With the exception of the barbell curl, the bench press is probably the most popular exercise in the world. Despite this, I have never been fond of the exercise. However, I decided to bite the bullet and go on a bench press specialization program.
My primary pressing exercises before this were handstand pushups and pushups. I am capable of performing one arm push ups with my feet together for 6-7 reps. I can also do 7-8 full ROM handstand pushups.
When I first starting benching seriously 6 weeks ago, I had a poor 200 pound pres.In 6 weeks I am now pressing 315 for 2. Of course this has less to do with any increase in my strength and more to do with me learning how to utilize the strength I have built doing bodyweight pressing exercises. As in any exercise, your bench press is determined by your practice of it. Considering how I never seriously pursued bench pressing, I was not surprised by the results.
However, all this did validate my theory that strength built by any horizontal pressing exercise, will build a base of strength. In order to realize it in other movements, you have to practice them specifically.
Ultimately, it is important to understand why the bench press is considered the ultimate test of pressing power.
Because if not the bench press, what else?
There is no other pressing movement that can be reliably used to determine one's pressing power. Overhead presses were contested in weightlifting before 1972, but anyone familiar with weightlifting history will tell you that it had to be dropped from competition because the degree of cheating in the overhead press had distorted its reliability. In 1972, there were athletes who were overhead pressing more than they could clean and jerk (by utilizing back bending techniques). So all overhead presses are out. Floor presses also are easy to cheat on, just look the old "belly toss" method of pressing the bar. Not to mention it does not test strength through a full ROM.
Pushups and handstand pushups are highly dependent upon bodyweight and body fat percentage, putting heavyweights and athletes from power sports at a serious disadvantage. The only reliable way of testing pressing power is the bench press.
For sure, the bench press has its issues- Shoulder instability, "non- functionality", lack of space for the shoulder blades to rotate and of course it being a open chain movement. Honestly, the functionality of the bench press is really dependent on who you are referring to. Those who need to routinely demonstrate their strength, like powerlifters, will find it functional. Remember the purpose of the sport is to display strength. Other athletes might find the close grip bench press more useful, as it mimics the pressing actions of actual play. Ultimately, the bench press is a full body exercise, and its usefulness has to be determined for every individual trainee.
However, no one can deny the injury potential of the exercise, specially considering the poor shoulder stability, terrible posture and khyphotic backs that are common today. However, if you wish to improve your bench press, you have to practice it. For such individuals, I have a small list of suggestions-
1. For every rep of every pressing exercise you do, perform one rep of bent over flys (Also called rear delt flys) of comparable intensity. Make sure your torso is parallel to the ground while doing it. Rear delt flys are a low intensity exercise that will help pack on the volume for your upper back, but will not significantly stress your recovery. They work the scapula retractors, the posterior delts and the external rotators- all critical for good posture and shoulder health.
It may seem like a chore but do it. All other back and pulling work is over and above this. And remember, huge traps and rounded shoulders are nothing to laugh at.
2. Like any other exercise, technique is everything. Perfect your technique and you will get great results.
3. The first thing you must learn is how to be tight. Counter-intuitively, grounding your feet and heel in the ground, tightening your glutes, tightening your spine until your arch is rock solid and it hurts will all improve your bench press by several dozen pounds. The number of times my glutes were more sore than my chest taught me how important being tight is.
4. The second thing you must learn is how to protect your shoulder. Your upper back has to tight, and your shoulders pulled down and back and the chest puffed out. This gives your acromin and your rotator cuff some breathing space.
5. Pec tears and shoulder dislocations are common in bench press enthusiasts. Tricep tears are uncommon. The fact is that few lifters ever use their triceps to the fullest. You must learn how to use your triceps in order to press big weight. Twist your hands outwards/ turn your elbows inwards while descending. Think of pushing yourself AWAY from the bar when you press it back up. This is critical to getting the muscle recruitment right.
6. Flare your lats at the bottom of the press. This will give you great power out of the bottom and save your delts for the sticking point.
6. I do not believe it is necessary to bench press all the time in order to have a big bench. You need to bench consistently though. Once a week is good.
7. However, you can and should train accessory work hard and frequent.
8. Among accessory work, your tricep and delt training is paramount. My favorite accessory work is the close grip bench press, the one arm (arm in) pushup, Handstand pushups, board presses, rack presses, floor presses, dumbell press, kettlebell presses, California presses and weighted dips. Pick any 3 and train them hard and heavy 3-4 times a week.
