Joliver
E-Fighter Extraordinaire
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2013
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I don't really post interesting shit anymore--not that this will be intereting. I spend most of my time in Internet wars. But I thought it would be worth a mention as to how I built a 400lb bencher in 6 months--at a commercial gym--with no specialty equipment.
Now, my project was a 340-360lb bencher to start with, but he was inconsistent as hell. He got pasted on the bench with 325 when I ask him to max the first time. He reset and 15 minutes later ground out 340. I ask him to rep out 315 two minutes afterwards, and he got 1. To make everything more convoluted, he had a video from the week prior benching 360--so I knew he had at least that much absolute strength.
Now I am not a coach, but I can see what is wrong with most lifters.
Here is what is wrong with this guy:
Shit technique. He was inconsistent. Getting stapled with 90% is bad news. You should, with few exceptions, be able to demonstrate a training max effort almost on demand.
Piss poor neural recruitment. Everything was a slow grinder. His second rep was always faster.
No GPP. He could sling 15 reps of 275 and wait 3 minutes and do 6 reps. In a fight, this guy could throw one punch and then be panting through a rape whistle.
His musculature was pathetic.
His biggest failure: he was lying to himself with slingshots, and bouncing the bar--all to cover his inability to move the bar off of his chest.
He was a train wreck of every training cliche ever.
The Fix
First, I taught him how to bench. If you don't know how to bench, there are plenty of people here that do, and they can help you. I am too busy fighting.
I am not going to go into the programming a great deal. Basically, I made him do PHUL. It is a power and hypertrophy day for both upper and lower. Programming has been beaten to death on this site. Yet somehow, few people do it. For that reason, I am only going to include the special techniques that stood out to me to be effective for this lad, simply because it is fresh. If you don't do Westside, Cube, 531, Reactive, Texas, or something...you need to pick something and dance.
He needed a new focus on hypertrophy. Bigger muscles move more weight. So after I figured he needed to do that, I had an idea of how I could fix his man-boobs and lack of bench endurance at the same time: verkhoshansky extended sets (VES). It is almost like lactic acid training and it can be terrible. Take 85% and do 15 reps. Stop when you have to...no more than 30 seconds when you do. It's basically cluster training.
1 VES would look like: 1 (set) x 5,3,2,2,1,1,1 (reps).
On power days, I also included cluster training every few weeks. Something like two clusters of 5 total reps (as singles) at 90%+ with 30 seconds rest. You all know I love singles. Triples possibly can make you as strong as singles, but they can never make you proficient at doing a single. If you are the guy who has a faster second rep than your first, there is no excuse for you not to be practicing singles.
As a side note to some people that fear singles, cluster singles are safer because it isn't a true max.
This man also had no reliable strength. So a steady diet of pause pressing was in order. He never did a touch and go on a power day in 6 months. I lowered his volume to accommodate for the increased intensity. He varied the pause times 1-4 seconds. I cannot overstate how important it is to be honest with yourself and pause, or at least competition press during training.
Overreach weeks were every 2 months. Overreach is basically 1.5-2x volume of a regular week. This one was kind of iffy. This guy had never had any meaningful volume in his life, so doubling it for a week every 8 weeks wasn't something that I planned, but it was something that he adapted to successfully.
For all the things that this guy did wrong, he did two things right: Didn't miss training days and listened to instructions.
Will this solution work for everyone? Doubt it. He had a very specific set of failures that we focused on fixing. But I thought you guys and gals might like to know anyway.
In summary:
Learn to bench
Upper/lower
Volume for hypertrophy
Training intensely above 90%--don't be a bitch.
Training honest
Consistency
Now, my project was a 340-360lb bencher to start with, but he was inconsistent as hell. He got pasted on the bench with 325 when I ask him to max the first time. He reset and 15 minutes later ground out 340. I ask him to rep out 315 two minutes afterwards, and he got 1. To make everything more convoluted, he had a video from the week prior benching 360--so I knew he had at least that much absolute strength.
Now I am not a coach, but I can see what is wrong with most lifters.
Here is what is wrong with this guy:
Shit technique. He was inconsistent. Getting stapled with 90% is bad news. You should, with few exceptions, be able to demonstrate a training max effort almost on demand.
Piss poor neural recruitment. Everything was a slow grinder. His second rep was always faster.
No GPP. He could sling 15 reps of 275 and wait 3 minutes and do 6 reps. In a fight, this guy could throw one punch and then be panting through a rape whistle.
His musculature was pathetic.
His biggest failure: he was lying to himself with slingshots, and bouncing the bar--all to cover his inability to move the bar off of his chest.
He was a train wreck of every training cliche ever.
The Fix
First, I taught him how to bench. If you don't know how to bench, there are plenty of people here that do, and they can help you. I am too busy fighting.
I am not going to go into the programming a great deal. Basically, I made him do PHUL. It is a power and hypertrophy day for both upper and lower. Programming has been beaten to death on this site. Yet somehow, few people do it. For that reason, I am only going to include the special techniques that stood out to me to be effective for this lad, simply because it is fresh. If you don't do Westside, Cube, 531, Reactive, Texas, or something...you need to pick something and dance.
He needed a new focus on hypertrophy. Bigger muscles move more weight. So after I figured he needed to do that, I had an idea of how I could fix his man-boobs and lack of bench endurance at the same time: verkhoshansky extended sets (VES). It is almost like lactic acid training and it can be terrible. Take 85% and do 15 reps. Stop when you have to...no more than 30 seconds when you do. It's basically cluster training.
1 VES would look like: 1 (set) x 5,3,2,2,1,1,1 (reps).
On power days, I also included cluster training every few weeks. Something like two clusters of 5 total reps (as singles) at 90%+ with 30 seconds rest. You all know I love singles. Triples possibly can make you as strong as singles, but they can never make you proficient at doing a single. If you are the guy who has a faster second rep than your first, there is no excuse for you not to be practicing singles.
As a side note to some people that fear singles, cluster singles are safer because it isn't a true max.
This man also had no reliable strength. So a steady diet of pause pressing was in order. He never did a touch and go on a power day in 6 months. I lowered his volume to accommodate for the increased intensity. He varied the pause times 1-4 seconds. I cannot overstate how important it is to be honest with yourself and pause, or at least competition press during training.
Overreach weeks were every 2 months. Overreach is basically 1.5-2x volume of a regular week. This one was kind of iffy. This guy had never had any meaningful volume in his life, so doubling it for a week every 8 weeks wasn't something that I planned, but it was something that he adapted to successfully.
For all the things that this guy did wrong, he did two things right: Didn't miss training days and listened to instructions.
Will this solution work for everyone? Doubt it. He had a very specific set of failures that we focused on fixing. But I thought you guys and gals might like to know anyway.
In summary:
Learn to bench
Upper/lower
Volume for hypertrophy
Training intensely above 90%--don't be a bitch.
Training honest
Consistency