Whining About My Crappy Bench

[cjangelo]

I think higher volume works for the bench. Guys like you and me bench around 230 and although it's easy to feel smart about how many of Rip's books we have read, the retards we make fun of are benching more than us because they just do so much of it and they do so much of other upper body movement.

Yeah I gotta agree with the volume thing. Bench has always been more responsive to higher volume than either squats or pulls, where I seem to be able to get away with relatively little (at least on the lifts themselves).

For me benching has always needed a frequency component to improve, even if the daily volume wasn't very high. Though now I'm finding that chipping away at it with the conservative, steady-improvement approach is working just as well.

I agree with these two meatbags. Volume and frequency for the bench. If you look at the Sheiko routines, you're benching 3 times a week, so maybe you've come to the same conclusions as the Russians who invented this program.

Anecdotally, I got my bench to it's highest level by doing two months of Sheiko followed by a few weeks of Westside. I'm assuming the Westside functioned as a 'Realization' phase after accumulating fatigue.

[Nauticus]

For all you folks talking about volume: Did you do higher volume with lower intensity, or about the same?

[Gary Gibson]

I think volume and frequency are right. The bench needs more than the squat and the squat needs more than the DL. In fact, my DL has gone up almost lockstep with my SQ when I pour on the volume for the squat and just do the DL every now and then. This would NOT work the other way around.

Anyway, I suspect my bench sucks because I give so much of my available time and effort to the squat. There's no way I can bench with Russian volume when I'm squatting with Russian volume. Smolov Jr. worked GREAT for bench when I wasn't squatting. That's why I'm going to try Smolov Jr. for bench again when I back off SQ and DL after the meet.

I tried to do Russian SQ routine protocol (80%x3x6...etc...) for both BP and SQ a few months ago, but the BP quickly burned out. In fact, I was just plain burning out because I was doing the drawn out version that included the DL in the protocol! BP/SQ--DL--SQ/BP. Brutal.

[cjangelo]

For all you folks talking about volume: Did you do higher volume with lower intensity, or about the same?

Look at the beginner Sheiko programs for my answer to your question.

[hbriem]

I tried to do Russian SQ routine protocol (80%x3x6...etc...) for both BP and SQ a few months ago, but the BP quickly burned out. In fact, I was just plain burning out because I was doing the drawn out version that included the DL in the protocol! BP/SQ--DL--SQ/BP. Brutal.

Yes, I tried that, but quickly made changes to avoid burnout. I reduced the light squat day from 80%x6x2 to maybe 70%x2x5 or so. I reduced the light bench day from 80%x6x2 to maybe 90%x3x1.

I dropped the DL progression after 3 weeks and did about 80-90% for 2-3 sets of 2-3.

It worked well for the bench (+2.5kg) and squat (+5kg), DL maintained. DL was much stronger anyway.

[George Noble]

Really?

I'm in the same situation, expect with even lower bench press numbers. I did SS for ~10 weeks and added 15kg to my 5RM. I then switched to a routine that has much higher volume on the pressing muscles (IA's SPBR) and it didn't do shit for me bench.

Maybe it's semantics, but I wouldn't say the SPBR has "much" higher volume. It just has the week's entire upper body workout pretty much on one day and the pump makes you feel like it's higher volume. On SS you do nine sets of pressing a week, and something like 4-6 sets of chins. On SPBR you do something like 10 sets a week of pressing, then some skullcrushers and chins. There is more volume, but not enough to offset these points:
1. All the volume is on one day so the later sets are lower quality
2. You do more exercises at a time when you need to do fewer exercises harder.


I was thinking about this the other day, and something occurred to me: a world class bench presser's arms are huge - maybe 20" or more, and they can move monster weights. This is a bit abstract and doesn't follow perfectly, but I believe there is a point to be made. A fairly thin intermediate's legs are even huger at about 22". So a "skinny" pair of legs is actually enough muscle to move a whole lot of weight. However people's upper bodies are not usually as developed and if you want arms and shoulders big enough to move all that weight you need to put some volume in. I noticed this when I watched Mark Spurling lifting at the Worlds. He is a masters lifter, and not famous but across the three lifts he has no real weakness. Bench press is up near 500, squat over 700 and deadlift over 660 all at 181. I was very surprised when I was watching him deadlift because his upper body looks like it belongs to a bodybuilder and his legs look like they belong to an Abercrombie model (exaggerations both, but you know what I am saying).

Another interesting irony: on Iron Addict's site there's a movement to get bodybuilders to train like powerlifters and elsewhere in the actual powerlifting community there are guys who think novice powerlifters should train like bodybuilders to get big enough to lift some weight. What?