9. You must do lots of chin ups and pull ups and rows. Your back development provides the base for your pressing power. This is one major advantage I had.
My primary pressing exercises before this were handstand pushups and pushups. I am capable of performing one arm push ups with my feet together for 6-7 reps. I can also do 7-8 full ROM handstand pushups.
When I first starting benching seriously 6 weeks ago, I had a poor 200 pound pres.In 6 weeks I am now pressing 315 for 2. Of course this has less to do with any increase in my strength and more to do with me learning how to utilize the strength I have built doing bodyweight pressing exercises. As in any exercise, your bench press is determined by your practice of it. Considering how I never seriously pursued bench pressing, I was not surprised by the results.
However, all this did validate my theory that strength built by any horizontal pressing exercise, will build a base of strength. In order to realize it in other movements, you have to practice them specifically.
Ultimately, it is important to understand why the bench press is considered the ultimate test of pressing power.
Because if not the bench press, what else?
There is no other pressing movement that can be reliably used to determine one's pressing power. Overhead presses were contested in weightlifting before 1972, but anyone familiar with weightlifting history will tell you that it had to be dropped from competition because the degree of cheating in the overhead press had distorted its reliability. In 1972, there were athletes who were overhead pressing more than they could clean and jerk (by utilizing back bending techniques). So all overhead presses are out. Floor presses also are easy to cheat on, just look the old "belly toss" method of pressing the bar. Not to mention it does not test strength through a full ROM.
Pushups and handstand pushups are highly dependent upon bodyweight and body fat percentage, putting heavyweights and athletes from power sports at a serious disadvantage. The only reliable way of testing pressing power is the bench press.
For sure, the bench press has its issues- Shoulder instability, "non- functionality", lack of space for the shoulder blades to rotate and of course it being a open chain movement. Honestly, the functionality of the bench press is really dependent on who you are referring to. Those who need to routinely demonstrate their strength, like powerlifters, will find it functional. Remember the purpose of the sport is to display strength. Other athletes might find the close grip bench press more useful, as it mimics the pressing actions of actual play. Ultimately, the bench press is a full body exercise, and its usefulness has to be determined for every individual trainee.
However, no one can deny the injury potential of the exercise, specially considering the poor shoulder stability, terrible posture and khyphotic backs that are common today. However, if you wish to improve your bench press, you have to practice it. For such individuals, I have a small list of suggestions-
1. For every rep of every pressing exercise you do, perform one rep of bent over flys (Also called rear delt flys) of comparable intensity. Make sure your torso is parallel to the ground while doing it. Rear delt flys are a low intensity exercise that will help pack on the volume for your upper back, but will not significantly stress your recovery. They work the scapula retractors, the posterior delts and the external rotators- all critical for good posture and shoulder health.
It may seem like a chore but do it. All other back and pulling work is over and above this. And remember, huge traps and rounded shoulders are nothing to laugh at.
2. Like any other exercise, technique is everything. Perfect your technique and you will get great results.
3. The first thing you must learn is how to be tight. Counter-intuitively, grounding your feet and heel in the ground, tightening your glutes, tightening your spine until your arch is rock solid and it hurts will all improve your bench press by several dozen pounds. The number of times my glutes were more sore than my chest taught me how important being tight is.
4. The second thing you must learn is how to protect your shoulder. Your upper back has to tight, and your shoulders pulled down and back and the chest puffed out. This gives your acromin and your rotator cuff some breathing space.
5. Pec tears and shoulder dislocations are common in bench press enthusiasts. Tricep tears are uncommon. The fact is that few lifters ever use their triceps to the fullest. You must learn how to use your triceps in order to press big weight. Twist your hands outwards/ turn your elbows inwards while descending. Think of pushing yourself AWAY from the bar when you press it back up. This is critical to getting the muscle recruitment right.
6. Flare your lats at the bottom of the press. This will give you great power out of the bottom and save your delts for the sticking point.
6. I do not believe it is necessary to bench press all the time in order to have a big bench. You need to bench consistently though. Once a week is good.
7. However, you can and should train accessory work hard and frequent.
8. Among accessory work, your tricep and delt training is paramount. My favorite accessory work is the close grip bench press, the one arm (arm in) pushup, Handstand pushups, board presses, rack presses, floor presses, dumbell press, kettlebell presses, California presses and weighted dips. Pick any 3 and train them hard and heavy 3-4 times a week.
9. You must do lots of chin ups and pull ups and rows. Your back development provides the base for your pressing power. This is one major advantage I had.
