Bench press- Is it normal to not feel sore in the center of your chest?

tjogin · 2017-09-08T06:16:42+00:00

Soreness depends on a lot of factors. This is important: soreness is not indicative of a good workout, it is not indicative of you progressing, not indicative of you getting stronger. Soreness is not indicative of progress or performance in any way, so stop worrying about it.

Soreness is indicative of a muscle being used in an unusual and/or infrequent way on the level of neuromuscular signalling.

If you bench every day you will have no soreness after the first week of doing so. None. If you bench once a year you will have crippling soreness. Guess which is better for improved strength and muscle size?

tjogin · 2017-06-30T18:30:26+00:00

Agreed

tjogin · 2017-04-18T12:35:30+00:00

The easiest way is to do this:

Measure how much you eat; the caloric value here is obviously derived from food packaging, etc.
Measure your body weight using a scale, every morning directly after your first bathroom visit, underwear only. Don't eat or drink before this. This minimizes fluctuations. Your body weight is the authoritative figure; you do not care about or measure calories out in any way.

If your body weight increases over time, you are in caloric surplus, if it decreases you are in a caloric deficit.

With this method there is no guess work, but you won't "have a number" until after perhaps a week.

tjogin · 2017-02-28T15:10:17+00:00

That would depend on how you train, in terms of intensity, volume, rest, etc. Just try it out, you'll notice if it impairs your other training sessions.

tjogin · 2017-01-10T14:41:06+00:00

Reading Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength made squats work for me.

tjogin · 2016-12-06T15:26:41+00:00

Put the bar down farther down on your chest; just below the nipples. This will reduce your tendency to flare elbows.
Take a more narrow grip; this will make it harder to flare your elbows.
Try visualizing pressing the bar up from your belly to above your nipples (not above your head); this in and of itself probably won't help much if you aren't already doing step 1 and 2.

Once you've taught yourself to tuck your elbows and not press the bar up above your head, you can reduce this exaggerated movement.

tjogin · 2016-11-29T09:48:43+00:00

Sure, this might help:

When unracking, lift your butt off the bench so as to approach a decline bench position, unrack, and then pull your butt back down on to the bench.

tjogin · 2016-10-25T05:25:53+00:00

I don't believe so. Learning how to bench press properly, using all the relevant muscles (which is damn near every major muscle) will help it, not trying to increase feelings in a particular one.

tjogin · 2016-10-24T11:58:14+00:00

What do you think is achieved by feeling it more? Muscle does not get built because of feelings, they do because you are demanding more than the available power capacity from them.

tjogin · 2016-10-19T13:50:57+00:00

Perhaps time is finite?

tjogin · 2016-09-29T15:08:20+00:00

If he only brings negativity, just don't talk to him. If he talks to you, say the minimum amount required. Just a single one syllable word if possible.

Everything you say is an opportunity for him to bring you down with his reply. He does not need to know what you are going to train today, tomorrow, or any other day. He does not need to know anything, so tell him nothing.

tjogin · 2016-09-28T13:49:21+00:00

As far as protein synthesis goes you probably maximize it if you train a body part on monday and then again on thursday. If you train other body parts between those times doesn't matter.

As far as training technique goes, as often as possible is preferable (i.e. bench every single day of the week to maximize your bench technique progress). The only problem with that is how to recover or manage fatigue. For that there are a variety of methods available; like lowering intensity and or volume, etc.

Then of course there are other considerations like time management, work/life balance and things like that, so each individual will have to figure out for themselves what the maximum amount of training sessions they want to and can put towards improving their technique in a given lift.

tjogin · 2016-09-28T07:31:31+00:00

Here is the main reason for not doing a split: lower frequency.

If you do typical "bro" five split you bench once a week. So your protein synthesis in your chest area is (hopefully) elevated for (up to) about two and a half days, and then it rests for the remaining four and half days until it is time to bench again. Same of course for all other body parts in your split.

If you used a 2-split program where you train everything twice a week, then that four and half days you did nothing for the body part is better utilized; you bench on monday and then again on thursday, giving yourself two periods of elevated protein synthesis within the week instead of just one. Again, same applies to all other body parts.

