Hudson Power Team: Articles and Advice - The Battered Shoulders Bench Program

The Battered Shoulders Bench Program

by John H. Hudson

**New! Video of a bench workout here!**

I’ve had numerous requests of late for a written version of my bench press program. However, until now my “program” has only existed in written form in training logs spread out over the last few years. It’s been a work in progress as I’ve experimented with various methods to increase my shirted bench press while trying strenuously to avoid yet another serious shoulder injury. Let me mention at the outset that I’m indebted to my two primary bench training partners of the last few years—Janne Heittokangas (who is now back in Finland) and Randy Biggiam—for not only great training but also many long discussions of lifting in general and benching in particular. Without a doubt, a great deal of my success on the bench is due to the influence of these two dear friends.

Shoulder injuries: they truly suck. If you’ve been in the sport long enough, you’ll injure a shoulder. If it’s only minor, count yourself lucky. I’ve had numerous shoulder injuries from both lifting and wrestling, enough so that my shoulders never will be as stable as I need them to be for heavy raw benching. My two most recent injuries, however, were blessings in disguise as I really had to rethink my training in order to recover. I’ve been able to use what I learned in rehab both to keep my shoulders healthy and to hugely increase my shirted bench press.

In 2002, my left rotator cuff was irritated so badly that sleep wasn’t possible without very strong painkillers, the kind for which Rush Limbaugh makes the news. It was a classic rotator injury; the pain was at its worst at night, sending shots of pain down my left arm all the way to my fingertips. I wanted to avoid surgery, and was lucky enough to find a good sports therapist to work with me through several months of rehabilitation and treatment. Just as the left shoulder was getting back to normal in mid-2003, I separated the AC joint on my right shoulder and found myself back in rehab again. In December 2003, I couldn’t get 135 off my chest without sharp pain in the AC joint. In April of 2004, I was benching up to 275 pain-free, but anything heavier was still painful. However, wearing a not-too-tight Inzer Phenom I was able to bench 455 with no pain. In the summer of 2004, I switched to the Titan F6 and headed for 500. I hit my first 500+ in a meet in January 2005, and was over 560 by March. In summer 2005, I was over the 600 mark and was invited to lift at Bench America 3 (where I bombed miserably . . . nevertheless, just getting the invite was an honor, and underscored just how far I had come since my injuries of 2002-2003). Finally, in May 2006 I benched 677.7 in a single-ply Titan at a WABDL meet.

I share all this not to be boastful, since 677.7 is merely a decent bench in these days when 700+ single-ply benches are not uncommon and a few superstars have passed the 800 mark. Rather, I share my progress over the last few years to show the long road I’ve come in the few short years since my shoulder injuries temporarily brought my benching to a screeching halt. I should also point out that I don’t consider the bench press my forte; I consider myself first and foremost a deadlifter, but one who has developed a decent enough bench to put up a not-too-shabby Ironman total on occasion.

So, if you, too, have to deal with less-than-ideal shoulders but still have your sights set on some bench press PRs, then you might give this program a try. If you do, by all means send me an email and let me know how it goes. I’m always interested in how others do with my programs.

First Principles:

1. The Shirted Bench and the RAW Bench are Two Different Lifts – This has nothing at all to do with the tiresome (and irksome) RAW vs. Gear debate. This is simply my opinion based on my own experience on the bench and my observations of countless other lifters on the bench. A shirt vastly alters the mechanics of the bench press compared to a RAW bench. Why is this important? First, accepting this principle as a given allows you to become a better student of shirted benching. Even if you are already a strong RAW bencher, you should approach the shirted bench as if you are learning a new kind of lift, a lift that requires you to set aside . . . or even throw away . . . what you know about benching RAW. Second, having this principle in mind allows you to let go of the idea that your RAW bench and your shirted bench must both increase in relation to one another. Maybe they will. On my program, they probably won’t, and that’s okay. On my program, you are aiming to increase your shirted bench. Since you won’t train RAW on my program, your RAW bench might not increase at all. But this is okay; when you accept the notion that the RAW bench and the shirted bench are each unique lifts requiring unique training, you then understand that your RAW bench doesn’t NEED to increase along with your shirted bench (though it MIGHT). If you want to have a bigger RAW bench, plan your yearly bench training to include a cycle or two specifically for the RAW bench.