Ok, Next is a bench press competition
ReplyDeleteHi Tejas, I was wondering how much do you weigh?
ReplyDeleteI weigh 185 pounds, and can do 5 One Arm Pushups but with feet a bit wider than shoulder width, but can only Bench Press 220 Pounds for 2 reps, so I was wondering would the One Arm Pushup strength translate into a bigger bench press?
Sounds like you should be able to press a quite a bit more. It depends on how much you twist your body when doing your push ups. Assuming you don't twist your body at the hips, and only a little at the shoulder, and you are using an arm in technique it sounds like you should be able to press closer to 275 Pounds. Perhaps your bench press technique is off? It is quite a technical exercise and honestly I think good technique by itself adds 60-70 pounds to the bench.
DeleteIn response to your first question, when I tested my bench, I weighed 180-185, which is pretty much the largest I have been since my accident. I am now down to 175 as I have taken up sprinting and the extra activity is taking some time to adjust to. My current bench at 175 is 295, which also shows the relation of size to your bench press. A couple of guys training with me have gained 10 pounds in the last 6-8 months and they have all increased their bench presses by about 70-80 pound in that period.
295 at 175 is 1.7 BW bench press which is impressive.
DeleteWell, like you said, my bench press has no technique, I just lie flat on the bench and press up...
For my OAP, there is a twist on my hip, my right thigh touches the floor, and my left thigh is about 4 inches from the floor. Also my right pec touches the floor while my left pec is 2 inches off. My arm is about 45 degrees from my body. But even with this not perfect technique I tested the weight on the scale is 110+ pounds, and I do that for 5 reps... I can also do 1 Arm pushup once with 11 pounds (5Kg) on my upper back. But I tried that once then stopped, maybe if I had kept focusing on OAP I could have added even more weight.
My squat and deadlift increase easily and flowingly, while my bench is an extreme challenge.. I reverted to OAP and started with planche progressions to maybe help me increase my bench.
Also my Overhead Press is about 73% of my bench press, which is a higher ratio than the 66% it should be. On one last note, my close grip bench press is also 220 pounds for 1 rep.
In my experience the overhead press and the close grip bench press are more closely related to push up ability than the regular. bench press. The thing with the bench press is that the ability to be stable on the bench and get your back to be tight is critical. The one arm push up requires a pretty different kind of tightness. Why don't you try a high volume, high frequency and medium intensity approach for the bench for sometime? That is what I did and it worked really well, especially if your pressing muscles are already strong from pushups and planches. Btw, O find planche training a lot more effective for the bench than the regular push up.
DeleteJust try this format-
Day 1- Bench Press
60% of Max- 5 Sets of 15 Reps with 90 second breaks.
Day 2- Bench press
65% of Max-2 Sets of 10
80% of Max- 2 Sets of 5
85-90% of Max- 2 Sets of 2-3
Take 90 second breaks for the first 2 sets, and 2 mins for the second 2 and 3 mins for the last 2.
Day 3- Off
Day 4- Bench Press
Repeat Day 2 workout with 5 more pounds on all sets.
Day 5- Bench press
5 Sets of 5 with 85%.
Day 6 and 7 off
Repeat this entire cycle for 1 more week with 5 more pounds on all sets.
This do this for the third week-
Day- 1- 5 Sets of 5 Bench Press, 5 more pounds over whatever you used for the last 5X5 workout.
Day 2- Same as Day 1 with 5 more pounds.
Day 3- Off
Day 4- 5 sets of 3 with 5 more pounds over the last workout
Day 5- 5 X 3 with 5 more pounds over day 4
Day 6 and 7 off
On the 4th week taper like this-
Day 1 and 3- 4 Sets of 2 with the weight used on day 4 of the last week.
Day 6 or 7- Test 1 or 2 R.M
Fit in other exercises however you see fit. Do not do any other pressing work. You can do some overhead walks with dumbbells or kettlebells and a medial delt isolation exercise if you want.
The logic is really simple, if your pec, delts and triceps are strong, as well as your lats and upper back, the only reason you are not bench pressing a lot is because you don't bench press a lot. Just be sure to go over good bench technique first and try to apply it as much as you can.
Try this doc- http://www.blastyourbench.com/bench.pdf
Generally the scale shows a little less weight for pushups as they get harder at the bottom. If we take the figure as 125 at the bottom than your bench should be- 125 x 2 x 5 x 0.0333 + 125 x 2= 292 pounds. So basically just focusing on the bench for sometime should help. Its only 4 weeks, out of which 1 is an easy week. Try it and see. :-)