How to increase bench?

[Markke]

Hi, all.

I've been doing SS for a couple of months now, and my stats are:
Age 23, weight 79kg, highet 180.
lifts are squat 120kg 3X5, DL 130kg 5X1 and BP only 80kg 5X3.
Since I've started training I only increased my BP by less than 10Kg.
I want to improve my BP another 10Kg min... Any Ideas on how to do it?
I can only train 3 times a weak, and I dont want to neglect my other lifts (mainly the squats and DL).

Thanks in advance!

[Les Hahn]

What is the minimum amount that you want to do the other lifts? Would you be happy squatting 2x per week and DL 1x?

Something you can do right off the bat is do the upper body lifts first. I would also move onto intermediate style TM programming (intensity/volume). Be sure to get some quality upper body assistance work in there too.

[Markke]

What is the minimum amount that you want to do the other lifts? Would you be happy squatting 2x per week and DL 1x?

As long as I keep progressing I have no problem squatting less per week...

You have a program in mind I should follow?

[Colin]

How much has everything else increased? Is it keeping pace?

You are benching only 100 pounds or so less than what you are deadlifting for your work sets. I am assuming you mean one set of five for deads, and three sets of five for squats, so I initially read it wrong.

Honestly, it sounds like you just need to get stronger all over. How many months have you been doing SS?

With what you've posted, I recommend making extra sure you are getting enough good solid nutrition.

At the risk of being redundant about some of what you've probably learned, you will of course gain slower on bench than squats or deads, but no idea how much you've gained there already. Many I've trained with like to start training their bench with a wider grip from the get go, because they often find this to be their strongest initial position. I've heard and read from numerous people, as well as my own experiences, that moving to a closer grip helps. You may find you are weaker at the start but your gains will be faster, and your shoulders will thank you. My dad first recommended this to me years ago when I was a teenager just starting out, and when I finally followed his advice my bench shot up fast and kept going. I was about 160 at the time and my bench had "stalled" around 200. After doing it this way I got up to 300 pretty fast. I had a really big chest at the time, even at 160-ish, so I thought the wider grip would allow me to use that muscle better. It didn't work like that.

Don't have much else to go on, but hopefully something in there will help you.

[Les Hahn]

I normally recommend 4 day splits, but I think you could make something like TM work. You would move to weekly progression on the bench/press, but stick with linear progression for squats/deads since that is still going up. I think I made some recommendations in Haggit's thread in the programming section.

You could still do a 4 day split 3x per week. Basically you do 3 of the 4 days every week. It would look like this:

M- 1
W- 2
F- 3

M- 4
W- 1
F- 2 ... etc.

If that is something you would consider, let me know.

[David_G]

First thing you should do is check your form.
Second thing is that you have to understand you are WAY too light for that height, I am 185 and 101KG, not very large myself.
As you gain more weight the mechanics of each lift benefit directly.

Last you must understand that the bench takes more time to train than the SQ or DL, the muscle mass involved is smaller and the prime movers are smaller.
Unless you have good proportions to bench(short ass arms) you should just be patient and keep advancing, keeping the first and second comments i wrote in mind

[Markke]

Thanks a lot for the replies :-)

@ Colin:
Squat and DL going pretty solid until now. I've been doing SS for 3-4 months now, and gained around 5-6 kg bodyweight. I started using a more narrow grip, so I'll hope it will give me a few more kgs.

oh, and thats 3 sets of 5 reps for squat and BP, and 1 set of 5 reps for DL.

@ Callador:
As long as I keep progressing in all my lifts and train X3 per week it will be great. Whats TM?

@ David_G:
I think my form is ok. I do the arch in the back, elbows in and all that. I'm sure its far from perfect, but I don't think its the main problem.
And I didnt know I was "WAY" to light :-). I'm getting haevier, but I never thought I need to get much heavier (maybe 85kg). How much weight should I gain to do like 140 SQ and 100 BP?

[Les Hahn]

Here was the thread I mentioned: http://startingstrength.com/resource...ad.php?t=37533

TM = Texas Method. It is a 3x workout routine normally that has a heavy day (intensity), light day, and volume day. The split version puts the upper/lower body work on different days. It still has the intensity/volume work. In the thread above, I showed how you could push bench/press on intermediate programming while keeping DL and Squat on SS.

Check it out and see what you think.

[hamburgerfan]

Les, if he's limited to 3 days a week, wouldn't a full body workout actually be better, if he works his upper body first? That way he works his upper body 3 days per week, instead of 1-2. He could still try the usual LP tricks or add assistance in a heavy/light/medium setup.

[yorick]

Two factors I gleaned from Oldster was to do close-grip work and really work the triceps. He gave some good program suggestions in his log, but I don't have time to find them right now.

Callador knows his bench stuff, too.