2. Train in the Shirt – If you can accept principle #1, then principle #2 follows. If you want to get the most out of a shirt, you simply must train in the shirt almost every week. There is no magic to the shirt in that a shirt will “automatically” add XXX-pounds to your bench. Rather, using the shirt successfully is about building skill in executing the bench press in the shirt while building strength to lock out the heavier weights that the shirt allows. This program is intended for the shirted lifter. In fact, competitive RAW lifting is simply out of the question for me due to my shoulders. But in a shirt, I can lift heavy without aggravating my old injuries. I use the Titan F6 as well as a prototype of the Katana, called the Super Plus, that Titan gave me for Bench America 3. I have four differently-sized single-ply shirts, each allowing me to execute full-range lifts in different weight ranges, from well-within to right at the edge of my strength envelope.

3. Boards are the Key – Board presses are a tremendous exercise, whether done RAW or in the shirt. For this program, you’ll be doing them in the shirt. This accomplishes two tasks: first, board presses help to build the lockout power necessary for shirted benching; second, board presses are a means to help gradually learn the groove of a new shirt over the course of the cycle. This program assumes that you will be using a new or a tighter shirt than what you’ve used in the past. I believe it’s a serious mistake to try to for a full-range press in such a shirt too quickly. Instead, board presses, which form the backbone of this program, allow you to gradually bring the bar lower and lower over the course of the program, such that you’ll learn the groove little by little, your body will be conditioned to handle the heavy weight (more on this next), and the shirt will be broken in (see principle #5). If you are unfamiliar with board training, I invite you to view a short video of one of my board workouts. Go here for the video.

4. Your Body Must be Conditioned – The new shirts available today potentially allow tremendous poundages to be handled over and above what a particular lifter can handle RAW. In my case, my smallest Titan F6 gives me a little over 200 pounds over my estimated RAW bench (I estimate my RAW bench since I am unwilling to risk further shoulder injury by maxing my RAW bench), while my Titan Super Plus (the Katana prototype) gives me more than 250 pounds. These gains were most certainly not instantaneous but were realized after many, many months of training in the shirt and in progressively tighter and tighter shirts. Had I thrown on my tightest shirt right out of the box and loaded 200 pounds over my RAW bench on day one, I would have hurt myself badly, and perhaps broken a bone or two (a not-unheard-of injury on the bench these days). Instead, I used those many months of training in the shirt with boards to gradually ramp up the weight, which had the effect of not only strengthening my musculature to move the weight, but also of strengthening and conditioning my bones and connective tissue to bear the new and greater load. My point here is that you must allow your body the time it needs to strengthen not only muscle, but also bones and connective tissue, bearing in mind that bone and connective tissue adapts more slowly than muscle. To hurry out of impatience to handle heavier weight will lead to serious injury, I guarantee. On the other hand, to be patient and condition your body to handle heavy weight builds a foundation for a long career of heavy benching and minimizes the risk of serious injury. Conditioning also requires attending to the state of your Central Nervous System (CNS), the wiring that makes everything go in the first place. Heavy training, which is necessary to lifting heavy weights, is extraordinarily taxing on the CNS. A powerlifter or a weightlifter must have a CNS operating at peak efficiency to move PR weights. When the CNS is stressed, you feel sluggish, you have no bar speed, and even light weights feel heavy. Every lifter who has been in the game for more than a few years knows this feeling; it’s called “overtraining.” When overtraining becomes severe and the CNS is heavily stressed, sleep patters can be disrupted, moods can become unstable, depression can set in, the immune system can weaken, and injury becomes more and more likely. The best way to deal with overtraining—an overstressed CNS—is to avoid overtraining in the first place (once overtraining has set in, get out of the gym for at least one week, or even longer depending on the severity of the case; once back in the gym, start up again very light). The best way to avoid overtraining is to, first, train for specific lifts and not like a bodybuilder (see principle #10), and, second, to build recovery into the program, which this program will do with some light “off” weeks. Let’s face it: heavy lifting of any sort is inherently dangerous in a number of ways and injury is inevitable. But by carefully conditioning your body to handle the weights one is lifting, as well as by attending to the CNS, injuries will by far mostly be minor, manageable annoyances rather than serious and career-threatening or even career-ending.

