#is there an optimal leg spread angle? like i imagine if you go to far it would be hard to change position fast on the ice

[freebooter4ever]

found it! ^_^

[spaceskam]

what i would do to get into your head

for @malexweek day 2: trope day! here’s my loose interpretation of the huddling for warmth trope (apart of this universe)

ao3

Michael had been completely and utterly terrified for the entire day.

“What if they bully me like in bad high school movies and throw me in the dumpster?”

“Michael, it’s music class. I’m almost 99% sure they won’t do that,” Isobel said, pushing his backpack all the way there. 

As much as Michael was glad he tested out of the alien-specific power training classes, he was terrified to be the only one in an entirely human class. He knew it was going to be difficult to make friends. Sure, they might talk to him and be normal, but he would know they didn’t mean it. 

“Can’t you just come with me?” he whined. Isobel smiled and shook her head.

“Sorry, we can’t all be geniuses or prodigies like you,” Isobel mused, kissing the side of his face and shoving him into the room.

Part of Michael expected everyone to look over at him, to stare and gawk, but they didn’t. Instead, they went on with their day. Michael took a deep breath and nodded. He could do this. He could.

Michael had technically been able to join music since his sophomore year, but he’d gotten scared both then and his junior year and chose to work in the library for his extra period. Which was fun and all, but he wanted to do music. He was passionate about music. He played three instruments and wanted to show it. But that was just difficult when some heavy anxiety weighed on his chest the way it did.

But, with the help of Isobel, Max, and his mother, he’d finally enrolled in music.

It did help that Alex Manes was also in the class. He, while not alien, was an outcast in the purest form. He was antagonistic and brutal and… easily one of the hottest people to ever grace the universe. Michael had never actually spoken to him, but he’d seen how he parted the hallways like the red sea with his presence alone. He’d seen him get in fights in defense of other aliens. He’d even seen him smile. That image seemed burned into his brain. It made him feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

Michael sat in the far corner by himself, hoping not to bring too much attention to himself. He would happily blend into the background. Except, that almost immediately backfired when Alex Manes himself walked right up to him. He was even more gorgeous up close.

“You’re in my spot,” Alex said, staring him down with his dark-lined eyes. Michael’s eyes slowly widened. He thought about pointing out that it was the first day of school and there was no way he had a specific seat. But, of course, he couldn’t find those words.

“Sorry,” Michael said, fumbling to grab his bag as quickly as he could and move out of his way. He moved over four chairs, leaving three between them so he wouldn’t bother him. Alex watched him with a raised eyebrow. Michael tried to ignore him.

Eventually, the teacher, Mrs. Wilks, walked in and immediately began talking. Michael listened as intently as he could, trying to ignore the way Alex never seemed to stop staring. His eyes burned into the side of Michael’s face and sufficiently made it impossible to focus.

Which is how the next three goddamn weeks went.

Michael would struggle to pay attention every single day because of Alex and it got to the point Mrs. Wilks pulled him to the side to make sure Alex wasn’t bullying him. And he wasn’t. He was just staring. 

“Michael,” Mrs. Wilks said at the beginning of class, “Why don’t you come up here and play for our warm-ups.”

Michael stared at her with wide, reluctant eyes. He knew she was just doing that to get him away from Alex, but that would just get more eyes on him. He was fine with just Alex’s, but everyone else?

But, Michael was compliant to a fault and he found himself sitting in front of the piano.

He played for warm-ups and even roughly sight-read the pieces they were doing. He was rusty, but it worked well enough. By the time it was almost over, he found that he was actually comfortable playing in front of that many people.

"Wow, thank you, Michael," Mrs. Wilk's praised as the class came to an end. She clapped and basically forced the class to join in which was uncomfortable to say the least. Thankfully, the bell rang shortly after and the room cleared out within a matter of seconds.

Or, almost cleared out.

Michael had turned to put his sheet music back in his bag when the piano bench creaked with the weight of another body. He looked over his shoulder to see Alex Manes sitting there, straddling the bench and looking right at him. He didn't say a word and still, Michael's cheeks got hot. Alex smiled in response which just made his face burn even brighter.

"You're good," Alex said, "And you're also good at biology."

"I-I guess."

"No guessing, you're the only alien in that class and it's because you're ridiculously smart," he said. Michael had no idea what to say.

"Thank you?" he offered. Alex rolled his eyes.

"You wanna tutor me?" Alex asked. Michael's eyes went wide again. "Why do you always act so shocked when anyone talks to you? Like, you're not invisible." Michael was silent. "Well, do you wanna? I suck and you're the only person I think I could handle being in a room with for more than five minutes."

Michael swallowed harshly and Alex looked way too amused.

"B-But your dad," Michael said lamely. As hot as Alex Manes was, his father was a proud xenophobe. The mention wiped all amusement from Alex's face.

"There's a shed behind my house, no parents around, no distractions," Alex said, eyeing him, "I'll pay you."

