When you’re new to lifting, you’re going to spend a lot of time making big progress really fast on your lifts and it’s going to feel awesome.
But at some point, the progress stops coming so easy and your lifts stall out, and you’re sad. But I’m going to give you three ways you can bust through that plateau and today we’re going to focus on the bench press.
Vary Your Rep Ranges
So when you first start out, progress is very linear.
Maybe you’ve been working in the five rep range and building weight in that range on a weekly basis.
At some point rep ranges run dry, and it can be beneficial to start varying what rep range you’re working in.
So for instance, if you’ve been working at 5 reps of around 87% of your 1 rep max, maybe you start working in the hypertrophy-based ranges like around 8-10 reps with 75-80% of your one-rep max.
If we can build some more volume for a block of training, we can then move back down to the lower rep ranges and keep pushing big weights.
Build Your Triceps
So let’s talk about the movement of a bench press. As we bring the bar down to our chest and as we begin the push back to the top, our pecs and our shoulders are going to be working the hardest.
But to lockout our arms and finish the lift, we’re going to rely heavily on the strength of our triceps, because the triceps are responsible for elbow extension.
So if we can increase the strength of our triceps, we can greatly improve the finishing power of our bench press.
So let’s start introducing some higher-volume triceps accessory exercises.
Use Dumbbells
When it comes to the bench press, dumbbells will give us a few benefits that barbells can’t.
One of those benefits is that we’ll be able to work through a larger range of motion throughout the movement using dumbbells.
Full range of motion is a key to building muscle, and if we can build those extra fibers in our chest, we can bring that over to our barbell bench press.
Another benefit is that when we’re using dumbbells, there’s a unilateral aspect because we have two separate independent pieces of equipment in each hand.
This will allow you to iron out any muscle imbalances you may have which, again, will transfer over to barbell bench press performance.
Want to watch our full-length video on this subject? Click here.
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