Idea for breaking through plateau (e.g., bench weight)

[Shmackey]

Has anyone ever tried to break through a weightlifting plateau (e.g., stuck on a 225-lb bench) by *lowering* their weight slightly and really focusing on slow, perfect form?

[Lee J B]

Yep, didn't work as well as lowering the weight and focusing on different forms of benching. But basically you will overcome your plateau by enforcing that technique.

[abarlament]

Lower the weight and lift if very fast instead of slow. Even throw some chains on 50% of your max. That's how the powerlifters do it.

[Gartrell]

take a break

[arbit]

Originally Posted by Shmackey

Has anyone ever tried to break through a weightlifting plateau (e.g., stuck on a 225-lb bench) by *lowering* their weight slightly and really focusing on slow, perfect form?

Here is something I tried yesterday
Get into a powercage with the safety bars above chest level so that bench bar is above chest. Do bench press for a couple of reps(start position is bench bar at chest not up). Rest for 45 sec-1min. Do a couple more- repeat till u get like 18-20 reps(so like 10 sets). Do NOT bench u'r 2rep max(clearly).
Man starting from bottom position is so much hard!
This is a modified form of rest-pause training where u lift for 1 rep, rest for 20 sec ...I tried limiting rest to 30sec, but after a couple of sets it was clear I coodnt do it(it was my first time yesterday).

[Alex(AJ)]

-pause pressing
-chain benching
-partial (1/2 bench)
-floor press
-more direct tricep work- dropping pressdowns and kickbacks and focusing on close-grip bench, incline cg-bp, reverse-grip close-grip bench, dips, jm press
-more work on horizontal plane of lats- row row row. yates row, bent-over bb row, cable row; focus on those

[gdawg0987]

Alex, what is the jm press? I know all of the other presses and what they are, but have never heard of this one until I saw you talk about it.

[Alex(AJ)]

Originally Posted by gdawg0987

Alex, what is the jm press? I know all of the other presses and what they are, but have never heard of this one until I saw you talk about it.

there's no set definition of it; even westsiders arn't certain as to the exact form

the way i do mine- take a regular close-grip bench setup. go down about 2/3 of the way (so unrack and bring the bar down 2/3 of the way to where you'd normally stop doing cg-bp). when you get there, stop, and, keeping elbows fixed in place, do an extension. then press it back up

so basically it's 2/3 close-grip bench, 1/3 extensions to finish it off (when you stop the extension part it should be around throat level...which is why you want to do it in a powerrack or with a spotter holding it or something, just incase you drop it)

[DaRkAnGel]

I'm still new to benching an weight lifting in general but i thought i had hit a plateu last week and a half. The only thing that i changed was when i worked ouit, and my pyramid scheme, which i now pyramid down and i went from not beeing able to do 4 reps of 190 (with cheating) to being able to do 9 in one week.

[gdawg0987]

Thanks for the info Alex. That sounds like something that I should probably incorporate into my routine. And now I can b/c yesterday I went out and got a power rack . So now I can finally lift heavy on squats instead of doing just smaller movements like lunges for the quads.

[Jaster]

I think Chain benching will help you out here. Also alot of people forget about their triceps. Work thme hard they make up a good % of your bench press!!