"Um, yeah, sure, I can tutor you," Michael agreed. Alex nodded, standing up. The bench was bracketed by his knees still and his studded belt was all but right in Michael's face. It was pretty hard to focus on anything else.

"I'll meet you by your truck after school."

"Okay," Michael agreed lamely.

He watched Alex walk out of the class and tried not to think too hard about what he'd just agreed to.

Michael floated through the rest of the day on autopilot, his mind stuck on what was set to happen that evening. A tutoring session with Alex Manes. That was it. There was nothing weird or sketchy about it. It was simply tutoring. So why did it feel so goddamn nerve-wracking?

For his own wellbeing, he didn’t tell Isobel, but he did let his mother know that he was going to be home late because he was tutoring. He even typed out Jesse Manes’ name and didn’t send it, keeping it there just in case he needed to send it quickly. Was that too paranoid?

As Michael made his way towards his truck at the end of the day, he couldn’t help but immediately notice that Alex looked goddamn picturesque as he sat on the hood. It should’ve been disrespectful that he just took over his truck like that, but… damn. The angle of it all made his legs seem impossibly long in his skinny jeans as they hung over the edge. He was leaning back on his arms and the sun seemed to be beaming down just for him, his face turned towards the sky with his eyes closed. It only occurred to Michael at that moment that Alex knew which truck with his without even asking. Oh, he had feelings about that.

“Hi,” Michael said as he walked up to his car. Alex slowly opened his eyes and tilted his head towards Michael, not budging from his place on the hood. Michael’s whole body tensed up at that.

“It’s about to rain,” he said.

“Is it?”

“Yeah, can’t you smell it?” Alex asked, tilting his head back again and breathing in deep. Did he know how risque that looked? “It’s in the air.”

“Oh, uh, cool,” Michael said, clearing his throat and shifting awkwardly. Alex hopped off the hood of the truck and headed towards the passenger side door. 

“Let’s go.”

Michael couldn’t help but obey.

Apart from Alex’s whole thing was he seemed to make the conscious decision to optimize space. He had his leg pulled up to the seat, but his thighs spread far apart while his head laid back and occasionally gave directions to his house. Logically, Michael knew it was a power thing. Illogically, Michael was sure he wanted him to wreck from being distracted.

However, instead of wrecking, his truck started sputtering before slowly to a stop. Embarrassment flooded him and he looked over to Alex who just smiled.

“I can fix it,” Michael insisted. Alex smirked and nodded.

“I believe you.”

Michael quickly jumped out of the truck and Alex, for some reason, followed. He popped the hood and started tightening all of the cables around his battery and alternator and anywhere else for good measure. Alex was looking over his shoulder which made it infinitely harder to locate all the cables.

And then, to make it worse, it started sprinkling just like Alex had said. And then it very quickly started storming. Alex laughed, as the sky drenched them and made it even harder to try to tighten things. Michael grunted and jogged back to the driver's seat and turned the key but it still didn’t work. His battery was dead.

“You’re an alien!” Alex called to him over the sound of the rain, “Do your little electrical thing!”

“It’s not my specialty!” 

“I believe in you!”

It was a hollow thing, Michael knew that, but it made Michael feel like he could run a goddamn marathon. He started at Alex for a moment, watching as he spread his arms out wide and smiled up at the sky that covered him in rain. He was even more gorgeous than Michael ever could’ve imagined.

After double-checking that Alex wouldn’t be totally freaked out by him actually using his powers in front of him, Michael went back to the front of the car and tried to channel all of that energy under his skin and in his blood, his hand hovering over the battery. He took a couple of controlled breaths, just like his mom taught him, and just tried. 

A small bout of energy came from his palm and went to his car battery, ignoring the rain. He added a little telekinetic umph to turn the ignition and he grinned as the truck roared to life. Laughter bubbled out of him as he did so. It was the first time he had done something so useful with his powers. His mother always taught him not to rely on them, but… That felt good.

“I told you,” Alex said, suddenly way too close and, when Michael looked over his shoulder, he was right there. He was so close and looking at him and smiling and covered in rain. “You’re good.”

Michael felt chills douse his skin from head to toe, feeling frozen as he stared at him and basked in his praise. He almost forgot about the rain. Instead, his eyes followed a water droplet that traced over Alex’s impeccable cheekbones.

“You ready to go?” Alex asked, voice low and right there. Michael gulped.

“Yeah,” he agreed. Alex raised both his eyebrows suggestively and nodded his head towards the cab of the truck.

Michael dropped the hood and they both got back inside, sitting for a moment. It was going to be a bitch to dry his seats without a mildew smell and his shoes were going to be so goddamn squishy and his hair was going to be so gross, but Alex had laughed and he said he believed in him and, god, it made everything better.

Alex finished directing him to his house and then told him where to park so his dad wouldn’t ask questions before they both ran into the shed, laughing slightly. Michael had never felt so confident in his life than in those few seconds, even as the chill of being soaking wet set in.

