Originally Posted by
Jack Morrison
I am 17 years old, male, and 200 lbs at 5'11". I am currently not interested in gaining weight because I am rehabbing a recurring IT band problem using low weights at slowly increasing squat and deadlift increments.
I stalled my bench at 195x5x3 at the end of my novice LP. I did not want to try TM again because it failed miserably before (another LP after football season). I decided to try my own programming and keep it somewhat simple. I use a pretty narrow bench grip. I decided to try to make 5 lb jumps once per week on a top set of 5 as long as I could and I based my work sets around this. I benched 4 sets of 5 reps of bench work sets and 2 sets of 5 reps of assistance (pause bench or CG bench) every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. On Friday, I did Press for 3 sets of 5 reps. Each Wednesday, I did my top set of 5, 3 more work sets, and my 2 sets of assistance. This added 20 lbs to my bench in 4 weeks, 5 lbs added to the top set each week. During that time, I did pause benches for assistance. When I got stuck at 215x5x1 for my top set, I switched to CG benches. Doing about the same scheme as before, I got up to 232.5x5x1 for a top set: an addition of 17.5 lbs over 6 weeks. I attempted 235x5x1 for a top set Wednesday for the next 2 weeks, but I failed both times. After my first fail at 235x5x1, I switched to pause benches because I failed at the bottom of the lift at that point in time. The switch did not help. I fail my work sets now: 227.5x5x4 on days without a top set. I am unsure of where to go in my programming. Do I increase in volume? I made this program very high volume because I have a pretty great capacity for recovery (which makes high volume a requirement for progress), given that I am 17 years old and male. Where should I go from here? How do I adjust my programming given my situation?
Thanks for your time,
Jack Morrison