Good bench article by George Halbert (733 bench at 215 bodyweight!)

[R CRUSHER]

speed bench has caused me alot of joint problems. i'm nixing from my program for alwhile after reading some MM articles. i think it's doing me more harm than good.

am i the only one?

 

[endpoint]

R CRUSHER: what joints.

your percentages may be too high.....or you could have bad form, or a major weakness in your pressing muscles or the muscles that are oposite them (you may have strong front delts....but weak rotators and rear delts causing an imbalance)

 

[benchmonster]

I will tell you what joints, Endpoint,

Elbows, shoulders and wrists. I too have dropped speed bench, and it was not cause of too much weight, too little weight, or improper use of bands, it is cause I cannot handle it without getting elbow tendonitis.

I went from a 355 bench to a 500 bench in 14 months using the Westside program and I am, and will be forever grateful for its innovations, however, for me, once I hit the 500 mark, I got to a point where I was having so much nagging arm pain it was difficult to impossible to keep up with the 4 day per week protocol, including benching once for Dynamic Effort and once for Maximal effort.

I still use the Westside Squat program, heavily tweaked for me. But I found I could not keep up with 4 work days per week, every week, and extra workouts, etc. . . If I had the luxury of access to massage, active release therapy, etc. . . then I could probably have kept up the pace, but something had to give for me, and my current modifications to the program are working out quite well. I am stronger than ever, in both bench and squat, and actually box squatted 675 a couple Sat. ago on my 15th work set of the day.

B.

 

[rjl296]

this is kinda why the metal militia guys don't do speed work. their style doesn't implement speed. they lower the bar slow and it goes up a little bit faster than it came down. westside guys lower it fast then explode up. if you lower it slowly, the rebound/speed effect that you're hoping to get from training probably isn't really utilized.

i think there's too many people that train with speed days when it really might not work for their particular style of benching.

(the first paragraph of this post was about an interview that a guy from bb.com did with a guy from MM and a guy from westside)

i just finished reading that, and i have been haveing the WORST time with my bench. i lower the bar sllllllooooow on ME day.

maybe its time to start lowering it faster, aprox how long should the descent be to be- fast ??

 

[jeremys]

i just finished reading that, and i have been haveing the WORST time with my bench. i lower the bar sllllllooooow on ME day.

maybe its time to start lowering it faster, aprox how long should the descent be to be- fast ??

it should be fast, but obviously don't drop or pull it hard onto you.

 

[Vendetta]

Here's the video of George's 733 lb lift.... What a freak.
http://www.powermagonline.com/videos/george-bench.ram

Don't worry about "Save-As", you have to stream the video anyways.

 

[endpoint]

Wow bench monster...long time, no....read?
how are you?

have you tried horse grade anti inflamitory gels like the guys use at westside? haha

speed bench didnt work for you....you found out the hard way(well i guess it did work for a good couple hundred pounds).....but there are a tonne of people killing themselves and their joints not performing something right.

Imagine if someone had shit bench press form...and were doubling the speed that this joint is moving (in the wrong direction)....bad news.