Still, they sat side by side on the floor, their backs against the little bed in the corner. Michael was still buzzing with power which seemed to keep his own coldness at bay, but Alex was already starting to shiver a little bit as he rubbed his hands together. He eyed him a little as he pulled out his biology textbook (human biology only, alien biology had to be taught at home or, if you were lucky, a progressive sex ed teacher might give a run down).

“If you need to go inside and dry off, I don’t mind waiting,” Michael said. Alex looked at him with those big, intoxicating eyes.

“I’ll just get wet again coming back out here, don’t worry about it,” he said, leaning closer. Michael just nodded, looking back to his book.

“So, most of this is just a review,” Michael started.

Just like in class, Alex didn’t seem to be paying attention. His eyes were burning into the side of Michael’s head, intense as hell despite the fact he was shivering. Michael did his best to ignore it along with his own chill. However, he stopped being successful at that when Alex’s teeth started chattering.

“You’re cold,” Michael said dumbly. Alex grinned through it. His eyeliner and mascara was somehow still perfect even though his hair was plastered to his forehead and frizzy. He was as picturesque as always if you disregarded how cold he looked. 

“And you’re warm,” Alex said, leaning in until their sides were pressed together as much as he could. Michael’s mouth went dry. “You can share some body heat, can’t you?”

Michael felt his eyes widen as he realized what he was saying. Alex just kept that smile in full force. How the hell did he exist? More importantly, why was he even giving Michael the time of day? Of all the people in the world and beyond, Michael was the least worthy of that attention.

But, still, he let Alex come close. He even dared to drape his arms over his shoulders and Alex leaned in even closer, almost balling up to feed off his body heat. Alex’s eyes were on the textbook as he did so which somehow made it all the more exhilarating. This was okay. He was allowed to touch another boy like this. Not just another boy. Alex.

Michael’s eyes went back to the textbook to try and focus, but Alex’s eyes seemed to take that as a sign to go back to staring at his face.

“Right, so, uh,” Michael breathed, scanning the page for something that was more interesting than him. He failed. “I'm assuming you remember Punnett squares. Fun fact, my people’s DNA is a little different and instead of just dominant and recessive, we have a triple combination and the third goes into our power skill and specialty. So we have dominant, recessive, and regnant genes types. They mix the same way yours does, it’s just a little more complex.”

“How does that work for Punnett squares?” Alex asked, still shivering and his teeth chattering. It made Michael feel guilty for some reason, so he rubbed his arm in hopes some type of friction would help him warm up.

“My mom said it’s like they use capital letters, lowercase letters, and superscript letters that stand on their own,” Michael said, shrugging slightly.

Alex didn’t answer right away, breathing in deep as a chill shook him. Michael looked back at him and saw that his lips were starting to tint a little bit purple. He couldn’t even acknowledge how close they were, he was just concerned. He frowned and tried to remember if it was normal for humans to get so cold just by getting wet, but he didn’t actually know. The shed also didn’t have any heat, so maybe Alex had one of those deep-seated chills that were impossible to get rid of. Michael hadn't actually had one of those before.

“Hey,” Michael said softly, “You really need to go dry off or get under a blanket or something, you’re gonna get sick.”

“Warm me up,” Alex requested.

“I’m trying, but it’s not working,” Michael said back.

Alex looked at him in the eyes, his brows furrowed like he was trying to make sense of something that Michael wasn’t aware of. He looked all over his face for what felt like a million years before he leaned forward and pressed his icy lips to Michael’s. Bells seemed to ring in his mind, every inch of Michael trying to battle with the fact that he was both shocked and not shocked at all. It added up. But, still, how the hell did Michael get the pleasure of his attention?

Alex pulled away, but he didn’t go far.

“I am so confused,” Michael breathed. 

“Should I have asked first? Sorry,” Alex said, forcing a little laugh, but he genuinely seemed a little nervous. It was the first time Michael had ever seen him look nervous. “I just am really fucking intrigued by you.”

“I just…” Michael said, trailing off once he realized he didn’t really have anything to say. Nothing worth substance, anyway. Not when his mind was just on Alex.

Michael leaned back in just a little, meeting him in a kiss. Alex smiled against his lips and moved his hand up to his cheek. Pathetically, Michael was trying to remember the last time he kissed someone and it counted. He couldn’t actually come up with anything and, instead, focused on Alex and not being a terrible kisser.

“Warm me up,” Alex repeated against his lips, but this time the connotations to his words were so much different and Michael’s skin felt like it was on fire. 

He wasn’t quite sure how to be confident like Alex, but he fed off the request and let it play into his people-pleasing qualities. Michael kissed him deeper and moved his hand to the hem of his damp shirt, slipping beneath it to get a little skin on skin contact. Alex nodded in approval as he tilted his head and slid his fingers into Michael’s hair.

“Tell me if you wanna stop,” Alex told him. Michael couldn’t find a reason to want to.

