re: Daily Strength Check-In

225 for 2x5? Nice man! That's more than a lot of people can do.

Is that flat Arch or powerlifting arch?

Even more impressive but you need to arch at least a little to protect your shoulders.

My bodyweight is 190 and my bench has always been weak. For me, 225x5 is as good as I've ever been. I console myself that it's paused, so I could probably do more touch and go.

Got a late start after helping neighbors try to evict a snake from the backyard. 5 giant sets of speed bench, arm over arm rope pulls and weighted dips.

Finished with 3 trap bar deads, then farmers walk, then 2 trap bar deads supersetted with tricep ext sled drags. I've never done the combo of trap deads/farmers/more trap deads and it was puketastic.

quote:

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3 sets of 5 with 205. I'm trying to decide whether to switch to 5-3-1 or just focus more on incline, close-grip, etc. and then come back to flat bench in 3 months or so.

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I find that it's usually a mental thing more than a weight thing.

try doing the presses in a rack or with a board so you limit ROM for a couple weeks, then go back to regular bench.

Other option is to forget about the reps/structure for a couple weeks and just try to push more weight, 225, 245, etc.

Then come back to your program. The mental aspect should be handled by then and you're back on track!

good luck!

I've been getting lazy with my responses. I need to get back into it. I'll start writing something and just delete it.

I mean to people who need help.

Mental, mental, mental. But switch it out for close grip bench and kick the shite out of close grip and get strong as shite on it. Then go incline and do the same thing then go back to bench.

So I love 531. But it's more of an advanced program. Let me ask you a question, how is going to a program that hits the lift less frequent, makes slower progress going to get you past the plateau? It's not and if it's slower progress you are after, you can keep the weight across a week on bench the same, just have to try and set rep records.

Also working your weak points will help, that's why I suggest close grip bench.

Now let's talk diet, what's it look like? At your weight, the greyskull philosophy would be 300g of protein, no carbs after 1pm outside of post workout. Control calories with carb and fat amounts. Are you doing that? If not do a reset and start doing those.

How much cardio are you doing?

Front squats today hit 235 for a double

then got a nice little 10 min AMRAP after