Personal best on bench last night

[Big A]

My shoulders are messed up because of doing heavy barbell incline presses. Moved to either light weight for barbell just for the reps. Only do heavy incline with dumbells. Has made a world of difference.

I've only ever had two good spotters. One was a champion power lifter. He never thought it was necessary to force reps with ORM weight. Was able to gain an incredible amount of strength in the 6 months we worked out together, but only if we would've forced reps, just think of the possibilities...

Just because one guy you know doesn't do forced reps, doesn't make them dangerous or ineffective. People like him will generally gain strength easier, regardless of what they are doing, as long as they are training hard. Those of us that aren't so genetically blessed need all the tricks and techniques we can to make progress.

I'd also be interested to know where this guy was at in his own regimen. Guys at the top of their game generally find it really difficult to make gains. I'm not discounting his accolades, but once near our genetic limit, we all make gains at a slower pace. I'm betting there's more to it than him simply having some miraculous growth spurt. After an extended layoff I was adding 10-30lbs per lift when getting back into it for the first few months, but I'm not going to tout myself as some freak of nature that doesn't have to work hard to grow. It was simply muscle memory.

That aside, I've heard of quite a few people having trouble with barbell incline, so definitely be careful. I've never gone heavier than 225 on it, and do the heavier sets on the hammer strength machine and barbells.

[SS Junk]

Damn people

LOL. Exactly.

[BERT]

My shoulders are messed up because of doing heavy barbell incline presses. Moved to either light weight for barbell just for the reps. Only do heavy incline with dumbells. Has made a world of difference.

Yeah with dumbbells there is no issue. Usually we do barbell when the dumbbells are being used. Damn people

[SS Junk]

Also been focusing more on incline here lately and going heavier. Working pretty well despite the little pain in my shoulder when doing them on the smith machine.

My shoulders are messed up because of doing heavy barbell incline presses. Moved to either light weight for barbell just for the reps. Only do heavy incline with dumbells. Has made a world of difference.

This reads like you have no experience with lifting heavy, and/or forced reps, with a good spotter.

I've only ever had two good spotters. One was a champion power lifter. He never thought it was necessary to force reps with ORM weight. Was able to gain an incredible amount of strength in the 6 months we worked out together, but only if we would've forced reps, just think of the possibilities...

[Big A]

Unless the spotter can rack 315 all on his own it reads like a good way to get hurt.

This reads like you have no experience with lifting heavy, and/or forced reps, with a good spotter.

[BERT]

Also been focusing more on incline here lately and going heavier. Working pretty well despite the little pain in my shoulder when doing them on the smith machine.

[BERT]

I had no interest in wasting time with 305, I wanted to put up 3 plates, anything less wasn't good enough. It's not about confidence, he WILL lift it, it's just a matter of being patient and continuing to grow.

This. I'm too damn close to not have the confidence to get it up. If I do 305 i'm just going to questioning if I could've gotten 315 up that time lol


It'll come, i'll try again in a couple of weeks

[SS Junk]

might help too to do some forced reps with your spotter at 315, for as many as you can with his help for a couple of sessions, then try again.

Unless the spotter can rack 315 all on his own it reads like a good way to get hurt.

[Silverback]

might help too to do some forced reps with your spotter at 315, for as many as you can with his help for a couple of sessions, then try again.

[SS Junk]

I only say that because alot of my goals were only due to a mind block. It had nothing to do with growing. The "it's only 10 more lbs" actually worked at least for me.

[Big A]

I still think you should do 305 first to give you more of a confidence booster. JMO.

I had no interest in wasting time with 305, I wanted to put up 3 plates, anything less wasn't good enough. It's not about confidence, he WILL lift it, it's just a matter of being patient and continuing to grow.

[SS Junk]

I still think you should do 305 first to give you more of a confidence booster. JMO.

[BERT]

Don't be reckless and let the bar slam down on, and bounce off of your chest either, that's cheating, and dangerous.

This is probably why I let it down so slow this time, I don't want any weight bouncing off my chest.

[Big A]

Manipulating time under tension is something I've been focusing on a lot lately actually, which is the cadence of your lifts, and a great way to induce muscle confusion to break through plateaus. It takes more energy to control the weight down, so you will only be able to do a fraction of the reps at a given weight, when doing a 1 second cadence, even less so with a 2 or 3 second cadence.

To illustrate, bust out as many quick reps as you can with 145 as a baseline. Then after sufficient rest do another set taking a full second (one thousand one) to lower the weight, and another full second to lift. I promise you that you won't get anywhere near the same number of reps, and it's the same for bigger weights. It is a bruise to the ego to have to drop the weights the first few times, but I promise that you will be sore as hell.

Anyways, I say this to back up that 4 seconds is too long to lower the weight for a ORM. This isn't a work set, the only purpose of the lift is to explode with as much force on the bar that you can, don't waste any more energy than you have to on lowering the bar.

Don't be reckless and let the bar slam down on, and bounce off of your chest either, that's cheating, and dangerous.

[BERT]

If your taking longer than 2 to 3 secs to get the bar down its too slow.

Might have been a tad bit longer than that. Maybe 4 seconds?