It was a slow process of just kissing and touching and turning to face each other entirely. Alex, bold as ever, tugged Michael into his lap as he leaned against the bed. Michael grabbed the blanket off the bed and pulled it over them. Alex smiled as they huddled beneath it, pressing close to each other as Michael used his TK to tuck it in place so he could keep his hands beneath Alex's damp shirt. Skin to skin contact, right? They hid under the scratchy blanket, touching and breathing and rubbing and kissing and slowly undoing all the cold. 

It didn’t go further than that and it seemed like it actually was mainly for warmth, but the kissing was definitely for more than just warmth.

“I like you,” Alex told him, holding him close and still gliding his hand up and down his spine, “But you’re very unapproachable.”

“No, I’m not,” Michael laughed, shaking his head, “ You’re unapproachable. You can be scary sometimes.”

“Don’t let me scare you,” Alex shot back, sealing his statement with a kiss as his hand squeezed Michael's thigh over his tight, wet jeans, “I promise the only things I wanna do to you are out of the kindness of my heart.”

And the words, as sweet as they were, were set with the dirtiest tone of voice that had ever been used on Michael and his face started to burn again. Alex grinned and shook his head before kissing him again. 

They stayed there until the rain had stopped and they were warm, sharing kisses. Michael felt special in a way he couldn’t articulate. He knew that, whatever this was, couldn’t be shared. He was an alien, Alex was a human, that was a no-go zone. He couldn’t tell anyone despite the fact that he wanted to scream from the rooftops. He wanted to tell everyone that this guy had chosen him. That he’d wanted him. He was special.

But, eventually, they had to move and Michael’s phone going off signaled that.

It was his mom’s ringtone and he basically dove out of the blanket to get it, ignoring Alex’s low laughter in response as he leaned where the textbook had been pushed to grab it. He answered on the third ring, pressing the phone to his ear and answering with the greeting from his parent’s native tongue like he was taught to. It was a respect thing.

“You said late, but I didn’t know you meant this late,” she said, voice tame, “Where are you?”

“Um, at the library,” he lied, ignoring the way Alex kept rubbing his thigh, “It was raining really hard so we waited at school until it slacked off before heading that way to be safe.”

“Mhm,” she hummed, mildly disbelieving but still choosing to accept the explanation because he’d never lied to her before, “Well, are you almost heading home? Dinner’s soon.”

“Yeah, I was about to leave. I’m sorry I didn’t keep you updated,” he said.

“As long as you’re safe. I love you.”

“I love you too.” Michael waited until he was absolutely sure the call had ended before he dropped his phone, his lips parted. “I just lied to my mom. I never lie to my mom.”

Alex’s fingertips gently reached to the back of his neck, spreading his fingers to cover the most space and slowly guiding him back to being chest to chest. He was going to be the death of him.

“I’m a bad influence,” he hummed matter-of-factly. Michael rested his forehead against Alex's, feeling a little intoxicated at the way Alex was staring at him from this close. There was just something about his eyes. 

“You’re the best bad influence I’ve ever had.”

Alex grinned and tilted his head to kiss him. His tongue parted Michael's lips, reminding him just how warm they could be if they just got close. It had his mind wandering to just how close they could get. Michael didn’t want to leave, but he knew he had to.

“We’ll have to schedule more tutoring sessions in the future,” Alex told him, voice low and almost a little commanding. A whole new layer of chills rose to Michael’s skin, but it had nothing to do with being cold.

“You want to?” Michael asked. It was a packed question. Do you want to do something we have to keep secret, do you want to do something this risky, do you want to do something that could get us both in trouble, do you want to put up with me and all of my bullshit? He didn’t know if Alex knew all of the questions that came alongside his small one, but Alex nodded.

“I want to.”

And that was good enough for him.

[cagestark]

Better Late Than Never//1

And Merry Christmas to YOU

Aka I started another project that I will take twenty years to finish. But @starkerflowers prompts were just too fucking good.

About: With interest in his work waning, famous writer Tony Stark (under the pseudonym AE Potts) changes his entire public relations platform, which includes hosting a meet-and-greet contest where one lucky fan will get to spend the day with him. That one lucky fan is Peter Parker. Peter is 21. Will contain nff, alcoholism, suicide attempts, character death (not major), drug mentions, anxiety, anxiety attacks. 

Read here on AO3. 

-

Tony is awakened from a drunken, dreamless sleep by a tub of envelopes and small packages being upended over his head. He jerks upright with a shout from where he was slumped over his writing desk, upending the (empty) bottle of whiskey that had lulled him to sleep. Pepper stands over him, impeccable in every way he is not.

“Jesus Christ,” he says, pushing envelopes off of where they have pooled on his lap. “You could have taken my eye out, Peppercorn. What are you trying to do, perform Lingchi on me? What is all this?”

“Fan mail,” she says. Her voice is stern and unsympathetic. The first time she’d found him passed out drunk over his desk, she had panicked and nearly called for an ambulance. The next handful of times she had just covered him with a blanket and regarded him with sad eyes the next morning when she brought him coffee. But those were ten years ago. Not to mention, all in her first few weeks on the job— “Social media is revolting. You never answer fan mail, you never do Q&A’s, you haven’t done an interview in almost a decade.”

