For people who compete, I was wondering how you train bench when you’re far away from a meet. I’ve been doing only pause benches for sometime but it’s tough to keep the pauses consistent and I’m thinking touch and go would be a better indicator of how I’m progressing.
I’m thinking in the future I might try to progress in tng, training paused bench in the last 6 weeks for a peak. Thoughts?
When I competed in powerlifting, I did touch and go up until the meet.
The farther out from a meet you are the less I think it matters and if you think touch and go can translate into a bigger comp bench then go for it.
I train touch and go pretty much all the time. We peak for five weeks and get some paused bench in there after the main sets.
Thanks guys, I’m going to give that a shot after this comp.
Why does it have to be only one or the other? You can do both, or do other bench variations t&g. You can get away with not pausing in training, but is there any actual benefit to doing that? It’s like saying you are going to squat high in training and hit depth at the meet, Ray Williams does it but should you?
Why wouldn’t you do the paused bench as the main sets then do the tng after? Not saying it’s wrong just generally curious
I was advised to do the first and last rep as a paused/competition lift and touch n go reps in between.
The paused reps are lighter, but the pauses are for around three seconds. The main sets we either don’t pause or do a comp pause for a couple of them.
@chris_ottawa fair point. I would definitely include a peak with paused only if I were to only to tng prior to that. Now that I think of it maybe sticking to the paused reps and hitting some close grip tng afterwards would be a pretty good option.
I don’t compete, but I always do either first and/or last rep paused. Just to keep that feeling there.
Also, sorry, didn’t really answer your question.
We don’t pause the main sets during peak because our coach has found that you don’t miss a bench because you had to suddenly pause it. The miss will be caused by a technical issue or simply being too weak for the weight.
I’m pretty sure our guys who compete in feds where you tend to get slower bench calls do some peaked benched paused just to be safe; and we don’t bounce the bar off our chests anyway, so adapting to a reasonable comp pause isn’t hard at all.
Before last meet prep, mostly close grip touch and go in the off season
This meet prep (in the off season), close grip touch and go and feet-up touch and go.
I still had some close grip and comp grip touch and go during strength blocks.