Tag Archives: bench press

Take it Easy: Avoid Injury: Get Better Gains

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At the gym the other day I was doing some bench presses. I wasn’t doing anything too heavy and I was pretty confident I’d be fine. My routine was going to be ten reps and five sets at about 60% of my one rep max. I got about five or six reps into my fourth set and things started getting harder. I wanted to finish out the set, so I pushed myself through the grind and around the ninth rep, I felt my should pop out a bit. I had a spotter and had them reset the weight on the bench for me. I didn’t push anymore. I just packed up and went home. I hadn’t made it anywhere near my full time in the gym.

There was one thing I did right that day and one thing I did wrong. I’ll start with what I did wrong. I pushed myself hard enough to actually aggravate my shoulder. It ended up setting me back a bit because it was sore for three or so days afterward.  Because it was my shoulder, it kept me from doing most upper body workouts for those three days. You don’t need to hit that ‘grind’ every time to see gains. You can very easily see progress just going until your breathing or form change. Stop there and avoid injury.

I was talking with a guy at the gym a few months back and he was telling me about his bench pressing story. He is currently going to the gym to rehab an injury to his elbow. I guess he had been pushing about 400 pounds on his one rep max during his normal routine and was trying to push forward to 405 pounds. He hit the grind at 405 and tried to will himself through it. He ended up ripping the tendon in his elbow from the bone, which set him back significantly. He’s now doing 375 pounds on a bench press, more than three years later.

What I did right: I stopped as soon as I knew I had pushed too far. I didn’t keep going on benches or even any other exercises and that ultimately let me get back into the routine much quicker. I just bailed out, went home, and rested myself. By doing that I was able to stay on track and push my quest for fitness forward.

I’m not saying don’t push yourself. That’s not what this is all about. I’m saying don’t push yourself too hard. Know your body, and be patient. You can’t add five pounds to your one rep max every week. Eventually your gains will slow down or even plateau. Embrace that and be careful while you’re doing it. You could cause yourself a few days, or worse end up in the hospital, if you push too hard. This is about being healthy, not about how much weight you can life, so you can show off to your friends.

Have you ever injured yourself while working out? How bad was it? Did you recover? How long did it set you back? I want to hear your story.

Biofeedback: An Interesting Take on Human Performance

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Biofeedback isn’t a new idea, but some high performance weight trainers have taken a new spin on it.  The idea is that if you want to get the maximum gain for your weight training efforts, you need to listen to your body and do what it is going to perform best at during that specific workout.

What does that mean?

If you’re going to work out, but your body isn’t going to respond well to bicep curls, you won’t do them in favor of another exercise your body will respond well to.  maybe you’ll end up doing bench presses today instead of curls, and because you’re listening to your body the muscle you build as a result of the bench presses will be dramatically better than if you forced yourself into doing curls.

How do I do it?

There is a simple method for testing your body’s response to any given exercise.  You just stand with your legs straight and reach for your toes.  As soon as you feel your body resist the action, stop and make a mental note of how far you stretched.  Do a couple of test exercises at a minimal intensity and then do the stretch again.  Not how far you stretched again, but this time compare it to your original.  Is it better or worse?  Rinse and repeat this method for a few exercises.

Now that you know which exercises your body is responding to the best, you can focus on doing those exercises for that workout.  You’ll find that you have an easier time doing those exercises and you aren’t forcing your body to do something it didn’t want to.  You’ll want to stop and do biofeedback tests a few times during your routine to make sure nothing has changed.

I’ve included a video of they guys from AthleteCreator.com and Extreme Human Performance using biofeedback to do Bench Presses below:

This is a second video from GymJunkies.com doing much of the same:

The Science

Your body responds to every movement you make by restricting or increasing range of motion.  This is a defensive reflex that kicks in when you’re making movements you shouldn’t.  It’s function is to keep you from injuring yourself.  When you’re working out, doing range of motion tests for each exercise will tell your body whether that specific motion is going to be helpful or not.

The whole biofeedback system is based on your body’s innate ability to contract muscles to prevent range of motion when you’re not moving the way you should.  Think about when you break a bone and all of the muscles around that area contract to restrict movement.  It’s the same feedback system.  Utilizing range of motion tests during your workout give you a noticeable physical response to what your body wants to do.

Using Biofeedback to your Benefit

Utilizing biofeedback to find out what positive motions will get the best results during your workout will help you build muscle and burn fat.  When you’re doing exercise that don’t test well, you won’t see noticeable gains in your overall fitness, whereas when you do, you’ll feel better working out and see excellent results fairly quickly.  Biofeedback and range of motion testing seem to really give great results.  It will be interesting to see how this type of exercise evolves.

Simple Upper Body Workout Routine

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This is about a simple upper body workout routine that I alternate every other gym visit.  Basically I do one set of five different exercises (a circuit), moving through all of the exercises until I reach the first one.  I then do a second set, and finally a third set.  Every set is on 10 repetitions, and I adjust my intensity so that I’m usually failing between repetition 5 and 10 on the third set.

I try to alternate the exercises between muscle groups so that each muscle group has time to rest before I move on to an exercise in a similar group.  For upper body, I tend to move between abs and arms.  I also always start my visit to the gym with a 2 mile run to get my heart rate up.  With a simple 5 exercise x 3 sets x 10 reps routine and a short run, you can easily spend an hour at the gym.

I note the intensity of each exercise I do in my phone and record it on a spreadsheet when I get back to my computer.  This way I can track progress as I go.  In my other life, I’m a data geek, so this stuff is important to me.  I want to see statistical progress in my fitness adventures.

The following is a list of the exercises I do in one of my circuits for upper body work out on odd days:

  • Bench Presses - Lay on a flat bench and push a barbell up towards the ceiling.  This works your pecs and upper arms.  Be sure to vary your hand stance to work different muscle groups.  Increase intensity by increasing the weight.
  • Crunches on an Inclined Bench - Don’t do a full sit up yet.  Just raise your body about a third of the way through a full sit up.  This works your upper abs.  Increase the incline until maximum and then add weight.  I usually carry a disc weight flat across my chest while inclined to add weight.
  • Bicep Curls – This mostly works your biceps, but can also work your forearm and pecs depending on your form. Increase intensity by increasing the weight.
  • Sit Ups on an Inclined Bench – Follow through and touch your elbows to your knees.  This works your lower abs and pelvis.  Be sure not to hold your hands behind your head, because that can cause neck injuries.  Add weight by holding a disc weight.
  • Tricep Curls - Lay on a flat bench and hold a single weight above your head.  Push it towards the ceiling and then bring it back down.  This works your triceps and forearms.  Increase intensity by increasing the weight.

If you’re unsure about how to do one or more of the exercises above, just contact me and I can help you get your bearings.  I will be posting videos about how each one works at some point.  I need to see what the rules are about cameras in the gym I go to.  A quick video search on Google gets some pretty great results as well.

These workouts should work for just about anyone at any level.  You should be able to adjust your weight to increase or decrease the difficulty of the specific exercise you’re doing.  Even if you just started trying to be fit, you can start with one pound weights and move forward from there.  Everyone has to start somewhere.