“Fuck this,” Tony mutters, opening one drawer. “Where’s my whiskey?”

“In your bloodstream, I’d imagine. Don’t brush this off, Tony. Sales are waning. We need to make some serious changes in our PR or I’ll be putting in my two-weeks’ notice.”

That gets Tony’s attention. Pepper hadn’t threatened to quit after his last book when he’d killed off one of the most popular characters (one of his personal favorites, may she rest in fictional peace) and the public had flipped their shit. She hadn’t threatened to quit years before that when she walked in on him hunched over his desk with a straw to his nose, three sheets to the wind on far more than just whiskey. She has the disposition of a mountain: unflinching and ever-enduring.

“You mean it,” says Tony.

“I mean it.”

His shoulders sag. He glances around the room: the mess, the junk, the empty alcohol bottles, the half-finished manuscripts. There’s a strange feeling in the back of his throat, acidic, like he might throw up. Or cry. When his mouth opens to say something sarcastic, something about not letting the door hit her on the way out if she expects him to play nice with the media, all that comes out is a broken: “I can’t lose you, Pep.”

She puts a hand on his shoulder. “You will. If you don’t make some changes. Okay?”

Maybe this is what it means to be balanced on a knife’s edge, where one way ends in pain and the other ends in terminal inconvenience. But he knows which one he has to pick. His whole life is just a big inconvenience, but pain? Tony has spent enough time with his hand flat against the stove’s burner to know that he’d rather die than feel it again, rather die than lose one of the only people left who can stand him.

He picks up the closest letter and tears it open, blinking heavily to clear his eyes. Pepper leans down to press a kiss to the crown of his head and then gags. “Take a shower, when you get the chance,” she mutters, smiling.

-

The letters start off by being good for one thing: his ego. Adoring fans have been writing to his penname and business address for decades since he put out his first super-hero novel, titled IRON-MAN. Pepper has chosen to give him recent fan-mail, considering he’s spent so long ignoring it that if he were to answer them in order of reception, he might encounter fans who didn’t even remember the letters once sent. Or ones who were dead.

They are all variations of the same thing. The handwriting changes, gentle feminine cursive to childish scrawling to neat block lettering, but the message is usually the same. DEAR MR. POTTS. I’VE READ EVERY BOOK YOU’VE EVER WRITTEN. I GOT YOUR NAME TATTOOED ON MY ASS. IRON-MAN IS MY HERO. I’VE NEVER READ PROSE AS LOVELY AS YOURS. WHAT IS YOUR SECRET?

At Pepper’s request, Tony drafts a generic letter to send in response, something about how he can’t respond personally to every letter but he wants them to know that he’s read what they’ve written and ‘holds it close to his heart’.

“It’s good,” Pepper approves. “Sign them yourself.”

“Good?” Tony says. “I was joking—this letter is trash. Anyone who knows me would see this for the sarcasm it is—”

“Then thank God none of the fans know you,” Pepper responds coolly.

She has a point. Tony has existed in relative seclusion since he first began publishing his works at 24. After twenty years, he’d managed to remain mostly anonymous. A pseudonym does most of the work, including non-disclosure agreements for his employees. Any time a presence is required, he sends Rhodey or Happy or Pepper even. Theory pages abound on the internet, sites devoted to finding out who the real AE POTTS is. Even though one picture leaked of him during the early 2000’s (a grainy godforsaken thing that didn’t even show his best angle), there were still some disbelievers. One popular conspiracy theory is that AE is Pepper, considering Tony stole her last name to use as his own.

Maybe that’s why his declining image in the media bothers her so much.

A week later, Tony’s hand has a cramp the way it hasn’t since he was a little boy learning to write his letters. Freehand has never been his specialty—it’s far too slow for the way his mind works, bounding a sentence, a scene, a chapter ahead. Signing so many letters is going to freeze his hand in a claw like position. He’s sure of it.

Then Pepper drops the next bombshell on him: the contest.

“It goes against everything I’ve been working so hard to do for the last twenty years,” Tony shouts at the zenith of their argument. “I do not want to be known! I don’t want the fame; I just wanted the goddamn fortune, is that too much to ask for?”

“Times have changed,” Pepper says through her teeth. She holds her own, spine straight. She hasn’t shirked away from his angry outbursts ever, not even when they were children growing up together in Manhattan. “I’m not asking you to do a 20/20 Special. I’m not asking for an interview on Ellen. I’m asking for you to meet with one fan. Have a goddamn lunch with them. If you can’t handle that, then you can kiss your fortune goodbye. Mark my words.”

Tony marks them. He fucking marks them, okay? When he’s drinking himself blind, locked in his office (good luck getting in now, Pep), they ring around his skull like a dime in the dryer. Sometime around dawn, she picks the lock on the door and mops his brow while he vomits in the tiny trashcan beside his desk.