5. Every Rep is a Speed Rep – This will be a controversial and contentious principle, I know. It’s been popular for some years now to incorporate “speed days” into bench routines. On these days, the lifter uses a light weight and executes each lift as fast as possible. The idea is to train the body to perform the movement as explosively as possible, and it is believed that this training with light weight will carry over to maximal lifts. Well, here’s why I don’t do speed days. First, to summarize one of my principles for deadlift training, a lifter simply doesn’t perform a maximal single in the same way that he or she performs a set of, say, three or five reps. A maximal single places very different demands on strength, speed, and skill, such that a set of five repetitions becomes a “mini-marathon” in comparison. Thus, heavy singles form the backbone of my deadlift training. In the same way, heavy singles, along with double and triples, form the backbone of my bench training. The point here in relation to speed days is that I’m unconvinced that performing speed reps with light weights will translate into greater speed with a maximal single on meet day. First, speed reps are most often performed RAW, while our meet singles will be in the shirt. We’ve already established that these are two different lifts. Second, speed reps are often performed in sets of three, five, or more reps. Such sets at light weights can be successfully—and usually are—completed with substandard technique; meet singles cannot be completed with sloppy technique. Since our aim is technical perfection for meet singles, we should therefore strive to make every rep of every set at every weight technically perfect, such that technical perfection becomes second nature, not something that we have to try to get right only on meet day. Like technical perfection, greater speed (explosiveness) is something we need to aim for at all times. Thus, rather than having a distinct speed day, I advocate performing every rep of every set, beginning with the second warmup set (I do the first warmups slowly so as to feel for any potential problems in the shoulders and/or elbows), as explosively as possible. In this way, you are consciously aiming for greater explosiveness every time you have the bar in your hands. From this view, every rep indeed is a “speed” rep, and explosiveness, like technical perfection, becomes second nature. This also eliminates the need for a second day of training and allows for additional recovery. While there are many who thrive on more than one bench day each week, I am not one of them. I, and many other lifters, do better benching once per week.

6. The Shirt Must be Broken In – In the early days of shirted benching, a shirt couldn’t be worn more than a few times before it stretched to the point that its benefit to the lifter was negligible. Today’s shirts are very different. I’ve been using my Titan F6 size 52 in training and meets for well over one year. In fact, I’ve never had to throw out a worn F6; when they’ve become too worn for my purposes, they can still make a good training or opener shirt for another lifter. I wore my Titan Super Plus almost weekly for four months leading up to the meet in which I used it to hit a 677.7. So, don’t worry about stretching out your shirt too much. In fact, I believe it’s essential to break in a shirt by wearing it in training regularly. Modern shirts will stretch slightly over the course of a few workouts, making them a little more comfortable to wear, and will then hold without stretching more. This process also helps to identify possible defects in the shirt. It’s better to get runners in the shirt or blow out a sleeve while doing three-boards in training that to discover that the shirt has a defect as you’re lowering a max lift to your chest in a meet.

