I do imagine a big part of it is that a lot of folks just simply haven’t ever tried to seriously push their bodyweight up and observed the dramatic impact it had on strength and leverages. Matt Reynolds wrote an amazing article titled “Eating Through The Sticking Points” that talked to this. I’m going to quote some of the better parts, but the whole thing is worth reading.
Last year we had a bunch of the guys at my gym preparing to compete in the same powerlifting meet. Even though there wasn’t a team competition, we still thought it would be cool to win every weight class from the 181s on up to Superheavyweights. Myself, and one other lifter (Justin Winder – pro powerlifter) were planning on competing in the 275-pound weight class when my 308 lifter (Jon Gold) herniated a disc in his back on his final heavy deadlift of the cycle. He ended up being able to bench only at the meet, so 10 days out from the meet I asked Winder if he wanted to move up to the 308s, or if he wanted me to. We both got on the scale – Winder was 274. I was 277. So I decided to move up to try and win the 308s. For 10 days I ate everything in sight. I ate McDonald’s at least twice a day where my typical meal consisted of 2 double cheeseburgers, a McChicken sandwich with mayo, large fries, a 42oz soda, a 42oz Powerade, and 2 apple pies. 10 days later at the weigh-in I tipped the scale at 304. That’s 27 pounds gained in 10 days. Guess what happened at the meet? I PRd my bench press by THIRTY pounds. My 3rd attempt, 450 pounds, shot straight to lockout and I ended up leaving at least 25 pounds on the platform that day. All because I pushed my weight up 27 pounds before the meet.
Speaking of cake, one of my training partners from the early 2000s, Kyle Gulledge (275-pound lifter, who deadlifted over 800 pounds as a teenager, and deadlifted 830 pounds both conventional and sumo in the same calendar year) once ate a 9"x13” pan of cake EVERY DAY for a month, from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Kyle had a meet in early February. On Thanksgiving weekend our training crew got together in Kansas City for one of our epic training days. At 265, Kyle looked a little leaner and smaller than the last time I had seen him. He worked up that day on the bench press to a slow 545 pounds (in an old time bench shirt). He then called for 600, a weight he had done several times before. I could tell he wasn’t going to get it, and sure enough, it stapled him. Kyle had this type of intense focus like no one I had ever seen in the gym, and missing the weight made him irate. He swore off losing weight and getting lean, and on the way home he invented “the cake-a-day diet.” Every day that month he ate either a 9"x13” cake or a pan of brownies equal in size, along with a gallon of milk. In that month he went from 265 pounds to 295. And at the meet a month later he benched 630 with ease.
Nick Leadbetter, who likely has the best deadlift coefficient at STRONG, went from 198 to 242 in 2 years, pushed his weight up on Little Caesar’s $5 large pizzas, sweet potato fries, biscuits and gravy, brown rice with peanut butter, and broccoli and beef with extra beef from cheap Chinese restaurants. This took his deadlift from 585 to 725 in two years.
My training partner, Jon Gold (308 lifter, 677 raw squat, 500-pound raw bench, 765 raw deadlift), graduated high school at 6’1” and 205. On weekends in college he worked security till 2am, then immediately went to IHOP and ate country fried steak and eggs, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, and milk. Then he’d go home and sleep, get up for church the next morning, then eat at Ryan’s buffet with all-you-can-eat steak until he was sick. On the way home, he’d go through the KFC drive-through and order a family bucket of chicken and eat it all while watching football. Dinner on Sunday nights was a large “meats” pizza from Papa Johns. This added 30 pounds of muscle in one summer and got him to his first 400+ bench.
We’ve established that eating to gain weight isn’t easy. Actually, at times, its downright sickening. But it works. We’ve heard Rip say before, and experience certainly tells me he’s right, that any amount of weight gained will lead to an increase in both muscle and fat; its virtually impossible for someone strength training to gain one without the other. This means that bodyfat percentage will increase with a gain in lean body mass, and thus, an increase in fat accompanies an increase in leverage. The increase in leverage occurs because bigger muscles (i.e. an increase in contractile tissue) increases efficiency in the barbell lifts four ways: 1) an increase in contractile tissue leads to increase in contractile force, 2) an increased steepness (closer to 90 degrees, where maximum force is produced) of the fibers pulling on the prime-moving skeletal structures, such as the upper fibers of the pecs and delts on the humerus in the bench press, 3) a reduced range of motion (also an example of increased pec size on the bench press), and 4) the increased “tightness” in the bottom position of the lifts serves like a compressed and loaded “spring,” ready to explode to lockout.
Inevitably, the comment will come “not everyone has the willpower to eat that way”, but, again, I see this question of “does everyone have the physical potential to do this”, not “will everyone be able to do what it takes to do this”. Let me strap someone up to an IV of gravy until they’re 350lbs and now the question becomes “is a bodyweight bench press possible for everyone”
I better be able to bench press a buick!