The effect of other muscles

[PoorBoyTek]

Can the growth of one muscle impeed on other? The reason why I am asking this is that my max bench weight has flattened out but in a way I feel it is because my biceps and triceps arent as developed as they should be. Sometimes it feels (when I am benching) that my arms are holding me back from a bigger chst...any comments?

[armorforsleep]

certainly. when you benchpress, your triceps and especially front delts reach failure long before your chest. doing some serious work on these parts will help you get past this plateau.

[Scott2k3]

It might depend on your other exercises as well. A couple things I do that I find help a ton with my bench press are:
a) One-arm swiss ball dumbell chest presses, keep your upper back and the ball and really let your stabilizer muscles work for you.
b) One-arm bench press, once again this helps with stabilizer muscles and you'll reach failure in your arms alot sooner than chest.
c) Weighted dips, I felt plateau'd on bench before I started doing these religiously, and then I gained another 40lbs in just over a month.
d) If you hang from a wide-grip position and try and pull your body up from the shoulders it will also help.

Hope these help a little. Thx. ~Scott

[TommyD]

Originally Posted by PoorBoyTek

Can the growth of one muscle impeed on other? The reason why I am asking this is that my max bench weight has flattened out but in a way I feel it is because my biceps and triceps arent as developed as they should be. Sometimes it feels (when I am benching) that my arms are holding me back from a bigger chst...any comments?

Muscles stunting the growth of other muscles is a pretty common problem. For example, runners often find that their quads are much more developed than their hamstrings. If they don't do anything about it, they usually end up with a torn hamstring. In this case you [i]could[/u] tear your tricep, but more likely you'll end up plateauing because of of that weak link.

Some great ways to develop your triceps for your bench are:

Close-Grip Bench: Chest still gets a workout here, but the triceps are absolutely hammered.

Rack Lockouts: Set the bar 6"/12"/18" (usually higher heights for tricep development) off of your chest and use your triceps to explode through to the lockout position.

*A great thing about rack lockouts is you can usually use them to judge your tricep progression. If you're benching 200lbs, your triceps should be caught up when you're doing about 250lbs or about 125% of your max bench for lockouts (it's different for everyone but you'll get a feel for where your tricep progression is).

*Build some endurance in your triceps and front delts. If you're benching 3x4-6, try doing tricep/shoulder exercises for 6x10-12. You'll definetely not only strengthen your triceps/delts, but you'll gain some endurance so they don't get tired as quick during bench. Be sure to give your triceps adequate rest so they don't overtrain.

*If you're going to failure in bench, stop. Try a different program where you don't absolutely fry your triceps (if that's what you're doing). Take it easy on bench for a bit and really focus on triceps for several sessions.

Good luck! :