How to Double Your Bench Press


[Note: Matt came to EFS about 2 years ago and was not strong. I say that as a professional. As his friend, I would’ve called him weak. But since I didn’t know Matt at the time, I let things play out and kept my mouth shut. You never know. As the months moved on, Matt significantly improved his conditioning level (using circuits after his main lifts) and continued to learn. We worked with him on technique but we certainly weren’t “coaches”. I will say this; Dave, Todd and I have never given Matt a workout. I don’t know if I’ve ever told him what to do. He would ask questions, but Dave and I never “trained” Matt. Matt has taken it upon himself to really learn what to do. What we tried to do and this might be because we are lazy, is teach him how to fish. Matt has continued to improve his deadlift and squat; probably even more so than his bench. He started with bodyweight squats and moved on from there. The only thing that I will take credit for is his knowledge of music. A couple of weeks ago, we were listening to the Melvins and Matt wowed me with his admiration for the sludge. My heart melted. Anyway, the point of this article is to give Matt a voice, let him show people what he did and to let everyone know that it is possible. Matt is probably where many of our readers’ are right now. Look at what he did and take a few lessons from him. – Jim Wendler]

After my first meet on May 30, 2004, Dave told me I could write an article when I benched 500 in a meet. I finally did it on September 10, 2005. I have to admit, though, that I wasn’t and still am not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, I benched 500. On the other, I only bench 500. For those of you out there still working toward 500, maybe some of the things I experienced will help you out.

First, a little background on me. I’m built to bench and by that I mean I have short Tyrannosaurus Rex arms. When I do floor presses, the bar touches my chest before my triceps make contact with the floor. I only mention this because it heavily influences how I train my bench. I’ve got a strong lockout (relative to what I bench) and my weakest point is 2” to 3” off my chest. When I started at EFS in October of 2003, I could bench about 235. I had trained on and off (mostly off) for about 12 years. I now have gym bests of 365 sans shirt, 500 shirted, and 500 shirted in a meet.

Ok, for those of you still reading, here is how I did it. I started out training 3 days a week so my ME and DE days were not on the same day every week. I did this out of necessity because I was traveling 2-3 weekends a month. After a couple of months, I started training 4 times a week.

My early exercise focus was board work. It was pretty much straight out of the articles I read. Rotate your boards, do your extensions, finish with shoulder and lat work. In hindsight, some of it worked, some did not. But, that is why you keep a training log. I have always had one, but now my log is extremely detailed. I can tell you not only sets and reps, but how I felt and how much I weighed on any day in the past year.

Let’s start with board work. Boards are good times. However, I want to qualify that statement. I use a 1, 2, 3, and 4 board. Anything more, with my short arms is worthless. Actually, it is very rare that I use a 1 or 4 board. In my line of thinking if you are going to do a 1 board, just go to your chest. There are times when I use it, but they are few and far between. As for the 4 board, it is just such a small range of motion for me that it becomes an ego issue. My high board work (3 and 4) is done with a pinky on the rings grip. My lower board work is done with an index finger on the rings grip. I rarely use any grip other than these two. Finally, I do not do shirt work with boards. We tried that extensively before a meet once and the results were not good. Suffice it to say I became a champ at pressing off boards, but I was a turd when I had to go to my chest.

The companion of board work is benching to the chest which I think it is often neglected. Everyone has a shoulder injury or it just doesn’t feel right. Well if you are just starting out, fix your form and address any injury problems you have now. I do a ton of full range benching both in my shirt and without it. I rarely go over 6 reps and usually use a progression of 6s and 3s or triples and singles for a session. This means I do sets with 6 reps until I think I will not be able to do 6. I then do triples for the rest of the session.

Next up is lockout work. Notice I said lockout. Perhaps the best thing Jim has taught me is train the movement not the body part. That being said, I do not do extensions. If I find myself in that position on the bench, I’m done. Lockout work consists of high board work and rack lockouts. I have been taught from the beginning of my time here at EFS to let the bar drift over my face and flare my elbows to lockout. I should also mention, that I only do lockout work as needed. Short arms, plus strong lockout equals something that only needs to be maintained not a priority.

Now we move to lats. I know I said train movements not body parts, but stabilizer muscles just need to be strong. Who cares how. For me, the king of lat movements is the chest supported row. It has only been in the last 3 months that I have been focusing on them. In this time my raw bench has gone up 30lbs. I train anywhere from 5-10 sets of 5-8 reps. Most of the time I do 5 or 6 reps, add 5 to 10lbs and repeat until my form starts to break down. The increased strength in this area has helped tremendously with my bench because when I miss it usually follows a certain pattern. I pop the weight off my chest, then 2 to 3 inches up my elbows flare and I lose the bar back over my face because I don’t have the lat strength to keep my elbows in. I have played around with dumbbell and barbell rows, but I don’t like them. They may work for me, but I’ve never given them a real chance. I do know that lat pulldowns do nothing for my bench even if I get stronger on them.

I think shoulder work is too often overlooked. At least for beginners like myself. When I started at EFS I did various raises and got poor results. About the same time I really started to focus on the chest supported rows, I started putting a greater emphasis on my shoulders. I guess I should clarify. I started focusing on my front delts. My rear delts get pretty well hammered by the chest supported rows and honestly unless and until there is an imbalance that affects my bench, I don’t care about my lateral delts. I have two exercises of choice, the standing overhead press and the cambered bar bench. I usually alternate weeks or sometimes, I’ll go for two weeks in a row, but never more. I use a rep range of 3-5 for overhead work and 6s for the cambered bar. If I can not do a relatively easy triple with a cambered bar it is too much weight. I’ll do 5-10 sets when doing overhead work and 3 or 4 with the cambered bar.

The final piece of the puzzle was upper back work. Without a big, strong base how are you going to bench big? In the past I have done seated dumbbell cleans. Lately, I have been doing power cleans or dumbbell snatches. Both seem to work so I just pick one and go to it. Three or four sets of 5 to 8 reps and I call it a day.

That’s pretty much it for exercise selection. The only other thing to cover is shirt work. Like I said before I don’t do shirt work off boards. At least for me, it does not carry over to my bench when I have to touch. My approach is to wear my shirt different for different weights. I can touch 365 if I have to or I can make it so 500 won’t touch. It’s simply a matter of where the collar is on the shirt.

There are two ways I’ll structure a session in my shirt. I either do reps in the shirt to get used to the groove or I will do some real max effort work. If I’m doing reps, I do triples or doubles and just make small jumps to around 90% of my best single. If I feel strong, I work up and try to beat my old record.

Notice that last sentence. “If I feel strong” really sums up how I train. The technical term is cybernetic periodization, but all it means is I train based on how I feel. Another valuable lesson Jim taught me is that it is almost impossible to map out a training cycle ahead of time. There is no possible way to know how you are going to feel two days from now let alone six weeks. This isn’t to say I don’t have an idea of what I want to do or what training weakness I want to address over the next couple of weeks, but that’s about as detailed as I get when planning for an upcoming meet. I can’t tell you the number of times I have asked Jim or he has asked me what are you doing today and one of us answers, “hell if I know.”

I hope this article can help someone somewhere break a PR or at least provide some food for thought. Just remember that if you are trying to hit that 500 mark or any mark don’t do what I did. Instead, look at why I did what I did and have the confidence to make an assessment as to whether a particular exercise works for you and stick to your guns. I’ll leave you with one final thing Jim taught me. You know more than you think you do. Be confident enough in your judgment to use what you have learned and apply it. Just because you read something somewhere does not mean that is the only way it can be done.