Whats the best way to bench? As in weights for sets/reps?

farva

The title is probably a bit confusing but what I mean is, for strength and building up to benching heavier weights, should you start off at a low weight and work up to a big weight for your 4th set? or should you start big and work down? Should you do a warm up set? Or whats best????

At the moment I start off benching 1 set of 8 reps at 70, then 8 reps at 75, then 8 reps at 80 and then 6-8 reps at 85. I'm doing this 3 times a week. Today I did 8 reps at 70, 8 at 75, 2 at 100 and then 5 at 90.

If it helps; I'm a guy, 21, 5'6" and weigh 72kg. I only started benching about 4months ago, but I could bench 100kg a month ago too, so I amn't seeing very quick progress. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

FunkZ

Maybe you should try 5 sets of five reps at 90kg or 85kg and work up from there?

And great work getting those lifts!

tribulus

Pick a weight you can do a tough set of 5 for. Next week do more reps, do more weight or add a set or two. Don't over think it just train hard then next week try to do a bit more. Do that each week and it all adds up.

Don't forget to train your lats, tri's and delts as well.

pm.

tribulus wrote: »

Pick a weight you can do a tough set of 5 for. Next week do more reps, do more weight or add a set or two. Don't over think it just train hard then next week try to do a bit more. Do that each week and it all adds up.

Don't forget to train your lats, tri's and delts as well.

i agree, but dont forget to warm up with some light weights, if your heavy set is 85 kg start off with empty bar for 10 reps 30kg 10 reps 50kg 8 reps 72.5kg 2 or 3 reps then go to your heavy weight, are you using free weights? if so thats great progress.

farva

Cheers for the advice guys, (sorry for the late reply - college finals!!)

I was in the gym yesterday and did a warm up of 10 reps at 40kg and then did 5 sets of 5 reps at 85kg. So should I try and up the weight or the reps from here?

My other tricep excercises are chest press with dumbells (when I'm not benching) I tend 4 sets of 8 reps at 34kg, Cable pull down 4 sets of 8 reps at max + 20kg added on, and narrow close grip tricep dips, 3 sets to failure (normally 22,16,12).

tribulus

If it's just for strength then try add more weight but honestly just doing a bit extra every week, whatever you can manage(more reps, sets etc), is still progress and that will soon equal results.

My bench day goes like this at the moment:

Bench work up to a top set of 3-5 reps maybe 2 or 3sets.

Then board work*: either a very tough top set of 3 or a few sets of 3-5reps

Then lots of lat work - rows etc and some tri's - something light 10-15 reps normally.

*Any related exercise is good here, e.g DB presses, floor presses etc.

Just keep it simple, best of luck.

Hanley

farva wrote: »

Cheers for the advice guys, (sorry for the late reply - college finals!!)

I was in the gym yesterday and did a warm up of 10 reps at 40kg and then did 5 sets of 5 reps at 85kg. So should I try and up the weight or the reps from here?
.

You could try adding 5kg next week and doing 3x5. Then 5kg the week after and just doing one top set of 5.

Dubdude

farva thats some excellent lifting but in your original post you say your doing this 3 times a week it could be down to the fact that your not given yourself enough rest days between benching anyone i know only benches once a week...

BossArky

farva wrote: »

Today I did 8 reps at 70, 8 at 75, 2 at 100 and then 5 at 90.

If it helps; I'm a guy, 21, 5'6" and weigh 72kg. I only started benching about 4months ago, but I could bench 100kg a month ago too, so I amn't seeing very quick progress. Thanks.

It sounds like pretty quick progress to me. Are we talking kgs here and not lbs? THat is rapid enough progress given that you started only 4 months ago... and could bench 100kg a month ago??

Fair play.

TerrorFirmer

Am I the only one that things theres some mistaken figures in there? Starting benching 4 months ago and could bench 100kg a month ago? 100kg after 3 months - that doesn't sound right...

If it is, then wow.

Boston

3 months = ~ 14 weeks @ 5kg improvement a week thats ~ 70kg increase. Its well doable in the time frame, if you're all about the bench press.

tribulus

Could be alligator arms, could be good technique, could just be lucky!

For a 1RM he's probably close enough to 1.5 body weight, so it's certainly good going for a beginner but I don't think it's that unusual.

TerrorFirmer

Boston wrote: »

3 months = ~ 14 weeks @ 5kg improvement a week thats ~ 70kg increase. Its well doable in the time frame, if you're all about the bench press.

5Kg a week is not as easy as you make it out to be though.

And the regime he's described is hardly overly punishing either. Certainly not something that would give you remotely anything like 5kg increase a week, unless he's doing a whole pile of other work he didn't mention and eating like a horse...and even then it wouldn't be easy.

I'm not saying it's not true but it would be far from normal to be benching 100kg after 3 months.

Dragan

I know a guy who walked into the gym his first day and bench 120, sqauted 150 and pulled 180.

A naturally big strong boy who spent his teenage years play contact sports and working hard.

He was also built for lifting, great leverages and such.

Some people are just strong and thats a good thing folks.

Boston

HavoK wrote: »

5Kg a week is not as easy as you make it out to be though.

And the regime he's described is hardly overly punishing either. Certainly not something that would give you remotely anything like 5kg increase a week, unless he's doing a whole pile of other work he didn't mention and eating like a horse...and even then it wouldn't be easy.

I'm not saying it's not true but it would be far from normal to be benching 100kg after 3 months.

I know exactly the type of effort required to gain 5kg on the bench, and I couldn't do it in a week I'd be looking at a month to increase by that much, but clearly the op has made gains approaching that. Also As Dragan stated, maybe he walked in on day one and did 60 kg. Either way, theres little point in questioning what the OP is saying, its fairly irrelevant to his questions.

matrixroyal

Sounds like very good progress, but maybe he's just naturally strong.
I'm not so maybe my progress is more average.
I also started 4 months ago at 3 sets of 8 x 50kg and yesterday I did 2 sets of 8 x 60kg and 1 set of 6 x 70kg.

I'm stuck at this for about month now and it's not getting any easier, so I was thinking I may just stick to the 70kg and do as many as I can for 3 sets or even try a heavier weight and see if I can survive.

farva

Cheers for the advice guys. Yeh, all the weights are in kgs and not lbs. I've been going to the gym for about a year and a half and have been doing other tricep excercises in that time, so its not like I've come from nothing to benching 100kg in 3 months.

I was doing chest press with dumb bells before I started benching, I'm up to 4sets of 8 reps at 34kg now. It was just annoying as I have been seeing very little/no progress in my benching over the last month or so.

Roper

LOL at alligator arms!

Any special reason you just do upper body work?