the most important queston ive ever asked

[rjl296]

my bench is going nowhere, and i need to know why !!!!!!!! AAAH !!

i while ago i posted i kept missing my ME bench, so I lowered the bar on DE day and changed ME movements weekly. Now ive hit another huge rut. (my squat and dead seem to be no prob)

here's my bench workouts

ME

ME movement.
triceps 3 sets 4-8 reps
lats (row mostly) 3 sets
shoulder lateral
cuff

DE
9 sets DE bench 125 lbs (my 2 board is 300 lbs)
triceps 3 sets 4-8 reps
lats
shoulder
cuff
biceps

My ME movements are as follows
2 board
floor press
close grip press
3 board
high rep dumbell/ or full bench press

my triceps movements consist of
cg bench- flat, incline and decline
tate press
jm press

problem - over 2 months ago i hit 280 on flat bench, today i failed on 285 -, which I thought would be a warmup ant answer is why ????
this wasnt a 1 time deal. last week I missed a 305 3 board when my pb was 300 - 4 weeks earlier.

i mean the weight today totally pinned me to the bench. - moved 1/4 inch

my thoughts - diet maybe. i dont eat much protein (.75g / lb)

rest - i sleep only 7 hours 3 nights a week, the rest I get 9

training - too much intensity for my triceps, i dont go to failure, but 1 rep short

i do 1 day of active recovery for upperbody / week.
???? other- please help. any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

 

[Vulgar_Display_Of_Power]

Rjl-

Im nobody important, but the frst things that come to mind are>>

Are you using enough speed on DE day, wouldnt hurt to have someone time you to check speed.

Do you use a bench shirt at all? If not, need to consider some wide grips to keep lower part of bench equal to gains in the top part.

Rows, rows, and more rows. I am jsut now getting where I can get serious on my bench again after suffering shoulder probs for the last x many months, and I really feel that the extra back strength/thickness is going to correlate to more stability and drive in my initial bench push.

One other thing I have to remind myself..My buddy benchmonster made incredible gains in a home gym with basically just a flat bench and rack, so you have to figure most of his tricep exercises were some form of straight bar exercises(Jm's, skull crushers, etc) So maybe there is a bench improving moral to this paragraph.

Later..

 

[rjl296]

i dont think its my lats, they have always been my strongest bp

for the next few weeks, i do not use a shirt, i will be ordering one soon.

my speed is fast, i think. i do get timed less than 2.5 sec for all sets, should i be faster ??

 

[IronLion]

bro, you need way more volume for triceps, the way I see it you are getting six sets a week, that is not enough. I try to get about eight sets on each bench workout plus I do a lot of high rep band work the day after to promote recovery.

Also consider adding some high volume timed incline work to your de day, it doesn't look like your getting enough reps in general

 

[rjl296]

Really ? wow. you are right, only 6 sets/ week. so maybe bump it up to > 10/wk ? plus some ar ??

 

[Tarheel]

What sort of tricep work are you doing?

Try to keep your tri-work in the benching plane (skullcrushers, close grip, JM presses, etc). Pushdowns and Frenchpresses aren't going to help your benching much.

 

[IronLion]

start slow by bumping your major tricep movement (skull crushers, jm's,close grip inc. or flat, ect.) to about five sets per bench workout then add in three or four sets of pushdowns to hit the area of the tri missed by the big ext. type movements

 

[GRIMMER]

4 and 5 boards for tricepts as well as rack lockouts about 6 inch movement. I know they will not help the bottom of the bench but they will allow yoiu to handle some heavier weights. Do you use bands or chains. If not try moving your weight on de day up a bit probably 135 -145 between 50-60% of your max.

 

[Liftbig]

TRICEPS!!!! you seem to have a very limited amount of exericises you rotate. you defiantly need to add some high boards. and some rollings extensions with DBs are good, also pual dicks press, and i like doing pushdowns for high reps at the end of my bench workouts. on the barbell tricep movemtns work up to a 3 or 5 rep max every so often. oh yeah, get some bands and chains if you can afford to. at least get some mini bands!!!

 

[rjl296]

thanks, i just ordered some bands