I spotted a woman the other day on the bench press.
She is a strong girl in her early 20s. I’ve seen her around in the gym enough that we’ve become fit friends, and as such I have been asked to lend a hand spotting on a few occasions.
I’ve watched her bench press climb these past few months from 55 pounds to 95 pounds and then again solidly to 105. She openly expressed her desire to “bench a plate,” 135 pounds; it’s a checkpoint for many gym-goers and her pursuit has been admirable.
That day, though, she repped out 95 pounds a few times, none of them very convincingly. She was frustrated, disappointed that in the two weeks earlier she had successfully lifted more weight more times than she was able to in the past couple visits. It was a feeling I could empathize with as I walked away and back toward my own workout, having experienced those same plateaus in my own foray into fitness. I felt the thought rushing down through my brain, bypassing normal filters and straight to my mouth.
“Have you ever tried to switch it up and get off the flat bench?” I blurted, turning around.
I normally try not to give unsolicited advice, but this was out of genuine concern, and so I relented. This woman, my gym friend, is in the same spot that so many of us hit in our individual pursuits. There is a natural progression to our strength, especially as we first engage in fitness. The first six, twelve, eighteen, or twenty four months can be glorious times filled with beginner gains and ever increasing strength. Every week, it feels like you’re able to put five, ten more pounds of weight on different exercises, and that’s great! You are activating your body all at once and it’s learning how to work together; when your back learns to tense properly during a bench press, you get stronger. When your legs learn to tense and stay firm rather than loose and limber, you get stronger. When your shoulders become accustomed to the load, you get stronger. This is all in addition to the natural and obvious muscle becoming stronger, your chest. It’s a compound movement, and this is the reason it’s one of the most popular exercises (perhaps to the point of abuse). Eventually, though, we all hit our plateaus. We arrive and throw five or ten more pounds on than the week before, as is the custom. For the first time, the wobble on the way down lets you know deep in your heart that this barbell probably isn’t coming back up. It hits your chest. You get it one inch, two inches, three inches off and back toward the rack, but then: the dreaded sticking point. Depending on your level of heart, you may keep the bar there for a couple seconds pretending you’re getting through it, but more often than not it means you instantly start the descent of the bar back toward your chest – hope you have a spotter!
And so I continued my unsolicited advice to my friend Brooke.
“You should really just get off the bench press for 6, 8 weeks. Go to some dumbbell work and then come back and see if it’s better.”
She smiled. “Stathi told me that!”
No doubt. Stathi is the owner of the Herc’s Nutrition store in town. Really solid dude and just plain strong, regularly powerlifting hundreds of pounds in the morning and emasculating me as I go through my dainty bodybuilding accessory lifts. Of course he told her that, because he knows his stuff.
“Listen to him!” I exclaimed, “He’s a smart dude.” I kept it at that and went back to my lift.
Now, though, with the advantage of time, I’ll go into a little more depth. I see too many gym-goers taking an unrelenting approach to progress. These people walk in the gym and fulfill Einstein’s definition of insanity by expecting a different result doing the same thing. The best approach to increase your flat bench is to increase everything else. The best approach is a mixture and a combination. This is the answer. This is the way. One way is never the best way. The best way is a mix of all the ways.
Let me hit you with it a little more factually than spiritually. Chest workouts should combine two main elements; presses and flyes. Presses should almost always be done first. Presses take priority. Flyes are great and they create great tension at the muscle origin and insertion; presses just do a little bit of what flyes do plus build a lot of thickness. For that reason, I structure workouts with a couple presses first, then a couple flye movements, then some combination or accessory finish. I’m not making this stuff up off the cuff, just so we’re clear. Elizabeth Welsh did a study on it in 2005 and said all of the same stuff in a much more intelligent and eloquent way, I’m just telling you again now.
So let’s focus on the presses. The same logic for all of these principles will apply to flyes. In fact, the same logic for all of these principles will apply to many different muscle groups and exercises, but I need content ideas so let’s just keep our attention on the here and now.
