New Article: Building a Bigger Press

[slowmotion]

Nice read!

[poser]

a HLM cycle focused on Press might look like this?

Heavy
Press: 5x5 to 1x5 etc (possibly introduce some backoff volume following low volume sets towards the end of the cycle)

Light
Bench press: 1x2-4, backoff 3x5
(Possibly some of these CGBP?)

Medium
Press: 3x5 10% reduction of Monday

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Thanks for the article!


As 75% is a 10RM, 6 reps are slightly submaximal for 4 sets. Do you prefer training with submaximal weights (but maybe as compensation max speed?) in the press/in the basic barbell lifts?

Depends on the lift and the lifter. For plenty.....75% is not a 10RM. These are estimates. %'s are never a tool of exact precision.

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

a HLM cycle focused on Press might look like this?

Heavy
Press: 5x5 to 1x5 etc (possibly introduce some backoff volume following low volume sets towards the end of the cycle)

Light
Bench press: 1x2-4, backoff 3x5
(Possibly some of these CGBP?)

Medium
Press: 3x5 10% reduction of Monday

Basically yeah. Devil is in the details of vol/int. And probably 5% on Fri not 10%

[poser]

Basically yeah. Devil is in the details of vol/int. And probably 5% on Fri not 10%

Cool. I think I'll start a OH Press focused HLM cycle next month. I've made good progress on my bench press recently so I'd like to get the OH press up to 200#

[Itchysoles]

I'd love it if someone can point me to more data or another hypothesis, but I went ahead and munged the SS lifter rankings linked from the training thread here to try to test whether there was evidence that good pressers were pressing a higher % of bench than poor pressers. It seems like that would have to be the case, but now I'm not so sure. If anything, it looks like good pressers converge on about a 2/3 ratio, and there might not be much variation from that for anyone with even a wee bit of press training:

[Culican]

If anything, it looks like good pressers converge on about a 2/3 ratio, and there might not be much variation from that for anyone with even a wee bit of press training:

I have a crappy bench and crappy press. Last Friday I did 165x6 on the bench. After reading your post I was curious so I multiplied that by 0.667 and got 110. 110x6 was exactly what I used for the press last Sunday. So the 2/3 ratio you state seems to hold even for those of us with crappy upper body lifts.

[poser]

I have a crappy bench and crappy press. Last Friday I did 165x6 on the bench. After reading your post I was curious so I multiplied that by 0.667 and got 110. 110x6 was exactly what I used for the press last Sunday. So the 2/3 ratio you state seems to hold even for those of us with crappy upper body lifts.

I benched Press 242.5# for 3x3 today. My OH Press 3x3 is 160#, within 2# of the 2/3 ratio. So, if you desire the 225# OH Press, you'll need a 335# bench press. It's that simple

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

You'd need more than a few examples to prove some kind of iron-clad link but it's a decent ballpark figure for reference

[Itchysoles]

Yep, not saying around 5-10% deviation from that is uncommon; stdD was about 7%, I believe. What would be interesting to me would be seeing some competitions with both press and bench so that we could see what happens when a larger group gets serious about both. Could look for USSF lifters who powerlift somewhat seriously as well, but I don't think we have enough data yet from that see spot any trends beyond the "ballpark".

Any application to training the press? Maybe just if your ratio below about 60% you'd benefit from training press more often; if ratio above above 74%, probably benching a little more would help your press?