My final point in this rather tangential post is that most people seem to have an assistance exercise that suits them so well that has its place almost alongside their main exercises. Rip seems to think that the chinup is a good one for novices. Wendler talked about how the Kroc row is his Holy Grail of assistance work. I personally feel like I'm on steroids when I do dumbbell presses because my raw bench press will go up immediately even if it was stagnant for months. Find your assistance exercise and get good at it. If you're a novice listen to Rip and if you're not, find the exercise that you hate the most and makes you want to quit. Chances are that will work pretty well.

Sorry for the life story.

[nisora33]

Maybe it's semantics, but I wouldn't say the SPBR has "much" higher volume. It just has the week's entire upper body workout pretty much on one day and the pump makes you feel like it's higher volume. On SS you do nine sets of pressing a week, and something like 4-6 sets of chins. On SPBR you do something like 10 sets a week of pressing, then some skullcrushers and chins. There is more volume, but not enough to offset these points:
1. All the volume is on one day so the later sets are lower quality
2. You do more exercises at a time when you need to do fewer exercises harder.


I was thinking about this the other day, and something occurred to me: a world class bench presser's arms are huge - maybe 20" or more, and they can move monster weights. This is a bit abstract and doesn't follow perfectly, but I believe there is a point to be made. A fairly thin intermediate's legs are even huger at about 22". So a "skinny" pair of legs is actually enough muscle to move a whole lot of weight. However people's upper bodies are not usually as developed and if you want arms and shoulders big enough to move all that weight you need to put some volume in. I noticed this when I watched Mark Spurling lifting at the Worlds. He is a masters lifter, and not famous but across the three lifts he has no real weakness. Bench press is up near 500, squat over 700 and deadlift over 660 all at 181. I was very surprised when I was watching him deadlift because his upper body looks like it belongs to a bodybuilder and his legs look like they belong to an Abercrombie model (exaggerations both, but you know what I am saying).

Another interesting irony: on Iron Addict's site there's a movement to get bodybuilders to train like powerlifters and elsewhere in the actual powerlifting community there are guys who think novice powerlifters should train like bodybuilders to get big enough to lift some weight. What?

My final point in this rather tangential post is that most people seem to have an assistance exercise that suits them so well that has its place almost alongside their main exercises. Rip seems to think that the chinup is a good one for novices. Wendler talked about how the Kroc row is his Holy Grail of assistance work. I personally feel like I'm on steroids when I do dumbbell presses because my raw bench press will go up immediately even if it was stagnant for months. Find your assistance exercise and get good at it. If you're a novice listen to Rip and if you're not, find the exercise that you hate the most and makes you want to quit. Chances are that will work pretty well.

Sorry for the life story.

Some good stuff here.

-S.

[PMDL]

"Get good at the shit you hate" is a great mantra to apply across the board, not just to exercises.

[Smack]

Maybe it's semantics, but I wouldn't say the SPBR has "much" higher volume. It just has the week's entire upper body workout pretty much on one day and the pump makes you feel like it's higher volume. On SS you do nine sets of pressing a week, and something like 4-6 sets of chins. On SPBR you do something like 10 sets a week of pressing, then some skullcrushers and chins. There is more volume, but not enough to offset these points:
1. All the volume is on one day so the later sets are lower quality
2. You do more exercises at a time when you need to do fewer exercises harder.

Your numbers are a little bit off.

The SPBR is based on a chest/shoulders/triceps and legs/back/biceps rotation, three days a week. There is, depending on the week, either 13 or 26 sets of exercises in total which work the pressing muscles. Plus either 4 or 8 sets of chins, inversely related to how much pressing there is. I'd call 13 sets per week 'higher volume', or at least 'medium volume'. 26 is definitely 'high volume'. Regardless of what it is in your eyes, it definitely didn't work well for my pressing.

1. Agree.
2. Agree even more so. It seems to be an amalgamation of Westside and DC and from the results I've seen it doesn't work as well on newbies as SS.

Can't really respond to anything else you've wrote since I've got no experience with it, except about the assistance part. I haven't really found a decent bench assistance exercise yet. I don't think I did get the to stage, even at my strongest, that I needed anything other than bench to get better on the bench. Every time I deviated from bench, my bench numbers came crashing down.

[George Noble]

OK Smack. I'm actually a bit surprised te SPBR didn't work for you at all, as it happens. But hey, everyone's different and now you know what works for you.

Mark doing his thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Sxj...layer_embedded