Bench program for size and strength

The bench press, in particular, seems to be the opposite of functional fitness, since you actually get to lie down while doing it. It has a short kinetic chain—the parts of your body actually involved in moving the bar.

And pushing something away from you with your back entirely supported is not often seen in real life or most sports. The answer lies in your biology and the fact that your subjective intent has no bearing on physical adaptation.

Often times, functional fitness enthusiasts miss this aspect of training. Their intention may be to cause widespread, general adaptations, improving strength, speed, agility, balance, and other traits through little more than experience—more like a video game than a scientific process.

Instead, our intent must bow to the principles of adaptation: If you want to get strong, you have to train in a way that makes you strong, not in a way that mimics the applications of strength or in a way that you think will make you stronger. The bench press is one of the four main lifts that comprise any quality strength training program because, in short, you need to lift heavy weights often to build strength; and no other upper body lift trains as much muscle mass with weights as heavy as the bench press.

The bench fills a gap where your overhead press is concerned, getting heavier weights in your hands and augmenting your overhead press for greater systemic stress. Below we give some ideas for programming your bench press when you are in the mid to later intermediate stages of training.

Keep in mind that when it comes to programming everything works and nothing works. Timing and well-reasoned, gradual changes will do more for your bench press than any single change or supplemental lift. There are so many ways to approach programming that we are going to pick a sample framework and stick to it for these examples. Coming out of a linear progression, you will be used to training your bench press and press equally.

This can continue as you move into an early intermediate phase of training, where one week may focus more heavily on the bench press and another on the overhead press. For each of the alternating weeks, one day should prioritize the volume of your bench press, and the other should push the intensity of the weight in your hands.

This works well for the newer novice, but your options will be limited for prioritizing your bench press until you switch to a four-day split type program.

The four-day split organizes your programming into two upper-body days and two lower-body days every week. With a four-day split, you can give equal consideration to your press and bench press, but this allows you to manipulate important variables, utilize supplemental lifts more effectively, and include assistance work that can directly target your benching needs.

Each of these training slots has a goal, and while this can become much more complicated, a simple and effective method of programming is to assign an intensity goal and a volume goal to each of these slots. This basic four-day split rendition immediately increases the frequency that you are bench pressing and pressing if you are moving from a three day per week program. The power of a four day split for an intermediate trainee is in its versatility.

Including both volume and intensity work during the same week gives you two kinds of stress to adjust. While we do not want to add too much complexity to a program, the more levers and knobs at our disposal, the better able we will be to make minimum effective dose changes in response to actual training. This leads to what is most desirable in a program: steady progress over a very long period.

Imagine all the examples in this article as waypoints. The map of your training consists of where you are right now—the exercises, sets, reps, and general shape of your program—and a seemingly limitless number of permutations of those variables to which you can take your training.

Quality programming will point you, generally, toward progress. The starting place is simple, bench press two times per week. One day is dedicated to intensity—few total reps at a near-maximum effort load. The other day is a volume day—sufficient accumulated sets and reps to cause fatigue and an adaptive response.

From this starting place, the next step is to slowly increase the amount of volume and intensity stress in the program each week. First, add the appropriate amount of weight to the bar at a given volume. For most people, adding 2. Remember to prioritize sustained progress over speedy progress.

Eventually, you will not be able to add weight to the bar without some adjustments. This is where you incorporate a second pause at the bottom position of each rep before exploding back up.

What this does is it gets rid of any momentum in the movement. And takes the stretch-shortening cycle out of the equation. Which means that pure strength and leg drive will now be solely responsible for moving the weight off your chest. The limiting factor here is likely your lockout strength from your triceps. And a great accessory lift to strengthen this weak point is the floor press. This exercise can be done with a barbell but dumbbells are generally much easier to setup.

And for these, you simply press the weight up as you would normally - but on the floor instead. Some other great options include the close grip bench press and triceps extension movements. Such as dumbbell extensions or skull crushers, for example. Knowing the specific accessory exercises that'll help with a particularly weak point of your lift any of them!

Thankfully, though, the team here at BWS has the necessary expertise to do just that. Our 3-on-1 coaching program takes the guesswork out of training, nutrition, and even mobility work - so you can focus on what matters: making gains. If you're interested:. Click the button below to find out more about the 3-on-1 coaching program:. Find Out More! Step 1: First, increase your benching frequency anywhere between times per week depending on your schedule.

Step 2: Next, gradually increase your volume from less than 5 sets of bench per week to roughly sets of bench per week. This has the potential to double the strength gains you experience. Step 4: And lastly, throw in the right accessory movements into your workouts based on where your weak points are in your bench press. That's given all of the little boosts each of these steps provide.

Proper bench form still needs to be your priority especially as you start benching more often. But hopefully, you can see that by applying these steps into your weekly routine, the cumulative benefits that you experience from them will enable you to truly develop your bench press strength in the fastest, most effective way possible.

And for a step-by-step program that builds these protocols and exercises into your weekly plan for you and shows how to properly progress them over time such that you can break through plateaus and pack on size and strength in the most effective way possible, just like countless other members have successfully done with their Built With Science programs, then simply:.

I hope you enjoyed this article on how to increase your bench press! Take Free Quiz Log In. Science Backed Products Thoroughly researched and scientifically sound products to help hit your goals. On your own programs Explainer microcopy ipsum lorem. Any questions, please drop it in the Russian Bench Press Program discussion thread or email me. Good luck increasing your bench press! This is a no nonsense 6 week bench press peaking program styled after the infamous Russian Squat Routine.

The program is explained in great detail in this PDF. I have pulled out some of the most important parts in the below overview [Read more…]. It only programs the bench press and squat movements. Deadlifts are not included. This is ideal for athletes that are either unable to deadlift or looking to focus primarily on improving their bench press and squat. The two programs are pretty similar, but here are some key differences: [Read more…]. If an athlete is trying to increase their one rep max in a relatively short period of time e.

If the athlete is trying to increase their 1RM gradually over time, then the answer depends more heavily upon the development stage of the athlete. Novice lifters likely do not need to be concerned strictly with the bench press and should progress all lifts on any well designed beginner powerlifting program. Later stage intermediates will likely need to introduce more variation in rep ranges and intensity, such as with Greg Nuckols Medium Load Intermediate 3x Weekly Bench Press Program.

The bench press uses smaller muscles than other compound movements like the squat or deadlift and therefore can be trained more frequently.