Weight Lifting Q&A

[rhino]

Continued from another topic ...

Who actually holds the bar when they're bench pressing? Git yer thumbs outta tha way.

Yeah, that way is good until the bar flexes a little and pops off of your hands. If you're lucky, it'll land on your chest instead of your neck.

[Thread drift]

rhino, was there anything special that you did to get your bench press weight up so high? My press weight sucks, whereas everything else is pretty decent (475lb squat (set of 8), 1310lb leg press (single rep), 125lb curl (sets), 225lb clean [years ago dropping the bar caused a shoulder injury that doesn't let me do shoulder press very well anymore]).

Those are all excellent numbers! I couldn't do a single curl with 125 without cheating like crazy! But I know how it feels to have one lift out of proportion with the rest.

I'm not sure the basic training concept is much different from any other lift. The main thing is to put a majority of your effort into the heaviest weight you can move for the desired number of repetitions. I see a lot of people lifting to failure on every set, increasing weight a little each time, and repeating. That works okay for a while, but eventually you'll hit a plateau. It's also a waste of energy! It makes no sense to put so much effort into sets that are essentially warmups.

I'm sure the state of the art training methods have changed since my time (late 80s and early 90s), but I can tell you what worked best for me.

You pick a weight that you know will be a challenge for you to do for maybe five or six reps. Warm up with the bar, and then maybe do singles or doubles with weights intermediate to your target. Then do two sets with for as man reps as you can get with clean form. Don't cheat, and if you need help on the last one, that is the LAST. Don't do negatives or forced reps. We're working on building a foundation.

Then you stop and move on to some assistance work.

Here is an example. Let's say lifter A can do 225 for five reps, but it's hard. He'll try something like this:

bar (45#) x 10-15 reps

135 x 1-2

185 x 1-2

210 x as many as you can get without help

210 x as many as you can with a tiny bit of help if necessary on the last

You're done. Do not go back down in weight.

Lifter A will do this until he can get two, clean sets of ten reps with 210. Then he moves his top sets to, say, 230, and does the same thing until he can get two sets of ten.

Keep doing that to build your foundation, which requires the combination of heavy weights plus enough reps to do some good. You continue with this until it's time either based on your strength level or the calender (like an upcoming meet) to start a peaking cycle. That's when you will do much the same thing, but you will use gradually lower reps on your top sets until you're doing the heaviest triples and doubles you can do.

That's the basic idea we used, anyway. The guy who taught me was IPF World Champion in 1984. His best squat was 1003, bench was 650 (raw), and I'm not sure what he did in deadlift. He was about 5'5", weighed 340 at the time, and you could see the muscle fibers in his quads when he flexed! Obviously he was "enhanced," but he really knew how to train too.

Assistance work you'd do in a more conventional manner. Incline benches were one of my primaries, as well as flat benches with a cambered (bent) bar that allowed your hands to go several inches below your chest level. I also did a lot of tricep work, as they were my primary movers (my strongest body part).

Today, however, the competition bench press has changed. The bench shirts they wear now can add 100-200 or even more to the lift, believe or not. Another key thing is that rules have changed to allow foot movement and for heels to be raised off the floor. This may not sound like a big deal, but it allows the bigger guys to arch their backs drastically more than if they had their feet flat and motionless (like we used to have to do!). That means they can use their lats, the strongest muscles on the upper body, and the rear delts to help with the lift. Consequently, the numbers have skyrocketed since I retired.

For a more conventional technique (like I use), you still need to work lats and rear delts for stabilizers. In fact, if you can get your lats big enough, they will help you even if your back is flat by helping with the initial push as well as offering a "platform" for your triceps to rest on when you're at the start position of the lift (bar touching chest, motionless).

Last quarter of school begins mid-March, early-April and I'd like to take that 10 weeks to get my bench weight up to something respectable (4 reps at 225-ish). Right now I'm doing 4 sets of 10 reps at 135lb on the inclined press and the last set has me working (ultimately resulting in me torquing my body to fight the shoulder injury). I don't really do the regular press, but the last time I did it I maxed at 195 for a single rep.

