Do you have a video of Kirill Sarychev rowing 738?
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Gonna have to agree with this one.
I just want to chime in and add that you gotta make sure youâre doing plenty of upper back and rear delt work to stay even. Youâre probably already incorporating that stuff but just to be sure lol. Everyone tagged in this thread is rooting for each other and no one wants to see anyone get injured haha
Edit:
These are my go-tos. Havenât had shoulder, chest, or upper back pain/discomfort/weakness since Iâve been doing these 2 out of every 3 sessions
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I donât know about that, a lot of people seem to overemphasize upper back work. That mostly comes from equipped lifting where you can literally miss a bench attempt because you couldnât touch the bar to your chest. There are plenty of lifters out there who do little or no upper back work with no issue. At the same time there are some people who say they get shoulder and arm pain from not doing enough upper back work combined with lots of benching, so Iâm not advising anyone to completely neglect upper back work and some is likely a good thing but you donât need a 1:1 ratio of pressing and pulling or anything like that. Personally, in a week I do 3 sets (work sets) of chin ups, 3 sets of rows, and 3 sets of band pull aparts. I do way more benching than that, and I have no shoulder issues.
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Ill give another vote to band pull-aparts for assistance.
I do sets of 20 between most sets of bench, other than top sets, and I definitely feel its helped me stay tight and keep my shoulders balances and healthy
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When I wasnât really sucking my shoulders back, band pull Aparts were counter productive. With my shoulders rounded forward, doing them was just practicing a bad motion. This taught me that lifts arenât magic. You Gotta make them hit what you want them to hit.
After I spent some time on these, pull Aparts became more effective.
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We arent talking about someone who can bench 738lbs, obviously once you get to a certain point it gets harder. But if you want to bench 315lbs, then you should be able to do a pendlay row with 315lbs. One, to help create that support base and strength. Two, to help maintain healthy shoulders.
Thanks for the quick responses everyone.
Apparently you canât tag like a dozen people in a post so youâll just have to check the list to get the warm fuzzy feeling knowing that youâve contributed to my bench gains
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Strong posterior delts are more important imo. I benched 315x10 and I havenât rowed over 275 in years.
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I donât know about that, I benched 315 before I ever did any sort of row with 315 and I never do pendlay rows. Your advice sounds like one of those articles âif you canât do 10 muscles ups then you arenât strong!â or something like that. There is not much correlation between bench 1rm and row 1rm.
Sorry, Im not trying to be like âMy word is lawâ. In my opinion, I feel like its important for your rowing strength to be relatively equal to your bench strength. From what Ive read and personal experience, having a strong row can help with the bench press. Sure you can live without it, but it wont hurt to do it either. Thats why I brought it up in this thread.
I get where heâs coming from though, I donât think some extra rowing volume is every gonna hurt anything. Its not a motion where over use comes into play much, you can vary it up to avoid this issue even more. I donât think itâs a mandatory âyou can only bench what you can row not matter whatâ but I think its a good goal to shot for especially for a beginner.
Itâs not a question of overuse injuries, but rather time and recovery spent something that might not help your lifts. I donât do much rowing as I mentioned above, although I still do barbell rows with close to 400lbs. But if I were to double rowing volume then I would have to reduce something else or it would cause too much fatigue and negatively affect my training and results.
Having a strong back will help with every lift tho, not just bench. So you canât say itâs not important. Besides, @guineapig is only lifting 2 days a week, so I donât think recovery would be a problem if he does heavy rows on one day and lighter ones another. He honestly could go heavy both days and still recover fine. All in all, the whole point is that itâs something he can try. If he doesnât like it he doesnât have to do it, itâs just another option that may help.
I donât think you get the point here. I never said that having a weak back is a good thing or that you should never do rows or any other upper back work, Iâm just saying that too much is counterproductive for the reasons above. If @guineapig or whoever is pressed for time then they shouldnât spend too much on accessory lifts. And really, increasing upper back strength doesnât seem to help bench press at all. For deadlift it definitely matters, but past a certain point it wonât do anything. For bench, some sort of external rotation work is probably a good idea to avoid shoulder issues but it doesnât need to be rows and you donât need to go crazy.
Let me tell you a story. A few years ago I did 5/3/1 and followed Jimâs advice to superset every pressing set with chin ups, plus I did lots of rows on top of that. I was doing rest pause FSL for bench and OHP so I figured I would do rest pause chin ups too. After a couple months I was doing close to 20 reps of chin ups (in one set, the first in the rest pause set) after maybe 10 sets of chin ups between bench/press warm ups and work sets, and this was at a bodyweight of about 220. I was the fucking chin up champ and my lats were huge, but my bench went up by maybe 10lbs. in 6 months. Now, Iâm doing maybe a quarter of the amount of upper back work I did back then and my bench is about 80lbs. ahead of what it was then.
Just gonna say, 20 reps at 220lbs is impressive. But yeah, I still think they are important but I see what you are saying, they arenât the best thing you could be doing so they shouldnât be prioritized in any way.
Thatâs rough, I just started running 5/3/1 a couple months ago and itâs probably helped my bench the most. My old 2rep max I can now get for 6 reps.
Sorry for derailing this thread, i have an unhealthy obsession with rows.
Probably a good idea to avoid rows for this purpose as the prime mover (lats) internally rotate the arm at the shoulder.
Iâm not too sure about that either. The lats can both internally and externally rotate the shoulder depending on the position of the arm, basically they bring your humerus towards the midline of your body. What Iâm saying about external rotation work is basically about balancing out the muscle in the front and back of your shoulder. If you have tight pecs and everything in the back is weak then it can cause issues.
Eric Cressey has written a lot about this kind of stuff, he is some sort of shoulder guru apparently. Look him up if you are interested, some of his articles are on this site.
Controversial Opinion;
Some back work is Stimulation for the back muscles.
Some back work is Practice for what you expect your back to do during other lifts. As Chris alrady mentioned, itâs an unusual motion to push away with your shoulders squeezed back. Lots of guys catch on to that quickly. Some guys (awesome athletes who played sports where they never layed down on their backs) have more trouble with that back squeeze while pushing away action.
These guys should do more non maximal back reps to ingrain that motion and make the relevant muscle go.
If you do rows for the sake of rows, or chinups for the sake of chinups, you may be missing the point.
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Thereâs a good article online that charts emg activity of the lats, delts, pecs, biâs and triâs in the bench press in different phases of the lift. I think one was a world class lifter and the other was a well trained lifter. âThe lats and the bench press-Much ado about very littleâ. Despite the emg data I feel the extra lat and rear delt work in keeping my pressing stable and joints healthy. Iâve always been prone to RC inflammation and flare ups, so take that with a grain of salt.
About 10 weeks ago I added two more sessions a week of prehab/bodybuilding/endurance work and itâs done wonders and takes literally nothing away from my recovery. Reps in the 10-20 range and moderately heavy to light. The upper back can take a ton of volume and recover quite quickly. I pull 3-4 times a week. Shrugs, high pulls, chins, upright Rows, rear lateral raises, etc. Iâve never felt better and Iâm having alot of fun training again. Win win!
I love doing any type of back work and throw it in pretty much everyday. If I were to beginpowerlifting though, I would cut a lot of it substanstially. Rows and pull ups and such are great, but far from the best for building a big bench. I could personally row 315 before I could bench 315. I think (and someone correct me if Iâm wrong) but the idea of doing rows to build your bench came to the forefront because of gear? The bigger your back was and the stronger your lats, the more tension you could get out of the shirt or something like that?