Bench press trouble.

[Justin Gibbs]

Hi Andy,

My wife has been following the novice progression for the last couple of months and is having a lot of trouble with her bench press. She frequently misses reps or cuts them to high and has been stuck at 65lb for the last two workouts.

We started with the usual adjustments, micro loading and switching to 5 sets of 3, both of which worked for a bit and then stalled again.

Her other lifts including the press have continued to move up with no signs of slowing. It should be noted that aside from micro loading we have made no other changes to the press. She is still doing 3 sets of 5 and has plenty of room to grow. Her last press session was 52.5lb.

My current thoughts are to either make even smaller jumps for the bench press (which she finds very discouraging) or alternate singles across with 5-6 sets of threes for volume.

Any thoughts or advice is appreciated

Thanks, Justin

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Microload at 1-2 lbs per session.

Your idea of singles and triples will likely work as well

[bluebutton]

Her other lifts including the press have continued to move up with no signs of slowing. It should be noted that aside from micro loading we have made no other changes to the press. She is still doing 3 sets of 5 and has plenty of room to grow. Her last press session was 52.5lb.

Not a coach, but another lady lifter. First, congratulations to her (and you) for persisting with lifting!

Next, I'm a bit surprised that her press is moving ahead and not her BP. You mentioned that she has failed BP reps or cut them off high. That suggests to me that she lacks confidence at the bottom of the movement. Two things to try 1) pausing at the bottom for the warm up weights and 2) cuing her to squeeze the bar as hard as possible. I have found both of these to help me be more aggressive with the BP.

(I failed a rep early on during my LP and in trying to re-rack it, dropped one side of the bar on my head. After that I removed the BP from my programming for a year. You can read my log(s) for the saga of my BP.)

[Justin Gibbs]

Thanks Andy, I think we will try making one to two pound jumps over the next couple weeks and see how it goes. I'd like to postpone switching to singles if it can be helped.

Thanks Bluebutton, the encouragement means a lot. I also thought it was strange that her press is not having similar troubles. I feel like it might having something to do with using press 2.0. She has pretty flexible hips and can seem to generate a lot of power to initiate the press. When she does fail it's usually at lock out (tricep strength issue?). With the bench she usually fails because she gets loose at the bottom to achieve depth or cuts it off when staying tight. We will try your advice and see where it takes us. Thanks