The current 105kg IPF bench record in the open class is held by a man over 50 years old. His name is Leon Brown, he actually lives in Ottawa. You have a head start, but that doesn’t bother me. Apparently Leon was benching 400 back in high school, it took over 30 years to put 100lbs on his bench.
Any time that I have done pause squats as the only squat of the day (I used to do full body training) the next time I squatted it seemed like I lost some of the stretch reflex and had trouble hitting depth. I do use pause squats at time, I was doing high bar pause squats for the last few months, but I only do them after regular squats and it works out like that.
I’m not taking offense, it seemed like a reasonable observation because some of my ideas have changed over time.
Mike T looks like he’s over the hill, he can’t deadlift heavy and isn’t back squatting at all, just front squats or squats with the transformer bar that Chris Duffin gave him. He might come back eventually, but it will be a while. He had some sort of hip/back injury that got worse and worse over time, I don’t think he ever figured out what it really was but it seems to be under control for now.
This information can be used for the chart. Then, for example, you can better see the relative intensity fluctuations. In the long-term training horizon, this informations, as I have written several times, are very beneficial.
However, I don’t want to force you. 
I guess all my Mike T info is based on you tube videos from 6 years ago. Anyway, I hope he gets back on track.
Did you mention that You also had a Duffin Transformer Bar?
Ok, enough small talk. I have things to do.
Thursday, Feb. 22 - bench assistance day
Close grip bench - no @gaelic, this is not paused
305x6,5,5 - the plan was to do sets of 5 but go for 6 if it felt like it was there. The 6th rep was a bit grindy, but the other two sets felt like I could have done one more. I guess it’s a small PR, but it’s not a competition lift so I don’t really care.
Military press AKA OHP - I do this seated so I don’t fatigue my back
210x6x3 sets
Push ups -neutral grip on dumbbells with mini band
12,10,8 - this is probably the one thing that sticks out like “what the fuck is he doing?” so I will explain. In the last year I have seen several people talking about using pushup to build the bench press including Bryce Lewis (says it’s his favorite bench accessory), Greg Nuckols, Louie Simmons, and Josh Bryant. Josh posted a video yesterday where he says he had Julius Maddox doing 350 pushups in one workout. I’m not going for insane volume at this point in my training cycle so I did it like this instead. Using dumbbells for the grip adds maybe 4-5 inches to the ROM, I added bands because it was getting too easy without them. Not sure if it will pay off but it’s a bit of extra pressing volume and it won’t make me weaker.
Floor pause tricep extension
115x12,9,8 - triceps died on me. This is kind of like a skull crusher laying on the floor, you pause with the plates on the floor behind your head between each rep. The idea is to take out some of the stretch reflex so that my elbows don’t get tendinitis, which has been an issue before. Regular skull crushers or any “French press” type of stuff will mess me up in couple weeks.
Hammer curls superset w/ band pull aparts
50’s/super mini band-shoulder width grip X 18/18, 14/16, 12/15 First set of curls got a bit sloppy at the end, whatever. The curls are mostly to prevent arm pain, which has been an issue in the past. Some people have said that biceps and brachialis are important to stabilize the arms in the bench press, I hope they are right.
Nice work…
Yes, I got it last week. I have used it twice so far. It’s nice but it took a long time to get it from the time I placed the order, over two months. They had a ton of orders from their black Friday sale and apparently their CNC lathe broke down a couple times. I complained twice and they sent me some t-shirts and $100 gift card, so in the end I can’t complain.
What do you think about doing push ups to build the bench press? It sounds kind of weird, but at least the way I’m doing it is challenging and I really feel it in my pecs, I would do dumbbell presses instead if that was an option.
I’m interested to hear your thoughts on it. Fortunately, if I decide to get one… I just have about an hour drive to pick it up. 
It’s good, there isn’t a whole lot to say really. I bought it for a couple reasons, I get arm pain from doing a lot of squatting with a straight bar so this can minimize that while still allowing me to train the same movement pattern. Also dead squats should be more effective with the bar set in the “straight bar” position, using a regular SSB did improve my squat but it taught me to squat a bit too upright, I can lift more with a bit more forward lean. Also the SSB that I have is fucked up, I got it for $100 the same time I bought my power rack and I quickly realized why it was so cheap. It doesn’t fit properly in the rack, the horizontal part of the bar is too short. I had to balance it between sets every time, loading and unloading it was a problem because it could tip over easily. I nicknamed it the “Danger Squat Bar”, there was nothing safe about it. I used it for a few years and I’m still alive, but I figured it was time to upgrade and the transformer bar looks like the best SSB out there.
I think push-ups can be a great rehab for the shoulders. I know that bodybuilders are doing a couple of push-ups just before entering the podium to them look the best. I don’t think push-ups will improve performance on the bench press.
I’m thinking to use them as a bit of extra hypertrophy work, they are too light to do anything else. I saw James Strickland doing push ups in an offseason training video about a year ago (he was doing something like 200 reps total) and I thought it was nonsense but all of Josh Bryant’s lifters are making steady progress so I won’t jump to any conclusions. Like I said, I would do another chest-focused exercise instead but options are limited.