“I’m not doing this to torture you,” she says with uncharacteristic tenderness. Her hand on his forehead occasionally rifling through his greasy hair is not what’s making his eyes prickle with tears—it’s the vomiting. Honest. He’s not that touch-starved. “You know that, right? I hate seeing you like this.”

“I know,” he chokes miserably, gagging again. So he agrees to the Willy Wonka Initiative. Pepper puts out the word that the infamous AE POTTS will be selecting a single fan to meet face to face. Anyone eighteen or older is eligible to participate, as long as they write a letter explaining why they should get it blah blah blah. A golden ticket might have been funner. At least then Tony might have had an excuse to wear the tacky purple suit and tophat.

In the meantime, Pepper reveals that she’s been having Happy screen his mail to only show him the happy letters—figures. His hate mail isn’t extensive, but it certainly exists, having increased exponentially since he killed off Natasha in the last novel.

FUCKING MYSOGINISTIC ASSHOLE, Cheryl from Newport tenderly writes. YOU HAD ONE GOOD FEMALE CHARACTER, AND YOU KILLED HER OFF. I HOPE ANOTHER WOMAN NEVER LETS YOU BETWEEN THEIR LEGS AGAIN AND YOUR DICK SHRIVELS OFF.

Tony thinks that’s pretty succinct. He posts it up on his desk propped up against the last picture ever taken of him and his mother. Killing off Natasha had been an idea he’d personally revolted against for months. Sure, it made sense that sensitive, strong Natasha would be the one to sacrifice herself in order to stop the villain from succeeding in wiping out half the universe. It made sense for a woman to be the one to give her life to protect others.

After all, hadn’t his own mother died trying to protect Tony?

The weekend after the contest drops on their social media platforms, Pepper texts to tell him that it’s being received far, far better than they might have ever hoped for. Already dozens of letters had been received, letters which must have been penned and mailed just hours after the news had spread.

Joy, Tony texts back.

I haven’t told you the best news, she says. That’s how Tony knows that the next news will be the worst news, absolutely the worst news of all. You get to pick the fan.

-

“Any letter catching your eye?” Pepper asks him over lunch in his office.

“They’re all the same,” Tony laments. Even his own ego can only take so much stroking. After a while, the fan mail has become mostly routine and lackluster, though he keeps opening it, keeps signing the response letters, keeps sending them out. “I’m going to end up picking one at random, Pep.”

“I don’t care how you pick,” Pepper says. “As long as you do—and as long as you’re ready to suffer with the consequences of your choice.”

“Suffer? God, I love the light you bring into my life. The unending optimism. The unparalleled faith and trust in me.”

Her eyes glitter even as they roll. “If you like me so much, you can buy lunch next time.”

Tony snorts, taking a large bite from his burger. “Gold digger.”

“I’ve seen your taxes, Tony. These days, there isn’t much gold to dig for.”

“Ouch, kill shot.”

-

The letter arrives only one week before the contest deadline. In the top drawer of his desk are three other letters from potential winners, mostly picked at random, sometimes because Tony likes their handwriting, sometimes because they say something funny that actually makes him laugh. When he opens up the letter from Peter B. Parker, he scans the first lines not intending to be impressed.

Dear Mr. Potts, Peter writes.

I’ve written you so many letters that it should be easy by now. I don’t know why my hands are shaking. Maybe I’m nervous because I know for certain that this one, someone will actually read.

I received my first copy of IRON-MAN when I was eight years old—yes, a little bit heavy for a kid that age, but my parents had just died unexpectedly in a car accident. My aunt and uncle took me in, and my uncle gave me his first edition. Iron-man’s story was one of the only things that got through to me as a kid. His struggle to come to terms with losing his own parents, his loneliness, his fear. The way he overcomes all of that and still goes on to do good…yeah. It meant a lot to a grief-stricken kid. Obviously.

Pretty much every birthday and Christmas, I end up receiving one of your books as a gift. My family and friends know me so well, I have nearly a half-dozen copies of AVENGERS (it’s one of my favorites). The things you write about are so close to my heart, so close to some of the experiences I’ve had in real life. My struggle with mental illness. My abuse and neglect. And the way you write these things makes me think…fear, I guess…that maybe you know something about them too.

I would love to get to meet you and talk about your incredible books. I’d love to get to know you. Not going to lie, as a fanboy, I’d probably be happy to just sit at the same table with you and have a meal. I’ll buy. We don’t even have to talk (okay I swear I’m not as desperate as I sound!). I’m sure you’ve received so many awesome letters, and I know that the fan you pick will be so, so lucky.

(Every letter I write to you, I ask if you could please return my book. It’s been five years since I sent it. I’m sure you don’t even have it anymore, maybe you threw it away from the start. But if you do have it, even if you don’t pick me to win the contest, it would mean so much if you sent it back. When I mailed it to you in Jan. 2014, my uncle was still alive. He’s gone now…anyway it’s one of the only things of his that I have left.)