Try what I outlined above, and cut back on the sets you do on the inclines and increase the weight so you are doing a couple of sets of six to eight after a warmup. Do some tricep work (lying extensions, cable pushdowns, etc.), may 4-5 sets total, then go home and rest.

If you're doing 10 with 135 on the incline, I think 175ish is the ballpark for your top sets on flat bench. Give it a try and adjust the weight to get the reps you need.

[Flexmoney]

[stealth mode...you didn't see me here]

http://www.musclemedia.com/training/bench/benchintro.asp

[JD45]

Nice link. It is way better than the one I used before.

I did that workout last year. Sort of. I was without a spotter for five workouts, so I had to back-off. Anyhow, I went up over 35lbs. on benchpress. Fifty pounds or more seems possible for most people. A funny feeling in my shoulder joints keeps me from pushing myself like a 17 year-old.

[D.carden]

Big question here???

In the early 80's I was able to bench 385#, squat 500#, deadlift 550#, clean & press 295# ( carrie-over from high school football days). All of which is impossible today. Is it possible for me to get somewhat close to these numbers again being in my mid 40's, starting from scratch???

20 years away from the gym, where does one start ( cautiouslly speaking)?

Dan

[diehli]

Awesome! Thanks for the replies.

I love it when a plan comes together.

[rhino]

Big question here???

In the early 80's I was able to bench 385#, squat 500#, deadlift 550#, clean & press 295# ( carrie-over from high school football days). All of which is impossible today. Is it possible for me to get somewhat close to these numbers again being in my mid 40's, starting from scratch???

20 years away from the gym, where does one start ( cautiouslly speaking)?

Dan

Some people with disagree with me, but it's likely that your single rep maxiumums you can achieve in your 40s and even 50s are probably higher than what you could have done as a kid.

The big difference is how you have to train to do it. Your endurance and ability to recover and heal is going to decrease as you get older. You have to train around it. The basic changes you have to make are that you have to work a given body part less frequently and you have to make your workouts shorter and more intense.

For instance, if you could train your bench press three times a week a when you were 17 and make good gains, you probably have to cut back to twice per week when you're in your 20s, and once every four to five days in your 40s, etc.

[diehli]

Big question here???

In the early 80's I was able to bench 385#, squat 500#, deadlift 550#, clean & press 295# ( carrie-over from high school football days). All of which is impossible today. Is it possible for me to get somewhat close to these numbers again being in my mid 40's, starting from scratch???

20 years away from the gym, where does one start ( cautiouslly speaking)?

Dan

Some people with disagree with me, but it's likely that your single rep maxiumums you can achieve in your 40s and even 50s are probably higher than what you could have done as a kid.

The big difference is how you have to train to do it. Your endurance and ability to recover and heal is going to decrease as you get older. You have to train around it. The basic changes you have to make are that you have to work a given body part less frequently and you have to make your workouts shorter and more intense.

For instance, if you could train your bench press three times a week a when you were 17 and make good gains, you probably have to cut back to twice per week when you're in your 20s, and once every four to five days in your 40s, etc.

I don't know if this is the case for everyone, but here's what happened with me.

I was probably at my physical peak back at 15. Body fat was the lowest, was able to run, etc. This was a result of playing football and all the training that went along with that. That all went to pot when I quit playing and training at 16. Then I blew out my knee at 17 and was dealing with surgery and recovery through 18. PT followed and I noticed that once things were in a general state of health, I was actually able to feel better what was going on in my body and able to push myself to higher peaks. First time I ever hit 1310 on the leg press was about 4 months after knee surgery (ACL replacement with patellar ligament section, removal of meniscal tear, draining of a bone(?) cyst, and shaving of an area of "bruised" bone).

I've gotten back into training in the recent months and found that I'll eventually be able to push myself higher than I've gone in the past. My squat weight is currently limited by what my back can handle, not my legs. I'm still doing sets of 8 at 900lbs (plus whatever the platform weighs) on the leg press precisely because there's no pressure on my spine (at least not in the same way as with a squat).

Anyway, I guess my point is this: with age comes the ability to better guage what's going on in your body. Listen to it and don't do anything stupid (i.e. start at some weight you're not sure you can move; instead figure out what you can do by working up to it), but get into the gym.