Elizabeth Welsh said it in her study plainly; combining dumbbell and barbell approaches may help people overcome plateaus in their training. It makes logical sense. If you watch the two exercises (or better yet, perform them), you can appreciate they are completely different from one another. The feeling of having two separate dumbbells in your arms and weighing down on your shoulders forces you to stabilize in a way that is completely separate than the way your body does when a barbell is descending. This creates stimulation in those accessory muscles (anterior deltoids if we are being nerdy) and ultimately helps with your strength and stability. In the same respect, all of your shoulder exercises and presses will assist with your bench press as well. In this way, when you increase strength in one of these exercises, you’ll often notice a symbiotic increase with another. And so to do the same thing with that silly flat barbell bench press over and over and over and over is akin to building one of those towers with the small milk and cream containers for coffee in restaurants. Build straight up and you can stack 5 or 6 before you notice the load is too much. It isn’t feasible to just keep building straight up. You need a pyramid with a wide base if you want to grow the center higher. If you want something formidable, you have to support it and build it out!
We are off the flat barbell and we have dumbbells in hand. We do this training block for 6, 8, 10 weeks and then switch it up, as we always do. When we come back to the flat barbell, we find that we have 5 or 10 more pounds in us, and maybe even a small increase after that. In this way, Brooke may get to 120 or even all the way to her 135 pound goal in a phase or two of training. She just needs to continue to fight through that sticking point, and every time it crops back up, she needs to be aware enough to recognize she’s there. I’m talking about the “sticking point” here as more of a concept in relation to her overall training, but there is also the actual lift to consider. Another study, this one by van den Tilaar, suggested that the actual sticking point in the bench press lift produced very little change in the way the muscles were stimulated; in saying that it can be concluded that it is possible to gain more strength. Your muscles are physically able, you just need to find a way to progress them.
We have established that we need to vary our phases. We never spend longer than one phase concentrating on a single approach to the lift as our primary focus. We need to press before we flye, though we need to do both.
We also need to vary our angles. The decline bench press is probably the most neglected piece of machinery that I have seen over my decade plus in fitness. Incline dumbbell presses have probably produced more results for me personally than any other lift. The value that people leave on the table here by their short sighted and narrowly focused approach is silly. Again, not spewing made up theories; Jakob Lauver confirmed all of this in a 2015 study. He suggested that each have their benefits and, surprise surprise, a combination of approaches was best. He also said that incline benches at 30 and 45 degrees were most optimal at times, which I found interesting given my own anecdote. To further add to these variations, Kinet did a study on the importance of different grip widths on the bench in 2017. It’s a heavily researched topic because it is important to people, and if it is important to people, they should find the value in a varied approach.
My grade 10 math teacher would scold me and tell me there’s an easier way to find the combination of exercises I just gave you using combinations and permutations, but for those of us who were a little less nerdy, here’s a list:
Flat Barbell Bench
Flat Barbell Bench Wide
Flat Barbell Bench Narrow
Incline Barbell Bench
Incline Barbell Bench Wide
Incline Barbell Bench Narrow
Decline Barbell Bench
Decline Barbell Bench Wide
Decline Barbell Bench Narrow
Flat Dumbbell Bench
Flat Dumbbell Bench Narrow
Flat Dumbbell Bench Wide
Incline Dumbbell Bench Narrow
Incline Dumbbell Bench Wide
Incline Dumbbell Bench
Decline Dumbbell Bench
*Exercises 11-14 I would recommend a pistol grip with palms facing inward like in the video. Exercise 16 should only be done with a proper spotter and way to load/deload. It can be dangerous otherwise at heavy weights.
Sixteen pressing variations that I would consider doing. Of course, there are others, or slight variations of these, but these groups work for me. Naturally, some are more valuable. All of my regular grip widths take priority over the wide or narrow ones, but again; for me to never vary my widths and expect progress is just leaving land unexplored for no good reason. These don’t have to be the very first thing I do in the gym and I don’t have to put a lot of egotistical stock or pride in the way that the weights and my capabilities in each one vary. I am building a pyramid, not a tower. And so if Brooke or anybody else is truly wanting to increase strength and performance on the flat barbell bench, it’s important to remember: The flat barbell bench is not the only way. There are many ways, and one is not better or worse because I am stronger or weaker when I compare it to other more favourable exercises and setups. Sometimes you go backward or parry to the side in order to later go forward.
Remember: the best way is a mix of all the ways. Now go forward! Or don’t.
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