You wanna look like a moron at the gym? Do these bench press accessory movements:
The first one is my invention and I'm copywriting it here. Anybody laying claim to it is stealing from me and will be appropriately dealt with.
I don't know what to call it. It's some weird hybrid suicide bench press mixed with a decline press and to really screw with your front deltoids I added a drag to it where you let the bar slide down your chest until it barely reaches your wind pipe just below the Adam's apple and then you push drag it on your chest and back up to your belly button whereby you decline press it back up to a locked elbow position.
Use a sit up bench set at the steepest angle setting and make sure the squat rack safety bars are positioned just above your throat unless you feel like crushing your wind pipe in case you miss the lift. Sometimes I miss and have to turn my head to the side to get my head out from under the bar.
This kind of movement will severely stress your front deltoids and will flare up any shoulder injuries, but hey it works getting you out of any bench press plateaus.
The second movement is the close grip bench press everybody tells you not to do, so if some sh"t-for-brain know-it-all tells you you're doing it wrong tell him to go f"ck himself and mind his own motherf"ckin business.
Once again position the safety bars barely above the arc of your gut just in case you miss.
You do both of these accessory movements on one day and then after rest and eating protein, for your next workout you do bench press and shoulder workout to keep your shoulders healthy and strong.
Get on the floor and bang out some push-ups. Now take your hands and position them close together so that your palms and fingers and thumbs form a triangle of empty space.
Now do pushups with your hands in the position above.
The point I'm trying to prove is you should be weaker with your hands in the triangle position than with your hands spread out in a regular normal pushup.
Now apply this principle to your bench pres training. Get underneath a bar in a bench press position and take both of your hands and move them close together in the middle of the bar. Now bench press.
You should be significantly weaker in this hand position than in the position with hands spread wide on the bar. If you believe in the mantra "you're only as strong as your weakest link", you will notice if you have weak triceps you can't bench press much weight. This kind of close grip bench pressing will hit your weak triceps and stimulate them to their full potential.
Bench pressing in this close grip position will also adress weakness in the wrists as well. Because the wrists take on an unnatural bent inwards and backwards position, they get taxed as well due to the awkwardness of the hand placement on the bar in this style of close grip bench press.
Since this style of close grip emphasizes the triceps, you will have to incorporate a front deltoid exercise such as the decline bench press. The decline press taxes the front deltoids for the simple fact no leg drive is activated in this movement because your feet are bound underneath the foot holder on the sit up bench. Additionally, it's best to angle the sit up bench to its highest position to deemphasize leg drive and provide the opportunity for the front deltoids to take on the brunt of the work in the decline press.
If you're going to do accessory work, the triceps and front deltoids and pectorals should all be worked at the same time. This is why so much frustration is experienced when expecting gains in the bench press when all you're doing for accesory work is cable tricep pushdowns. This type of movement is useless to bench press gains because it misses the front delts and pectorals. The successful strength trainer and strength gainer will know that the only accessory conducive to bench pressing strongly is one that involves triceps, pectorals and front deltoids simultaneously.
Sure, you can look at any explanation of bench press form on YouTube and think you got it all figured out. But the one thing they always miss is the wrists.
If you look at the bench press as a kinetic chain, you will notice the movement involves the triceps, front deltoids, pectorals and legs. But the weakest link in that chain are your wrists.
If you bench press without wrist wraps, you are setting your wrists up to fail and consequently you miss the lift. When you unrack the bar and bring it over your face and then lower it down to your chest, your wrists take on a folded over backwards position with your knuckles pointing to your face. If you begin your press in this wrist position you are going to miss your lift.
To remedy this malady of weakness and to fully engage your triceps and pectorals and front deltoids, you have to literally flip your wrists to a perpendicular position relative to the bar when the bar is laying on your chest. There should be a ninety degree angle formed by your wrists connected to the bar via your hands to assume the right angle position in order for you to explode your arms away from your chest. That flip will greatly enhance your bench pressing ability.