7. Shoulder P/Rehab is Essential – If, like me, you have a history of shoulder issues, incorporate shoulder rehabilitation exercises into your workout weekly. I call this P/Rehab. Since I’ve been incorporating p/rehab into my workouts, I haven’t had any serious recurrence of shoulder injury. At most, I’ve taken a week off here and there to allow my shoulders extra recovery. There are a variety of shoulder rehabilitation exercises you can do, and I suggest mixing in a variety focusing on rotator cuffs and AC joints. These exercises are widely described and discussed on the internet, but if you can get an appointment with a good sports therapist to set up a shoulder program, it will be well worth your time and money. Also, if, like me, you have a history of shoulder issues, stay away from bands and chains. Bands and chains stress shoulders where they are weakest and simply don’t make sense for those of us with poor shoulders from a risk-benefit standpoint. The only bands I own come from Office Max.

8. Attend Carefully to Setup and Technique – We should strive unceasingly for technical perfection, beginning with a rock-solid setup. In this regard, it is important to work one-on-one with a more experienced bencher who can help you improve your setup and technique. If you don’t know someone near you who can help, it’s worth your while to make a pilgrimage to a gym in another city to work with experienced benchers. Also important is taking video of your workouts when possible, and particularly of your heavy attempts. This allows for analysis, feedback, and reflection that isn’t possible any other way. Be patient in building your arch. A good arch is something that takes time, time to build flexibility and time to strengthen the back to hold the arch. Increase your arch gradually and thus safely.

9. Safety is Paramount – When training in the shirt, it’s important to train with benchers . . .and spotters . . . who are experienced with the shirt. Under no circumstances should you tolerate spotters who are not sharp and on the ball. If your spotters are not paying attention, warn them; if they screw up a second time, find new spotters. Never train alone in the shirt. Also, wear tight wrist wraps when benching anything over 300. Not only will wraps take some stress off your wrists, but they will also keep your hands stable when you have heavy weight on the bar. Dumping the bar on yourself due to a turned wrist isn’t fun. Finally, if you don’t feel good on a particular day, go light or go home. You’ll benefit much more from rest than from overtraining. At the very least, rest carries with it a much lower risk of injury than does overtraining.

10. You are Not a Bodybuilder – If you are on this program, your aim should be to increase your shirted bench press. All other considerations are secondary, if not irrelevant. I’ve seen an incredible number of young lifters under perform in the bench, at best, and completely torpedo their bench, at worst, because of a dubious fixation with bodybuilding and bodybuilding-like training. Bodybuilding and powerlifting are different sports and require different training. If your aim is to maximize your shirted bench, you need to commit to doing so by following an appropriate program. Bodybuilding and bodybuilding-like training isn't appropriate.

The Program

This is a 14 week program intended for someone with an mid-400s bench, aiming for a 500 at the end of the program. I’m assuming that the lifter has a new shirt or a tighter shirt than what he used for the mid-400s press. Remember that everyone is different and every program will inevitably need to be adjusted to suit the individual lifter. Be aware that extraneous factors such as illness, work, injury and the like may necessitate recalibrating the target weights. This is not a percentage-based program. There are so many variables involved in shirted bench training that coming up with a workable percentage scheme is extraordinarily difficulty. If your strength situation is very different from the beginning assumptions here, then use the program as a guide to setting up your own based on the same principles and ideas.

Week 1
Bench Press: warmup – here’s the warmup scheme I recommend: 135x10, 135x10, 185x5, 225x5, 275x1, 315x1; then into the shirt for 3board warmups: 365x1, 405x1, 425x1; target set – 3board 475x1 (if you can do a double or triple, that’s fine, but no more than a triple; one good, well-executed single is the target); 3board down set: 405x3 (increase your down set from week to week, if possible).
Close-Grip Bench Press: 2x5 select a weight that is challenging; do these RAW.
Shoulder P/Rehab: I use five to six exercises with light dumbbells, 2 sets of 12-15 reps each.

Additional Assistance: Mix up some favorites of your choice, but no more than three additional exercises; hit the triceps HARD, but don’t be a bodybuilder. Use multi-joint exercises that allow you to use some weight. Do not, however, sacrifice good form for pounds. Leave that to the bicep monkeys.

Week 2
Bench Press: warmup; target set – 3board 490x1

Close-Grip Bench Press: 2x5

Shoulder P/Rehab: your choice