Friday Feb. 23
Light squat/deadlift day
Squat
300x2x5 sets, 45 sec. rest. - the weight here stays the same each week, it’s about 60% of my raw squat max. The idea is to get some light technique practice without causing any significant fatigue, it’s a good warmup for deadlifts and the best way to add a second squat session (in my opinion) to a 4 day upper/lower split. I also do vertical jumps between sets, as per the recommendations of Josh Bryant. I put this in the same category as the pushups, I’m not convinced that it is useful but it can’t hurt either. So I squat, rack the bar, do a single vertical jump, rest 45 sec., repeat.
Deadlift
485x2 - I’m not happy with this at all. Two weeks ago I pulled 475x3 and it looked like I could have done 5, and my technique was solid. It was also at the end of a high volume training block and fatigue was definitely catching up with me, I thought 485x3 would be easy this week. The problem I have is that once I’m over about 85% I have a tendency to let my hips rise too fast, the first rep here was a bit off, the second was worse, and I was going to go for a third and I could feel that I was getting totally out of position as I started pulling so I cut it there, pulling an ugly stiff legged sumo deadlift is not going to help me in any way and this wouldn’t even be a PR.
DL volume work
380x3x5 sets - was going to use 390 but due to the shitty first set I decided to play it conservative. This was easy, technique held up well. I’m still upset about the top set, but shit happens.
Paused deadlift - paused just off the floor
365x5x3 sets - this was somewhat challenging due to the fact I haven’t done these lately but it went well. Hopefully it will help to fix my issue with the rising hips.
Barbell row
305x10x3 sets
Shrugs
385x30, 28 - I only started doing these recently and my shrugging ability is quickly increasing, I need to add some more weight to the bar.
The plan for this training block is to start off with heavy triples or doubles for the top sets on the comp. lifts and gradually increase that each week until I’m doing singles the last week or two. Not max singles, something a bit heavier than an opener. The rest of the exercises (or most of them) will increase by 5-15lbs. each week.
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I think it will be better if you train an dips. The dips are the best complementary exercise for the bench press. Are you asking why? Because of the so-called transmutation of motor potential, you transfer the strength potential from dips on the bench press. It’s true that if you improve your performance on the (weighted) dips, you are likely to improve bench press. One of many Zatsiorsky’s studies proved my claims.
You might be right, the problem is that dips with the attachment that comes with my rack was giving me some shoulder issues. When I used to train in a gym I never had any problems with dips, but I’m also quite a bit stronger now as well and I was doing them with more weight than in the past.
You have to do rehabilitation and compensatory exercises for shoulder muscles. The BB cuban rotations are very useful. Maybe also you have a bad technique of weighted dips.
I have a previous shoulder injury, I dislocated my left shoulder several times when I was younger. The last time was about 15 years ago and it doesn’t normally give me any problems, dips are the one thing that seemed to aggravate it despite the fact that I did them for years with no issue. I would blame either the dip setup or the fact that I do them with a lot of weight, but technique would possibly be an issue as well. If you care to know, the dip bars that came with my rack are not welded properly, when you set them up one is slightly higher than the other. I put plates under one side of the rack and used one of those balance things with a bubble inside liquid (not sure the name) to make sure it was even, maybe it’s horizontally uneven too.
Monday Feb. 26 - Main bench day
Bench press - I’m pissed off about this
355x1 - failed second rep. I had high hopes for this block of training, the last week of the previous block I did 355x2. That was during a high volume block and I was feeling the fatigue at the end, if it wasn’t for last week’s sub-par performance I would have expected to get 3 reps today. Technique wasn’t the issue, I just got stuck halfway and couldn’t grind it out, the first rep was fine and my last warmup was 325x1, which was easy. I guess I need to adjust my expectations, this is a bad start to this block and I shouldn’t be failing reps at all.
Volume work
290x3x5 sets - 75 sec. rest
Dead Bench
295x8 singles - 1 min. rest
Wide grip bench
275x8,8,7 - I expected this to go badly because of the failed rep earlier, it was fine though.
Dumbbell flys w/band
30’sX15x3 sets - I guess this is a PR, I will move the weight up to 35 next week. Unfortunately this doesn’t count for shit so I’m still mad.
Chin ups - wide neutral grip
bodyweight +10lbsX10x3 sets - last couple reps on the last set were a bit sloppy, no big deal.
This workout went just like Friday’s deadlift session, the top set was shit but everything else was fine. I suppose this is one reason to use autoregulation.
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Two things I neglected to mention: all reps are paused on wide grip bench and light squats on Thursday are done with the transformer bar set at 1-D, which gives the same leverages as a back squat. The reason I’m doing that is because my biceps and forearms get achy from doing a lot of squatting with the straight bar, even if I do mostly high bar, and I often feel it during my bench workouts.
@gaelic - You know a lot about Sheiko and the Russian training philosophy. They all squat at least twice a week, almost always all low bar squats and relatively high volume as well. What do they do to avoid arm pain from squatting? This seems to be a very common problem and I have found ways to work around it but no actual solution. I tried doing lots of light bicep curls, shoulder rotation exercises, and light rear delt/upper back work like face pulls and band pull aparts but it only reduced the pain, didn’t eliminate it. Any thoughts?