21s
Member
Does anyone know of a good bench program? I was going to start 6 weeks of candito's cycle but my lower back is fucked atm so backing off squats and deads for the time being :[
MESO-Rx
Anabolic Steroids
Bench Programs?
- Thread starter 21s
- Start date
Your goal is to increase bench strength or just hypertrophy in the chest?
21s
Member
Bench strength bro. I've always done bodybuilding (hypertrophy) training since the beginning. Now I'm injured I feel like trying something new
Bench strength bro. I've always done bodybuilding (hypertrophy) training since the beginning. Now I'm injured I feel like trying something new
Not the best time to switch but oh well lol.
I'm not personally a fan of the Bulgarian style of training but our very own MastersPowers uses it, or a version of it, in his training with great success. You basically work up to a daily max with no music, stimulants, hyping up, etc. The daily max shouldn't be a grinder either. Once you do that you take about 10% off the bar and do 2-3 sets of doubles or triples. Bc you do this 5-7dYs a week you can sub in some assistance or variation lifts to help alter the variables like CG bench, push press, floor press etc on 1-3 days.
I much prefer either a sheiko bench routine or something like rts style. For sheiko just look up a sheiko calculator and plug your max bench in (be conservative) and follow what it says for upper body work.
For rts, what I'm doing now, I do 6 pressing movements spread out over 4days and work in 3-4wk volume and intensity blocks. Some lift examples are competition bench press, touch and go bench, floor press, CG floor press, cG incline press, 2ct pause bench, 3ct pause bench, OHP, military press etc.
21s
Member
Thanks man. I'll give any program you suggest a go.
I actually wrote out a split out where I focus on both powerlifting and bodybuilding.
I obviously can't do this now but with this split I'll be Squating&Deadlifting 2x a week and benching 3x a week. Would you say this this split is too much volume?
Mon: Squats (3-5 sets) & Pull
Tue: Bench (3-5 sets) & Push
Wed: Deadlift (3-5 sets) & Pull
Thu: Bench (3-5sets) & Push
Fri: Squats (3-5 sets) & Pull
Sat: Bench (3-5 sets) & Push
Sun: REST
Squats are followed with some accessory work ie pause/front squats/box squats.
No more than 3-4 exercises on the hypertrophy work (push & pull).
It really boils down to what you like and what you're good at. For example, I respond well and thoroughly enjoy squatting no less than twice a week (prefer 3-4x a week actually). So while the Cube method could help me increase my strength, it wouldn't be optimal. Something like an rts style program or sheiko suits me better bc there's the frequency I respond to.
Which one sounds good to you? Pick that one and you can tweak it to suit yourself better. Or you can come up with something on your own and you can get critiques or help making it.
The long answer: Whether that split is too much for you or not depends on you. If you have a good specific work capacity you could do that or more. If you're not used to that much work then you'd be better off easing into it. What have you done in the past? Do you do well with moderate frequency and volume? The sets you listed don't show percentages or RPE or something to reflect intensity so volume is impossible to tell.
The short answer: I would think most people can tolerate that kind of training so long as the intensities and weights are in check. The frequency isn't too much and it looks like the beginning of a decent template.
weighted chinup
Member
This is very interesting. What is the reasoning for this? Does increasing emotional arousal before a set make more fatigue than being calm / normal, or is there another reason?
It's a retarded approach to a simple concept: your actual 1RM requires psyche-up, rage, drugs, etc. If you don't do / use any of those things, you aren't really maxing out but can delude yourself into thinking that you did. Actual maxes stress the nervous system beyond it's ability to compensate, let alone supercompensate, so they are 100% unproductive and only useful as tests.
Thus, lifters take a layoff after a meet to recover from the stress. A few forced reps or HIT-style 'momentary failure' aren't in the same league as actual maxes, FWIW.
A 'daily max' that isn't real should rightly be called 'heavy' or some similar adjective.
Yes. Verkhoshansky differentiates between CFM and TFM, the former being a contest maximal force and the latter is a training maximal force. CFM takes into account emotional arousal which in your typical lifter can account for ~10% performance difference, more in more advanced lifters, but is also more taxing bc of the psychological stress applied to the body.
If you look at the different training intensities between the Bulgarian method and sheiko, on paper they look large. Sheiko generally uses 70-80% intensity for most of the of the work and the Bulgarians use 90%+ everyday bc they're working to their daily max which can differ day by day depending on stress, sleep, etc. It's a way to auto regulate intensity basically. Looking closer at the different intensities you see Bulgarians, by working up to daily maxes, base their top work set and subsequent back off sets on TFM whereas sheiko bases his blocks on CFM. This closes the intensity gap between the two programs.
Verkhoshansky goes into this in pretty good detail in one of his papers that involved the intensity corridors we were talking about the other day. If you haven't seen it I can try to find it and link it to here.
weighted chinup
Member
Thanks for the explanation doc.
I think CFM and TFM was mentioned in the same paper I got the corridors chart from, the paper is by Zatsiorsky though. "INTENSITY OF STRENGTH TRAINING FACTS AND THEORY: RUSSIAN AND EASTERN EUROPEAN APPROACH".
http://www.salisbury.edu/sportsperf...TRAINING FACTS AND FALLACIES - ZATZIORSKY.pdf
It's one of the best documents I have saved, only 20 pages but so useful. It has one of the best explanations on protein degradation from certain training intensities for hypertrophy I have seen. Very good resource.
That is the paper I was referring to. I should have known you'd already have a copy of it.