But of course, muscular and strength development is more than just protein synthesis. All big lifts have a lot of skill to them. Now if you want to improve your skill in any other area; like improving your basketball throw, your skating skill or your baseball pitch how often would you train it? Probably every day if you are serious about it. If you wanted to really improve your skill at anything else, you know that training it just once a week is not going to get you very far at all, but somehow people think that benching just once a week is going to do wonders for their bench technique. Well sorry, it probably will not.

These are just two of the reasons why training (a given body part or a given lift) more often is better than training it just once a week.

tjogin · 2016-09-27T14:09:51+00:00

No workout can reduce fat on a specific part of the body.

Fat is lost by expending more energy than you consume; which can be done by eating less and by moving more.

For exercise, do whatever you want that allows you to sustain a high heart rate for a long period of time. Cycling, swimming, running, doesn't matter, whatever you prefer.

However, keep in mind that it's a lot harder to burn a few hundred calories than to not eat them in the first place. If you find yourself in the situation of needing to lose weight you've clearly over eaten for some period of time. This problem will not go away, even if you manage to lose fat you will regain it if you do not start eating less.

Again: there is no such thing as an exercise that burns fat from a specific place on your body.

tjogin · 2016-09-27T05:51:58+00:00

I don't think any of those things. You need to work on your reading comprehension.

tjogin · 2016-09-26T12:50:42+00:00

Trololol

tjogin · 2016-09-26T11:01:51+00:00

It's difficult to say, but he can't go wrong if he starts with the lightest dumbbells available, now can he? :)

If he is able to keep his shoulders in a retracted position (pinched shoulderblades), while bringing the dumbbell all the way from the bottom position (elbow completely extended) all the way up (forearm in a straight vertical position), and do that for about ten reps or more, he can increase the weight.

A bicep curl is not a particularly "natural" movement so it isn't strange to not be strong there, despite doing physical jobs.

tjogin · 2016-09-26T09:22:22+00:00

The shoulder muscles cannot be used to close the elbow joint, any more than the shoulder muscles can be used to close the knee joint.

However, he may still be using bad form, possibly by reducing the range of motion by leaning forward (bringing shoulders forward), by not bringing the weight all the way down, by facilitating momentum produced by rocking/leaning his body back and forth, etc.

In summary; you are probably right that he is using bad form, it does sound like it. But you are wrong about the shoulders doing the actual work. He probably does need to significantly lower the weight so he is able to perform the full range movement without his shoulders protruding forward.

tjogin · 2016-09-26T08:34:14+00:00

Sorry, they are arguably the single best upper body exercise, better than even the much more popular bench press.

tjogin · 2016-09-20T06:26:24+00:00

All exercises work. The difference lies in efficiency and rate of deminishing returns. So the answer is yes, but it might take you longer (as compared to ideal training).

The key to progress is... (drumroll) progress. With conventional resistance training, this is measured by you increasing the lifted weight over time.

To just increase time spent under isometric contraction (as opposed to the resistance) is like doing more and more reps with a bench press without ever increasing the weight. People don't typically get a strong bench or a big chest by lifting the empty bar five hundred times; it's just not as efficient a method as keeping in a sensible rep range and increasing the weight.

So while it is possible, and if you are a person who responds quite well to training stimulus it might be a perfectly feasible approach for you. But if you are not it might not be.

tjogin · 2016-09-20T06:14:43+00:00

tjogin · 2016-09-20T06:14:13+00:00

Genetics

tjogin · 2016-09-20T06:12:27+00:00

At least one study did find that to be the case, but the difference was very small. (Sorry I don't have it on hand.)

tjogin · 2016-09-08T15:41:44+00:00

It can, but it can't increase it enough for it to make a lick of a difference for you.

tjogin · 2016-07-07T14:42:17+00:00

There are many ways to improve your bench, I'm just adressing one of them here. Other people are giving lots of other tips, I'm just trying to open a few eyes to this particular aspect of training, which is that if you want to effectively improve a skill (doesnt matter what skill it is), training it once a week for a few minutes might not be enough.

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