Try and get video of your bench sets, look for differences between your “good” sets and “bad” sets. My guess is it’s just because you’re working with weights higher than you have and your body needs to get used to these heavier weights before you can dominate them. Don’t worry too much about it.
Glad to see your weight is moving up a little, that’s the right direction. Whatever you’re doing is working, keep it up for a month, then re-assess.
OK, thanks for the feedback. I wanted to post a benching video to get some feedback. I’ll likely do a video of my Friday lift.
Unfortunately, in the past these sort of struggles are what eventually derail me and cause me to quit lifting, etc. However, I’m determined to not let that happen this time, so I’ll keep pushing forward.
Yeah, I’m definitely not comfortable with heavy weights. My goal is to bench 135 lbs for 10x. I’m not there now, but that’s my goal at least in terms of benching.
Remember it will be a little Harder to bench press after front squatting. And a little Easier to bench press fresh, on the days your front squat 2nd.
I was particularly tired after squatting that day. I also notice I need to eat more too. I weighed myself this morning and I was 136.0. Need to up the calories. My protein intake has been around 150 range…where before it was 170 for a few days.
Keep up the good work, eat good clean and enough.
Do not worry to much about the bench sessions.
Jim says that if you get the prescribed reps you’re good. So on the 5’s week 5 reps is enough and you get way more than that, 3 reps on 3’s week and a single on 531 week.
Sometimes if I’ve given it everything I’ve got, then next time the lifts comes up, I’m not as strong it’s fatigue and it’s normal. You bench twice make the day you bench first be the day you kill it and the second day well just get the good reps in do not struggle focus on good reps with good bar speed.
Get that in your mindset, do not compare from week to week or workout to workout, some days you’re golden some days not.
Get under the bar consistently and you WILL progress I promiss you that, if you eat wise and don’t do stupid things.
It’s Great that you are starting to make these connections between diet, workload and performance in the gym.
When the eating is bad or the accessory work is too much your Main Sets suffer. When you’re well fed and less tired the Main Sets are better. It’s great feed back. To me, this was one of the Best things about 5/3/1. It’s so consistent, any changes you make “show up” so you can evaluate what’s good or what’s bad. Or how many sets/reps to do on assistance moves without blowing up the program. A lot of other programs just throw a bunch of work at you and you can’t tell what’s working or not working.
Deadlifts
75% 165 1 5
85% 187.5 1 3
95% 210 1 1+ (18 reps)
75% 165 5 5
Press
75% 80 1 5
85% 92.5 1 3
95% 102.5 1 1+ (8 reps)
75% 80 5 5
Assistance
Incline BB bench: 80 lbs - 5x10
Chin-ups: 5x10
Ab roller: 5x20
Notes:
Bench
75% 102.5 1 5
85% 115 1 3
95% 127.5 1 1+ (6 reps)
75% 102.5 5 5
Front Squat
75% 75 1 5
85% 85 1 3
95% 95 1 1+ (20 reps)
75% 75 5 5
Assistance
Skull crushers/Bench: ~40 lbs 4x15/10
DB rows: 30 lbs - 4x20 (2 min rest)
Leg/hip/toe raises: 3x25 (1.5 min rest)
I will post video of bench later.
Yeah, so even today I could only bench 127.5 lbs for 6 reps. Here’s a video, but clearly it feels heavy once I get past 5 reps.
You can get a lot more out of benching with a good arch, more leg drive (those are related to each other), and widening your grip a bit.
You’re benching with a very flat back right now. If you want to be good at benching and stay healthy, you’ll want to make more of an effort to retract your shoulder blades. That should arch your back more and will let you get more leg drive without lifting your ass off the bench.
With grip width, you have decently long arms for your height, but your grip is narrow. Do you have any existing shoulder injuries, or is your grip narrow just because that’s how you happened to grab the bar? If not, going wider would be a big help for you.
Also, you gotta disconnect from needing to hit a certain number of reps to feel like you’re progressing. You’ll have ups and downs and you can’t get hung up on them. If you have a bad workout, eat more food and get more sleep so that the next one is better. That’s all the more you should dwell on it when things aren’t great.
When you’re doing your plus set, you only should be focusing on the rep you’re currently doing. Not your goal you feel you “need” to hit, only the rep you’re doing. Anything else will mess with you mentally.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the rep after you let all your air out felt more difficult and you bailed. I think if you’d taken the time to rebrace properly, you’d have had at least one more.
I wish to further echo that these are narrow grip benches being done.
Okay, thanks for the advice. I think one issue is that the bench is too high and it’s hard for me to get leg drive. I might need a lower bench. I will play around with grip width. It’s just the way I currently grip the bar though. Never thought it was short.
I don’t get how people do these crazy arched backs when they bench. Maybe I just need to practice. My back is slightly arched but hard to tell.
BTW this is the last two 7 day averages for my weight.
May 22 - 136.2 lbs
May 29 - 136.8 lbs
So the 7 day average up to May 22 was 136.2 lbs and from May 23 - May 29 the average is 136.8. So I gained .6 lbs, which is 272.2 grams. Does that look like good progress in terms of gaining weight without too much fat gain?
You can put something under your feet to press off of, rather than try to lower the bench.
Yeah, I put something under my feet. Maybe I need to just practice the arching more.
I’ll link a video or two here to show how to set your arch for bench. You don’t need a crazy one, but you need more than you’re getting. Arching better will make leg drive way more effective.
Your weight gain is about as slow as possible without being negligible. A little more would be better.
I think I need to reassess my bench grip then, because that’s not only an inch or two closer than I grip.
I consider bringing your grip in an inch or 2 to be narrow grip benching.
But in the video he’s gripping where the knurling begins on the bar. I find most consider that narrow grip.
Just to clarify: I wasn’t suggesting you were wrong, it was a genuine statement that when I bench again, I’ll film my grip and evaluate it. I usually bench with my grip so i can see an inch or two of knurling inside my hands.