5, progressing from 180Ibs to 250Ibs and from 290Ibs to 570Ibs respectively. My Bench, however, lags behind dreadfully at 150Ibs, up only 20Ibs since March.

I think I now know why.

The squat and the legpress are obviously very similar movements, and I feel that the latter is an excellent 'barrier-buster' for the former. In squats, you must be careful, especially without a spotter. I train alone, and don't have the luxury of someone to look out for me. What's more, my legs carry the weight easy, but they don't seem to trust my back to balance the weight, so, I've had to be tentative in my increments. However, with the legpress, you can overload the press quite safely. If you cannot come back up in a squat, you are in serious trouble. If you experience similar failure in a legpress, your knees and body are more than capable of supporting the weight resting on your legs. You take a breather for a minute or two, wait for your muscles to recoup, and press back upwards for one rep.

Like squats, benchpressing with a barbell is an intrinsically dangerous movement. Unlike your legs in the legpress, however, your chest will probably not support the bar should you experience failure to raise it, causing damage. Even tilting the bar so that the weights slide off will incur some potentially harmful strain on the shoulders, which have to take the rapidly shifting load from the fatigued arms, as the bar jerks violently from side to side.

Now, I think I need to use a machine bench so I can REALLY exert my upper body, without the concern of a bar getting stuck on my chest, as I exerted my lower body in the legpress without having to worry about toppling backwards/forwards during a squat. Of course, machine benching is no substitute for a proper benchlift - your muscles don't enjoy the added benefits that come from balancing the load, not just moving it. However, I believe this is one area (and the only one) where machines are superior to free weights for those who train alone- when you hit a sticking point, a machine will allow you to increase the weight radically, freeing you from worrying about the consequences of failure, and will allow me to put my heart, mind, body and soul into the sheer DRIVE, as I did with legpress.

When getting on the bench machine, I'll add 10Ibs to my bar lift to compensate for the loss of the bar, and THEN increase the weight a further 10Ibs. That's my plan of attack. I'm keeping good form, and this a.m I managed to implement a kind suggestion by a fellow BB'er here to keep my elbows closer to my body, this allowed me to do 3 x 4 this morning on the barbell bench. Additionally, I worked arms hard this morning, and worked lower back & lats yesterday, so all bodyparts responsible for participating in the bench should be stronger for next week, when I'll use the machine for the big push forwards - or upwards, as the case may be! I really think this will be the same shot in the arm that my squats received.


Ok, comments? Criticism? Analysis?

Thanks in advance,



Jaybee.

[edster951]

get in the rack and rest the bar on the bottom rails. It'll save ya.

With the squats, our squat rack has side rails so if you get stuck, you can sit on your heals and roll forward. I do anyway, so I usually squat alone. Even with a spotter, he's only there to stop me falling backwards or forwards. If I get stuck at the bottom I hate anyone trying to hoist me up by the armpits. I rock forwards and rest the bar on the rails.

[supadave]

It's worth a try Jay

[supadave]

It's worth a try Jay, good luck with it

[tarman]

try it if it makes you feel comfortable when lifting alone.
Fortunately for me, I know what I am capable of, so when I lift at home (alone) I know how much I can do w/o a spotter (unless my wife is around! lol). Granted, I usually lose a rep, but I would prefer than over a machine.

[oracle]

i do suffer the same fate as you did, JayBee; lousy benchpress. One of the good way is to do it in the rack and with partial reps. I think one of the biggest hinderance in our benchpress progress is our fear that the weight might crush on us. Everytime when i unrack the bar of 210lb, i start to worry. With the rack, I just work it out till i have no more juice and bam! bar rest on the supporting bar.

[fitnessman]

Okay I really shouldnt add to this because I was blessed with a body that is perfect for the bench, but I will

Why bench? If you are not good at it, why put yourself through the mental stress? As an overall chest movement its really not that great, so why do it?

IMO the flat dumbell press would serve you better. One of my oldest friends competes in natural shows. Big guy, 220 or so, 18 1/2 arms in a single digit BF. He cant BP worth a hoot (maybe 225 on his best day) doesnt bother him in the slightest.

I guess what I am trying to say is there are better options to the BP. I feel it all comes down to muscle growth and how you look as oppossed to what you can bench.

[jaymed]

Fitnessman kind of stole my thunder with the suggestion of db benching....I have a similar problem with my benching as well and I agree with your reasoning that you don't have a workout partner. I changed to DB's to help increase my intensity and alleviate my fear of getting crushed. I also started doing weighted dips and that has been a huge help in getting my bench up. In the span of about a month, I've added a good 20 pounds on my bench from doing both of these exercises.

[MiloMan]

Originally posted by fitnessman
Why bench? If you are not good at it, why put yourself through the mental stress? As an overall chest movement its really not that great, so why do it?

I'll agree with that; if a person is not a strength athlete, never intends to compete in bench contests, and lifts first and foremost for improved physical appearance, then there's not much reason to barbell bench.

[fitnessman]

To be honest, The only reason I bench press is for my ego. I am the strongest guy at my gym and it makes me feel good when people watch.

It has been in the back of my mind now for some to scrap the BP all together.

[Charger]

My gym is a sissy gym. The DB's only go up to 100.
I agree with everyone, no one has agreed that using a machine is better! Use a cage or DB's.

