Discover
how to increase your bench press fast with these routines, techniques, and
exercises while minimizing your risk of injury!
Dear
fellow weight lifter, bench press enthusiast, or athlete:
I
created this website in order to provide guidelines and techniques for
rapidly increasing your bench press while minimizing injury risk. I love to
bench press and enjoy helping others bench press more.
Not
everyone shares my enthusiasm for benching. Critics say that the bench
press is not a good measure of athletic ability or that it has a high
injury risk. While there may be some merits to these arguments, the bottom
line is that the most vocal critics of the bench press tend to be
those who cannot bench press very much themselves!
Even
if you do not like to bench press, there is no doubt that you recognize the
importance of increasing your bench press. If you are an athlete, the bench
press is a standard test for many collegiate sports. Bench pressing
more can help your chance of getting a scholarship or even being
drafted by a professional sports team.
If
you are a regular guy in the gym, the bench press is the standard by which
your strength and advancement is compared to other lifters. No matter
what the situation, everyone wants to increase their max bench.
The
Three Golden Rules of Improving Your Bench
Below,
you will find the three golden rules for increasing bench press numbers
fast. These are three time-tested strategies and are likely the most
important thing you will pick up from this website. In the section below,
you will find a table of contents with links and descriptions for more
specific details about benching, such as technique, routines, and
information on injury prevention and rehab.
Rule
#1: Bench Press Frequently
One
of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to increase their bench press is simply not bench pressing frequently enough. While it seems all
too logical that in order to increase your max flat bench press you need to
flat bench press, many people do not even perform a flat barbell bench
press regularly in their routine and wonder why their bench is stuck.
While
other similar movements to the flat bench press can be great assistance
exercises to use to help improve your max bench press,
you must get in regular work on the flat bench press if you want
to maximize the strength of your flat bench press.
I
think that the ideal frequency for benching movements is 2-3 times per
week, with flat bench being chosen for two "exercises" in a week.
For example, if you are training your bench press two times per week with
two benching exercises, that leaves you with 4 slots to fill. Two of these
should be bench press, whereas the other two could be a similar movements
like incline bench press or dips.
More
advanced trainees will only need to bench press twice per week, whereas new
trainees (or those with a low max bench) can bench three times per week. As
you get stronger, you are capable of inflicting more damage to the muscles,
hence the need for only two training sessions.
Of
course, you can train yourself to bench more frequently, especially for
short periods of time. This can be useful when trying to peak for a
competition or when trying to blow out your new max. The success of peaking
programs like the Critical Bench Program is evidence of that.
People
benching more than 3x a week or less than 2x a week for more than 12 weeks
in a row are outliers and should not be emulated. Most people will find
success with 2-3 bench training sessions per week.
Rule
#2: Train for Reps
Another
mistake and perhaps the one that took me the longest to figure out is that
the average, natural lifter that is not using equipment will have far more
success training for reps than they will trying to max out all the time.
It
took me about a year of dealing with a plateaued bench press before
realizing the power of this rule. Each week, I worked up to a max on a
bench-related exercise and then did reps of a similar movement, but avoided
performing sets of flat bench for reps. Over that year, I literally only
added 5 pounds of my bench press (I was already quite advanced at the
time).
After
looking through my logs, I realized that the only thing I had changed when
my bench plateaued was I stopped doing sets of flat bench press for reps. I
started adding in a few sets of 8-10 reps after my first exercise of the
day, and within 3 months my formerly stuck max bench was up another 20
pounds!
There
is something about training for reps that boosts the max bench press.
Whether it induces hypertrophy (muscle growth), helps improve neural
efficiency, reinforces good technique, or all of the above cannot be said
for sure, but I can tell you that it works.
The
favorite mistake that newbies and would-be exercise gurus make is trying to
copy the popular Westside Barbell (a very successful powerlifting gym)
workout style. This is style involves maxing out on the bench press every
week. These would-be gurus try to then use the program with athletes or gym
enthusiasts that want to bench press more. This is wrong on so many levels.
The
main problem is that this workout program is designed for people wearing
powerlifting equipment. If you are not wearing powerlifting equipment (i.e.
bench shirts and squat suits), the "speed work" as well as the
bands and chains, which is a large part of the program, will not work for
you.
Secondly,
the Westside approach does not have nearly enough volume in a single
workout for a regular gym-goer. The people using this approach are often
professionals or otherwise have given up their life outside of work in
order to train 20 hours a week. At a serious powerlifting gym like that you
have people coming in for 5-10 supplemental workouts a week in
addition to their 4 Westside workouts. Obviously, these extra 5-10 workouts
make a big difference.
Rule
#3: Eat More
There
is something about gaining weight that boosts your bench press beyond
what is typically experienced by the other big three lifts
(bench, squat, and deadlift). I have seen individuals (and personally
experienced) adding large poundages to a max squat or deadlift without
gaining any weight. In fact, adding weight to a max deadlift after losing
weight is quite common.
In
those that are already advanced lifters, I have never seen a large increase
in benching strength without a corresponding increase in body weight. This
includes fat mass, not just muscle. Now I am not necessarily
advocating getting fat in order to increase your bench press, but gaining a
few pounds is an easy way to break even the most stubborn plateaus in the
bench.
Here
is where it gets interesting: if your bench press has plateaued, you can
slowly gain weight over 12 weeks and likely see marked improvements in
strength. Then, over the next 12 weeks, you can slowly lose the weight (no
crash diets), and likely maintain all of your new strength!
Adding
fat decreases the distance the bar has to be lowered and lets you handle
more weight. Perhaps this extra weight places more tension on the muscles
which in turn leads to a new and more powerful training effect, resulting
in increasing a stubborn bench press. These gains could then carry over
after the fat is lost.
Whatever
the reason, gaining weight works. If your bench is stuck, try adding in an
extra 500 calories per day for 12 weeks. This will result in around a
10-pound weight gain, some fat and some muscle. Make sure you get adequate
enough protein and train hard during this time and your results will be
good!
Critical
Bench Program 2.0 Review - The Critical Bench program is an
excellent 10-week program designed to cause your body to peak - allowing
you to perform at your true max capacity by the end of the program. This
allows lifters to realize strength increases at a much faster speed than
they are accustomed to. This can be used prior to a competition or when you
are trying to reach a new personal record such as one of the major bench
milestones like 225, 275, 315, or even 405+.
