Getting increasingly peeved off with my Bench progress. It’s always been my weakest compound movement by a country mile but my progress since the 4 month lockdown break has been pathetic. Previous PR was 110 which is nothing really, but now I can’t get above 80KG which I feel is just embarrassing for someone who’s been lifting consistently for nearly 3 years now. I’d like to blame it on the sub standard home equipment I’m using but I know that’s not really the reason.
Just very frustrating. Bench is something I think we all want to see big numbers in and seeing it consistently left behind with no real progress has me dreading chest day at time.
Going to throw a vid up next week for you guys to critique. Sure I’m doing a thousand things wrong despite obsessing over form for months.
Focus on technique. Weeks where I can’t bench as high will always be down to my technique. Post shoulder injury I had to make huge adjustments to my form and I learnt to keep a very strict movement - whereas I hit a wall pre-injury, I’ve since hit some pretty big numbers on bench vs a lot of other similar weight and powerlifting focussed friends that I have. Really drilling my shoulders back into the bench and taking a huge breath helps, too often it’s easy to throw your shoulders into the lift, not actually focussing on pushing with and squeezing your pecs.
One of the biggest differences I’ve made post injury is focussing on shoulder work, particularly OHP that has helped give me huge stability. Tricep work has obviously helped too.
Funny thing is since having my home gym - I’ve cut out most of my chest movements. I now just do loads of flat bench and CGBP (quite heavily based on the program by
@reiyushin ) - the rest then includes a just few landmine barbell flys and incline presses.
. It always makes me laugh when they send 25kg plates via dpd, poor guys.