BTW, my left leg is visibly larger than my right (the one that had the knee surgery). I definitely cheat ever so slightly to my left, which may cause problems in the long run. My solution: do what my body says it can handle on a given day. Right or wrong, I dunno, but I'm doing alright.

[rhino]

Listening to your body and heeding its messages is one of the toughest "skills" to develop. Most people never really do it, even though they think they do. A lot of us have gone past it, where we know exactly what our body is telling us, but we purposely disregard the message and act otherwise. This leads to overtraining, injuries, and is also known as "stupidity."

In terms of physical development, you're still very, very young. You may be past your absolute peaks of testosterone and growth hormone production, but you're still at an age where you can make very rapid gains because you can recover quickly. It's a good time to be renewing your dedication to trainining.

[John Thompson]

Gorrilla,

I have the same muscle imbalance problem from multiple surgeries on the left knee. The solution is to leg press one leg at a time. If you squat you absolutely have to have your knees behind your toes during the movement. That's why the only squat I do is the box squat, it forces me to sit back. Just remember to touch the box not sit on it or else your going to have all new back problems.

Strength potential peaks in males in their mid 30's. So guys in their 40's can still get frickin strong as hell. 50's are another story because the testosterone drops so hard. Any strength you want inyour 50's you'd better have going in to them.

I agree with most of Rhino's origninal post however I don't think one or two warm up reps a set cut it. It takes me 20 minutes of warmup just to do legs. Also while I do only two or three working sets to my first set is usually the heaviest(not squat though) and the second is a tad lighter.

[diehli]

[stealth mode...you didn't see me here]

http://www.musclemedia.com/training/bench/benchintro.asp

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So it worked for me. Put on exactly 50 lbs on my bench press to 245. Did 1500 on the leg press today, too. Doing sets of dumbbell rows with the 100-lb dumbbells (we don't have anything heavier). Overall stronger and I feel better (and I'm never tired at the end of a match anymore).

The only bad thing is that I'm now a gym rat... and I don't think that that's a bad thing. Is that a bad thing?

[JD45]

Congrats on the bench press. Don't you wish it would keep working that well forever?

Because I have confidence in the people who post here always giving answers that are about as close to the truth as a person can come, I need some advice.

I have been weight training for 3 1/2 years now. I only had a spotter the first year. At the two year mark gains came to a halt. I've read everything you can imagine and have tried every workout under the sun.

If you are over 30 like me there are some things to consider. For starters, I don't recover like I used to. The workouts in bodybuilding magazines may work great if you are cycling steriods. They also tell you that you must eat one gram of protein per pound of body weight. That ain't gonna happen any time soon for me. Six meals a day, protein shakes? Forget it.

What I want to know is what sort of workout should I be doing if I eat three healthy meals a day plus a snack at night? The Mon.,Tue, Thur.,Fri. split doesn't work for me. Training each bodypart one day per week is not much better.

If you must eat like a horse to make gains, and I'm not going to, would I do just as well (maintain what I have) doing a simple circuit training total body workout twice a week. If I can't get bigger, and can only maintain size, I would like to stop killing myself working out.

[Mike H]

www.elitefts.com

if you really want to gain strength, the westside approach is the way, look at the top 10 power lifters in any weight class and westside dominates

alot of Soviet and Eastern European methodology, the Q&A is alot like this site, the best in the world are posting there

[Wim]

Hi Mike.

Nice link.

If BB is more your thing check out www.t-mag.com - there are quite a few of Charles Poliquin's principles / articles there worth a look. But a bit of "in your face" type of image for the site as a whole.

There is also an article by Poliquin on achieving max bench press somewhere. It is under the search function.

Anyone else out there paying the price now for a gym membership, a big ego and a small brain in their early 20's??

[Mike H]

t-mag is a good resource, Poliquin's articles on wave loading, anything Dave Tate writes, Dan John, Cressey etc are very good.

no pro gym for me, got a home gym with an incredible power rack, plenty of bands, a glute ham raise, reverse hyper and god forbid lots of chalk