Your fan always,

PETER.

PS: please disregard the last letter I sent…obviously.

Tony rereads the letter twice. He feels a swirl of emotion in his stomach, not dissimilar to the queasiness after a long night of drinking. This—this is what he sacrificed by being so closed-off from his fans. While he’d known that his fans were real and obviously human, a part of him had never felt the magnitude of it before. These are people with feelings and experiences. This Parker kid (a self-proclaimed fanboy) lost his parents too, and far younger than Tony had. In a car accident.

Maybe Peter hadn’t been there, hadn’t been in the car, hadn’t watched his mother parents go up in flames, but it’s still a tragedy all in its own right. And all at eight years old. Jesus Christ. This kid has been looking up to him for ten years and more, and he had no fucking idea that kind of dysfunctional altar he’d been worshiping at.

Tony goes into the private bathroom connected to his office and gags up—nothing. Drool. But it still leaves his mouth slimy, so he brushes his teeth until he’s spitting pink into the sink, and when he catches sight of the haphazard reflection in the mirror, he pities it. He leans forward to touch foreheads with it, auto-intimacy. Do better, some voice in the back of his head says, but it’s not his voice.

Happy picks up his cellphone on the first ring. Of the ninth call.

“What do you fucking want, Tony?” he hisses into the receiver. “I’m at the movie theater seeing that new Star Wars. You made me go out into the lobby—”

“Then I’m doing you a favor,” Tony says, cracking open the cap on a sparkling water. “Look, I have important questions, I wouldn’t have called otherwise. My fan mail—how much of it has Pepper kept?”

“Jesus, how should I know? Totes and totes full, at least—”

“Brilliant—”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself? I’m missing the movie!”

“Didn’t I say you’re not missing much? I’m asking you because Pepper will make me do it myself: I need you to find specific letters from one fan: Peter B. Parker. Address is Queens, but he could be from anywhere. I’m also especially interested in acquiring a package he sent me in January 2014.”

“Christ, could you be any more mysterious?” Happy mutters. “Text me the details you bastard, I’m not missing another moment of Mark Hamill.”

-

It turns out that Pepper is not only a saint in all ways previously mentioned, but she is a saint in this as well: his fan mail from the last ten years has been saved and meticulously organized by month and year of reception. Happy comes to Tony’s office in the city the next day with a package, the outside brittle but address clear.

The writing is the same script as the letter newly received from Peter, though the handwriting has become more mature over time. Neater. Confined. No more hasty slant from an enthusiastic hand. The kid’s contest entry is in the top drawer of Tony’s desk—the previous potential winners are now the cherries on top of the reject pile. His stomach is heavy as a stone while he tears open the five-year-old package.

Out tumbles a pre-addressed package that was meant to carry the book back to its owner, back to Peter. Then, one first edition of IRON-MAN, the cover a little tattered, the spine creaky. Also included is another letter, torn from a spiral notebook. He opens it with shaking hands.

DEAR MISTER POTTS

I KNOW THAT GETTING A RESPONSE FROM MY LETTERS IS A LONG SHOT, BUT I’M REALLY HOPING THAT YOU’LL AUTOGRAPH THIS COPY OF IRON-MAN AND RETURN IT TO ME. IT IS MY UNCLE BEN’S…

It goes on to describe how his Uncle’s birthday is coming up and Peter hopes to give the autographed book to his Uncle. Tony reads with a heavy heart, knowing now that Tony hadn’t bothered even opening the package, hadn’t tried to sign it—and even if he had, Ben hadn’t lived long enough to celebrate his next birthday. What a son of a bitch Tony is.

For the first time in three months, Tony goes home.

Most days he stays at the space he rents in the fancy Manhattan building, the one that holds his office and Pepper’s own workspace as well as the other people who work for him (Happy, Beck, Rhodey). The mansion outside Manhattan belonged to Tony’s father and his mother. When his mother had still been alive, it had been a cold place that he had endured staying at for her sake. After his mother had died, it had been a torture chamber, or worse—a stale, suffocating tomb.

Then Howard had died and somehow left it to Tony (probably out of some misguided duty to ‘keep it in the family’). Tony made a personal habit to visit it infrequently and stay there even less often; but Pepper maintains it for him, has it cleaned, keeps it safe. Uses it as storage, Tony knows. For his fan mail.

It takes up three entire rooms, floor to ceiling clear totes labeled with months and years. Just looking at it makes Tony feel small, ashamed of how little he cared about interacting with his fans. It’s no wonder sales were down. Searching for Peter’s letters would be like looking for a needle in a haystack—but he has to do it, and he can’t let Happy bear the brunt of the weight anymore either. This is on Tony.

So he begins pulling totes from the room and scattering their contents on the oaken table and floors of the dining room. Five hours and seven totes later, and Tony still has no letter from Peter.