To train this flip I decline bench press, and
when the bar reaches midpoint between chest and stomach I let the bar slide down towards my neck right below my Adam's apple and try to slide the bar on my chest back towards my stomach and then push my arms away from my body. Of course you need to do this in a squat rack with safety bars situated above your windpipe to prevent the bar from choking you if you miss. This movement emphasizes the front deltoids and wrists.
I take about four of these at a time, and turn myself into a sex machine.
I suffered a shoulder injury and that prevented gains in the bench press. My injury was caused by doing dips in fifteen degree freezing weather. Apparently your shoulders have to be really warmed up and loose before undertaking dips. Otherwise you risk ripping your rotator cuffs in your shoulder joints.
I've been trying to make a fool out of myself by eating whole chicken roasters and drinking diet coke at the gym as intra-workout nutrition to help me with my most sought after gains, but I always get a kick out of having a chicken drumstick in my mouth while the person next to me is changing into their gym shoes.
Bench press nags me with weakness and pain thanks to the previous mentioned shoulder injury. To rehab the shoulder I do the above movent with a ten pound weight instead of a stick.
The keto diet's basic tenet is if you keep insulin levels low in your bloodstream, then you will stave off hunger and lose weight as a consequence.
As it applies to strength training, the keto diet is almost mandatory if you plan on lifting more weight. My argument is that for the simple fact the stomach can only handle a fixed volume of food and since protein consumption is absolutely necessary for muscle building, one must adapt one's diet to a ketogenic diet.
Typically keto diets are high fat, moderate protein and low carb. The strength trainer's diet is high protein, moderate fat, low carb. High protein for muscle building. Moderate fat to keep blood insulin levels stabilized which facilitates muscle protein synthesis. Low carb again to keep blood insulin levels low.
This represents the perfect ketogenic meal for while working out and up until 48 hours after the workout. It's chicken and guacamole. The guacamole has tomatoes, onion and avocado so it's not perfectly ketogenic but it's pretty close because it has only 50 grams of carbs. If you still feel lightheaded after eating this, eat a couple slices of bread to feed your brain glucose.
I'm beginning to think that during your workout, what matters most is how low you can keep your blood insulin levels. I used to think that an abundant protein intake was necessary for making personal records in your lifts but now I'm beginning to see that when you keep blood levels low, not only is the need for protein less but also I feel much stronger because my blood insulin levels are kept from spiking too high thanks to the use of avocado during the workout.
Without question, the first 48 hours after you workout heavy you will need to stuff your gut with fatty beef if you hope to gain muscle and get stronger.
After those 48 hours what happens then?
I workout every 72 hours approximately. That means I got 48 hours of copious beef consumption but what happens after that? I still got 24 hours left until my next workout.
The answer is eggs. I'll go to Dunkin Donuts and get egg and bacon on plain bagel. That'll be my main staple protein source for those 24 hours leading up to my next workout.
My reasoning is that per egg there are only 4 grams of protein but as far as amino acid profiles go, there is no food more perfect than an egg. They have all the amino acids in small proportions but they will satiate your muscles' constant hunger for protein without overdosing. Too much protein will cause your body to expel it, and when that happens you're watching all of your expensive protein being flushed down the toilet.
Of course as you get stronger, that 48 hours time limit for protein intake will become irrelevant as you will be in constant need of protein to get stronger. Then you'll run into the problem of not getting enough protein ever.
The mere fact that I can put a McDonald's double quarter pounder in a car, leave it over night and then come back in the morning and eat it for breakfast without getting food poisoning should at least make you ponder for a brief moment as to what they're putting in that burger meat.
But hey I'm all about candid honesty so I have to be truthful no matter how unpalatable the facts are: McDonald's double quarter pounders no cheese no bun no salt made me stronger.
The training was the same, the rest intervals were the same. The only difference between the first and second workout is that I used McDonald's double quarter pounders no cheese no salt no bun as a post-workout protein source for the first 48 hours after my workout for the time proceeding my 10/27 workout. For the
10/21 workout I used steak from a Mexican restaurant as a post workout protein source.
As far as I know cows have no significant differences between them as far as protein content goes, so maybe it's the preservatives McDonald's puts in their burgers that gave me the strength gain. Who knows?