[oracle]

you are lucky. my gym's dumbbells go only to 60lb.
i think there is a way to do heavier BB benchpress although i have abstained from flat bench press for quite sometime. And that is to arch the body and bench somewhat like a dip or decline benchpress and the movement is like pushing yourself out from the swimming pool. This motion, i think, is much stronger if you ly flat on the bench and do the perpendicular up/down lift.

[DanMc]

I also work out alone and do not even try and go even think of going heavy out side of a rack be it a smith machine or ortherwise. When you bench more than you weigh it can be scary!!!

Good luck

[Power-Quest]

There are plenty of other chest exercises to choose from and diffrent methods of doing them , i like weighted dips 3 sets to failure.

[nuck]

Some interesting responses, except if your bench is weak, your dumbells will be too. For me, I use dumbells on the incline to mix things up once in a while and I find that once the poundages start to get up, I spend almost as much energy wrestling the weights into postion to do the reps as the presses themselves. I stil go back to it, even though I hate it, because I thing the ability to control heavy separate weights is a useful kind of strength to have(but a poor isolator of the muscles worked).
Jaybee, I got the impression from the other thread that you wanted to become as strong in your chest exercises as in your legs, as opposed to just adding meat. The flat bench, and incline bench are to me, fundamental in building strength. I have avoided going too heavy for a number of years, but I usually stuck with enough weight that I could not push more than 8-10 reps a set, or pyramiding. I did not worry too much about going to failure, except on my last set, and was never shy about asking for a spotter to do that. The seated press machine is the same motion and allows you to go to failure without a spotter so it is a viable second choice. You can get up to doing 250lbs for reps fairly easily, just by pyramiding, even if you don't go to failure. Beyond that, unless you are naturally on ox, it seems to require more specialized workouts (thanks Miloman) but I don't think you need to get too fancy yet. 8-12 sets of bench, incline and flys, going heavy but not hugely so. I actually would switch over to volume from time to time which for me was slightly lighter, with sets of 12 instead of 8 so counting my inclines I am doing close to 100 reps instead of 50-60. Would not do the higher volume for more than three weeks though. There is lots of info on this board for increasing your 1 rep max but since you are pushing fairly modest poundages right now I don't think you have to get that scientific. I think you need to build up your strength base which means pushing weights that you can manage for 40 or so reps of flat bench, and gradually increasing. The other thing is watch your recovery. Different body parts can have different recovery rates so don't expect your less developed chest to necessarily handle the same frequency as your legs

[Eye2]

One of my best friends is a powerlifter and is very strong on the flat bench. He says it's all in the technique and form. That's the only way you can improve. With the correct technique.

Use the cage of course. And use your triceps instead of your shoulders as secondary muscles. The way he teaches is to grip the bar in a reverse grip and look at the position of your elbows. Then grip it overhand placing your elbows where they were in the reverse grip. Lower the bar so that it comes under your nipples. Then when pushing up, pull the bar apart.

That's the biggest technique. He's also really big on board presses with huge amounts of weight. He'll lift double his max and inch at the top. Then keep lowering the heigth of the boards.

Sheesh... now I'm remembering all that he said about benching. You gotta focus on one thing at a time, Flat Bench, Squats, or DL's. If you want to improve on FB you have to do a lot of Military Presses, CGBP, and alternate between fast light weight benching and max effort benching.

He's got a mirror on his ceiling so he can tell if he's doing it right.

[Grey Wtr]

Jaybee:

Are you lifting at home, or at a Gym, you didn't say?

If at a gym, just ask for a spot, you cannot, cannot, markedly up your bench w/o a spot, IMO.

I've been training seriously 30yrs. Forced reps at the end of a set is one of the best things you can do to up your bench, build up trust with cetrtain lifters that train the same time you do.

Machines are mostly a waste, since there is no stabilization involved. Although I will say, the Hammer Strength flat bench machine is excellent, best bench machine I've ever used.

You can train inside a rack or something but you still need to do forced reps, at some point.

There are some gimmicks, here goes, heavy close grip bench, builds up the power head portion of the tricep, Seated machine dips, or weighted or non-weighted free standing dips on the dip bars. Shoulder presses, to build up power in your shoulders.

Another gimmick, build up the number of reps you can do for your body weight or another weight you picked, at age 17 I picked 225, I weighed 145, and repping out 2 plates just always impressed me, my first goal 10 reps. These days, at 43, I can still knock out 225lbs for 22-24 reps on a good day, body weight of 215-220, lean. Now, even though injuries prevent me from doing 4 plates these days, I know that mathematically that if I can do 225 for 20+, I can do 315 for 10-12 (I did earlier this week), 350 for 5 reps, and 405 for 2+2 assisted reps.

So, what weight can you get 10 reps, and thats it. Well start nailing that weight for 11, then 12, ultimately moving it up to maybe 14-15. Once again, this system, works best with a spot on the last 1 or 2 reps. This has the effect of upping all the higher weight benches.

A point was made about the similarity between Squats and benching, both are inheirently dangerous, bench can sub consciously pscych you out, Heavy bench I should say, all that weight over your face. Your mind does register, hey this is crazy.

But you must never have to think about getting stuck under the bar, why, you need a spotter on heavy weight.

I can train any time of the day, and surely I'll be able to ask someone for a spot.

My 2 cents.