Stalled bench

[Corey Laxton]

My brother has been training with me the last few weeks and has stalled on his bench. He is 20 years old, about 5'6"-7" and about 170lbs starting at about 160-165 lbs. I think I've finally gotten him to eat 200g of protein but he's trying to stay around 2500 calories/day. His stomach sticks out an inch so he's convinced he's at 20-25% BF and is terrified to eat 4000 calories a day. He's also "accidentally" doing keto for about the past week. I know there are tons of issues with his diet but I just got him to agree last night to go up to 3000 calories a day and will continue to try to get him to go up to at least 3500. He has also decided to stop weighing himself, I think because he doesn't want to see the number on the scale going up. I told him it's a valuable piece of training info and he needs to track it and hopefully he will. I'm just hoping he will learn to appreciate the numbers on the bar going up and will decide to eat properly to keep the weight on the bar going up.

Despite the nutrition aspect his numbers are still going up. I don't have his training log and don't remember his numbers exactly but I think his starting numbers were something like:

Squat 95x5x3
Press 65x5x3
Deadlift 185x5
Bench 85x5x3

And his numbers now are close to

Squat 180x5x3
Press 87.5x5x3
Deadlift 280x5
Bench 115x5x3

He's been hitting his reps for everything except the bench. He took one 10lb jump on the bench then 5lb since. He hit his reps the first 2 bench sessions and has missed reps for every session since. He tries the same weight the next workout and then hits it and goes up the next. Yesterday he tried 120 and only got 3 reps then rested and did 2 more. He then dropped down to 117.5 but couldn't complete that for 5 either. I told him to go only go to 117.5 to begin with but he wanted to try 120.

Where should he go from here? I would have him deload back to maybe 95 lbs and take 2.5 lb jumps but is that too conservative? Should he take smaller jumps? Did I mess him up with that first 10 lb jump? He's taking 2.5 lb jumps on the press and it seems odd that he may need to take smaller jumps on the bench than the press. I know he needs to eat more but I'm still a little baffled that he's struggling so much on just this lift. When I was 16 and weighed 135 lbs I could bench 135x10x3 pretty easily and don't remember working very hard to get there so I just don't understand why he's struggling so much.

[heinz83]

Rest time between sets?

Stick with 2.5 lb jumps, eating more, and tell him to read the blue book.

[That_guy_Over_there]

He might just need more practice at benching in order to be able to press hard. Sometimes I think we are over thinking all of this. I didn't track anything as a kid, I did 10-8-6-4-2 sets for every exercise. By the time I graduated I weighted 165 and benched 285. Obviously, those are not massive numbers, but I see many guys struggling to do half that amount.

Maybe he just needs to figure out how to actually push hard?

In the book it says you get a couple weeks of 5 pounds before changing to 2.5 or smaller jumps.

another thing my dad had me to was heavy negatives. We'd work up to my set of 2, then add more weight and he'd help me do negatives for a couple. I think it helps you learn how to use the muscles.

[Mark Rippetoe]

He might just need more practice at benching in order to be able to press hard. Sometimes I think we are over thinking all of this.

I agree. Just do the program as it's written in the book.

[Corey Laxton]

Okay, thanks for the replies everyone.