Everyone wants to know how to improve bench press. Would you like to know how to gain 100 pounds on your bench press? Every lifter looks at two different numbers, their max on their bench and the max on their squat.
The max on the bench is what people are always asking about and everyone knows that if you were to gain 100 pounds on your bench press that you would have a lot bigger chest.
There are four pieces of the puzzle to increasing your bench press by 100 pounds. These four are the planning, the eating, the workouts and the rest.
How to improve Bench Press
The Planning to improve bench press
Planning is something that very few lifters do. When you go to the gym you workout as hard as you can but very seldom do people working out ever have an idea of what they will be doing in a month.
Plan your workouts, plan your eating, and plan when you are going to be taking breaks.
This is pretty easy but often we will forget what is the most important part of the workouts and just do the stuff we like best.
Eating your way to gain 100 pounds on your bench press
We all like to eat and the faster metabolism that you get from working out allows you to eat even more then other people do.
When you are trying to make big strength gains you are going to want to do the kind of eating that is considered bulking up. You want to do the following
Eat six times a day – first eat first thing in the morning and make sure that you eat just before you go to sleep. I have even heard of people setting the alarm to get a meal in in the middle of the night although night is for sleeping not eating.
Eat lots of protein and plenty of carbohydrates – You should eat 40 grams of protein per meal. This is as much protein as your body can really accept and use and there is no reason to waste protein.
Also make sure that you are eating lots of carbohydrates. Fruit, veggies, potatoes, rice and bread.are all great carbs. These carbs are the energy that you are going to use to workout and if your carb deplete your body will cannibalize your muscles to get the extra energy.
There is no reason to deplete carbs at this point so do not take the chance that you are not getting enough.
Supplement well – Take all of your vitamins and also take in some creatine. Creatine has been shown to increase the amount of water in your muscles so that your body can lift harder before your muscles get weak.
Also Creatine will help you recover from tough workouts
Workout Correctly For Big Bench Press Gains
Use all of the tools that you know of over a course of a few months this means that you are going to do workouts that are focused on primary exercises. Do lots of bench presses of all kinds, do incline bench, decline bench and flat bench.
Do as much as you cfan with dumbbells as well as barbells as this not only helps your stabilizer muscles but will also force you to lift slightly differently. Occasionally do no bench but instead kill your pecs with flyes and cable crossovers.
To improve bench press it is important to work all around your shoulders, triceps, chest and tie-ins. Your pecs are the main muscle but to improve your bench press, even to gain 100 pounds on your bench press you have to make sure the weakest points are still very strong.
In every workout try to do about 4-6 sets after you warm-up and make sure that all sets are to failure. There are two things that people that lift do horribly wrong.
First people do too many sets for each muscle group, we can blame muscle and fitness magazine for this. Secondly people do sets not to failure and waste the sets that they do do. Try this next time you do chest.
Go and do a couple of warmup sets and then pile into two really hard sets of bench press of 6 to eight reps and do negatives and forced reps. After you have really burned out your chest with these bench presses your chest will be burning so why bother doing any more warm-up sets?
Instead do two sets of flat bench flyes to failure. This is your whole chest workout for the day and you will definitely be sore the next day.
Finally, if you really want to improve bench press then do not do much cardio during this bulking phase. Just as you are eating a lot of carbs for energy and to stop and catabolism you also want to make sure that you are not doing any cardio that will tire your body.
Rest and relaxation – the hidden key to a big increase on your bench
Rest is Important. The only time that your body recovers fully from tough workouts is when you are getting lots of rest and especially sleep.
Another way of getting good rest for your muscles is by getting massage and also hot tubs or warm baths. Everyone is different but it is a good idea to get at least 8 hours of sleep per night and a half hour or so nap in the afternoon before you workout if you can.
So these are I feel the keys to getting stronger. Will these rules help you to gain 100 pounds on your bench press?
Hell ya.
More importantly though is that if you follow these rules you are going to get stronger and bigger faster and your are not going to fall into plateaus like other lifters and bodybuilders do. All of these tips are critical to improve bench press.