I’ve trained with a pause exclusively for around 2 years now. Took some getting used to, but I’m much more comfortable that way now, to the point where I feel like I get nothing from touch and go because I can’t get my timing down properly. I did a local, commercial gym bench-off a couple months back; it was supposed to be touch and go, but the rules were super lax so a lot of guys were just bouncing. I felt like shit after my opener, so I thought, “I’ll just touch this one, save myself some energy.” Missed 500lbs. about halfway up because I was so slow off of my chest. Paused my third attempt at the same weight and hit it fairly easily.
As far as disadvantages: its more taxing to pause every rep, so if you’re benching multiple times a week, all that extra fatigue adds up. You’re never really overloading the top-end of the lift, either, because most people will be naturally limited by what they can get off of their chest, but that’s not a big concern, for me at least.
I would concur with the poser above. Here is the backstory:
Nov 2012 I hit 330 on bench as a 181 lber, and missed 340 something for my third attempt. Since november, I paused ALL of my flat bench reps. Every last one. Usually it was a competition length pause, though on some back off sets I would do an extra long pause of 5 seconds or so. Inclines and other auxillary work was not paused.
A few weeks ago, I wanted to work up to a near max attempt. I SMOKED the shit out of 350 at the end of a 6 week training cycle. I probably had another 15 or more in me.
Pausing every rep of every set leads to a much greater disparity in rep records for a weight, ie touch and go I could probably get 11 on a set, but only 5 or 6 paused reps.
It really dialed in my form and made me extremely strong off the chest. I hope to hit 400 shortly. I will continue to pause every rep in the future. It WORKS.
[quote]BCP27 wrote:
Right now I’m switching to paused. My sticking point is on my chest, so I’m adapting to that along with checking my form. [/quote]
Im the same way, sticking point was always off the chest. The past few months ive been adding in a lot of paused pressing for sets of 3s and 5s. As well as brought my grip in closer and Ive been seeing a lot of improvement.[/quote]
Yeah, I tried moving my grip out wider when testing my one rep max recently (to ring finger on the ring) and it must have been 15 pounds weaker than pinky on the ring finger, but closer than that doesn’t seem much strong for me.
Make sure you aren’t losing that upper back/shoulder tightness during the unrack or at the bottom. That apparently can be a huge cause of this particular problem.
I think ive posted my opinion on this in another thread, but ill throw it out again. Some people dont need work on pausing, you know who you are. Just like any other sport, its a “skill” some have, some dont. Me? I sucked at pausing, so working on it helped me out a ton.