Heavy Pressing Like a Good Amurican!

320 for 2x2, felt good to get under
a heavy bar

Let's all face it.  Monday is national bench press day.  I've fought it for God knows how long because I've never been a big fan of the bench press, but due to how my training split this month worked out, the first upper body day of the week fell on a Monday.  The reason I don't like the bench press is not because it's not effective.  There is no doubt that an individual can increase their upper body strength and power through a properly implemented bench press program.  However, the fact that I see people bench pressing 2, 3, and even 4 times a week...EVERY WEEK...is just ridiculous.  It is an overrated and over-used method of improving upper body strength and power, and its popularity has forced people to neglect great exercises like push ups, pull ups, and overhead pressing.  People use every conceivable variation of the pressing motion and do what is termed "chest and tris" day.  This leads to consistent overtraining and even more importantly, shoulder injuries after years and years of over-developing the pressing muscles and neglecting the equally as important or even more important pulling muscles of the elbow flexers, (upper back muscles and biceps).  I talk to people all the time who complain to me that they've been stuck pressing a certain weight or have even lost weight on their bench but they're training harder than ever and they can't understand why.  Inevitably, when I ask them what type of program they're doing, I hear, "chest on Monday, back and bis on Wednesday..." so on and so forth.  Never mind that this often includes just one leg day a week or something ridiculous like that, these people are setting themselves up for failure because they're not training optimally, they're simply beating the crap out of the muscle which any idiot can do.  

Now that I got that rant out of my system, on to today's workout.  It seems the training is just getting better and better every week.  Not wanting to be un-American we hit a heavy upper body day today to finish out a 3 week wave of lifting.  Rizz, Mattera, Pis, and even big Mo Bassie joined in the fun.  Everyone was hyped to lift after taking a weekend off to recover and the energy came through.  It's exciting to see so many people who look forward to getting in the gym and moving heavy shit to get bigger and stronger.  Some want to improve on the football field, some are just training to be big strong dudes.  Whatever the reason, these guys are motivated and hungry to get better every time we step into the gym and I couldn't ask for more out of training partners.  

General Warmup

Dynamic Warmup

Upper Body Activation/Prehab

Banded Face Pulls--2x20

Banded Rows--2x20

Banded Triceps Extensions--2x20

Banded Lat Pulls--2x20

Bird Dogs--2x10 each side

Power

Explosive Standing Med Ball Chest Pass--10x1 Full Recovery

Strength

Bench Press--1x4 at 8 RPE, 2x2 at 9 RPE

--Worked up to 285 for a set of 4 and 2x2 at 320, didn't plan to go that high but felt easy so kept going up

Assistance

Single Arm DB Row--3x12

Shoulder Stabilization/Work Capacity

Chaos Bench w/ a 35 and 20 lb DB on each side of bar--3x15

--DB are attached to bar with resistance bands creating unstable resistance

Brian Pisano working high rep chaos bench for shoulder stability

Muscle Building/Conditioning--3 Rounds

Rope Curls--12

Dips w/ Leg or Knee Raise--8-12

Band Pull Aparts--25

Abs

Band-Resisted Knee Tucks--3x12

Christian Mattera is a BIG STRONG MAN

The key here is progress.  Everyone has gotten stronger week to week in this program, and even small improvements like athletes who begin by wobbling uncontrollably on the chaos bench locking in their form and stability is awesome to see.  This was a brutal session that had us all gassed.  After starting out heavy on the bench we upped the volume this week.  This is the last week of our first cycle coming off of the football season and while it's important to get back to moving heavy weight, we didn't work up to a true max this month because I didn't want to overly tax the CNS and muscles coming off the rigors of a college football season.  Our goal was to build a basis of strength and work capacity that will help us to lift heavier and do more specialized movements in the coming months.  Again, the key is progress.  Steady, consistent gains in muscle and size without over-taxing the body to the point where over training or injuries occur.  Enjoy this workout as we did and keep grindin'!