Pepper finds him at midnight. She comes bursting in through the front door—Tony can hear the sound of the door colliding with the wall from the force she’s used—shouting his name. The hysteria in her voice chills him to the bone. It’s worse than the tone she uses when Tony fucks up; this is the tone she uses when there’s a Tragedy, when something is Wrong.

She finds him in the dining room surrounded by letters, kneeling up from where he was slumped on the floor. He must be a sight, but she is one too, her hair a mess, her eyes red. When she sees him, all the breath goes out of her, one hand clutching at her breast as the other grabs the back of a chair for support.

“Jesus, Pep, what’s happened? Is it your father, another heart attack—?”

“Why don’t you ever answer your goddamn phone, you bastard!” She says through heaving breaths. “You don’t leave the office for weeks and suddenly no one can find you, you won’t pick up your phone—”

It takes a long moment for the pieces to connect.

“Oh Christ,” Tony says, chidingly. “What, you were scared for me?”

She slumps into one chair and puts her face into her well-manicured hands. Tony drops back onto his ass. He’s not a good man, not a sensitive man. The last woman who had cried in front of him was his mother, and look at all the ways he had failed her. But the longer he sits letting Pepper cry, the more it feels like bamboo shoots growing under his tender fingernails. Fuck it. He gets up, knees creaking, and goes to her.

They sit side by side at the dining table no one has eaten at in twelve years. Pepper leans into him, her thin shoulders shaking. Shame makes his own eyes burn, because he thought what did she have to be afraid of? But maybe she saw his car in the driveway of the unhappy home he avoids and assumed that he’d come here to Hemingway himself. Maybe she sat in the drive steeling herself to come into the sight of his body.

“I’m going through the fan mail,” Tony says at last.

“I can see that,” she says. Her scathing tone drips with tears.

“I’m okay, Pep,” he says. He’s not sure if it’s true. He’s not sure if he’s been okay ever since he blinked awake upside down and suspended by the seatbelt in the back seat of his mother’s Cadillac, glass littering the roof (and the roof had become the floor, then, see? Because they were upside down), the smell of gas and smoke in his nose). Maybe he’s not okay. Maybe it’s all a fucking lie, but he’s not going to off himself. Not when there’s a mystery afoot. “I promise.”

She nods, one damp hand reaching out blindly for his. It’s an awkward angle to hold hands at, but he doesn’t complain. And awkward or not, it feels nice to be touched in a kind, even platonic way.

“What are you looking for?” Pepper asks at last, wiping at the wet, swollen skin beneath her eyes.

“Why? You want to help?” Tony asks.

“Might as well,” she says. “I always do your heavy lifting, don’t I?”

-

With Pepper’s help, they find the first letter. Somehow the Willy Wonka Initiative has reversed until Tony feels like a kid, ripping open chocolate bars, desperate for a glimpse of gold. At dawn, a cry echoes in the dining room startling Tony from where he was slumping against a tote, dozing.

“I’ve got one, Tony!” Pepper shouts. She’s barefoot, her panty hose taken off and folded on the table, her sensible jacket removed and slung over the back of a chair. Her rumpled shirt and tendrils coming free from her ponytail reveal how much energy she’s been putting into this with him—maybe to make up for her emotional outburst earlier, maybe like a mother humoring a child’s singular beneficial interest. “From Peter B. Parker, address is Queens, same as before.”

“What’s the date?” Tony asks. He slips in a pile of letters from last August and nearly breaks his neck. Wishful fucking thinking.

“Last May. Here—”

Tony takes the letter and collapses in a chair, his lower back grateful for the support. He recognizes Peter’s handwriting as he tears the letter open, and he can feel Pepper’s presence over his shoulder, reading along with him.

This letter is different from the others. Tony knows it right away. The first indication should have been the date; Tony’s most recent novel dropped early May of last year. His most controversial work to date, with praise glorious and venomous in kind. Which way did the scales tip when it came to Peter, Tony wonders.

I know that you won’t read this. I’ve written you twice a year since I was ten years old, and you’ve never written back. I don’t blame you. I’m sure you’re busy—I guess I just needed to get these words down somewhere, so that they exist, so that somewhere there is a record of me after I’m dead.

Tony reads the rest in a dazed blur. At one point, Pepper’s hand lifts to press against her mouth, but still they read on, huddled together for convenience and then for comfort.

In the letter, Peter describes the tragedy of his uncle’s death and how he felt personally responsible, and how after months of guilt, when he’d read about Natasha’s sacrifice, he’d decided to take action. Against himself.

If someone’s death can do so much good in the world, Peter wrote with shaky script. Then maybe mine could too. I’m not deluded or anything. I know that I’m not a superhero and that I’m not fighting against some sanctimonious super villain. But I feel like if my death could make May’s life easier, then I have to do it.

“Jesus. Tony, don’t read this—” Pepper reaches out for the letter but Tony nearly rips it in half trying to keep it away from her.

It’s not just for May, Peter admits. I’m ready to stop hurting, too.

Peter signs off, for good. Only it hadn’t been for good—Peter’s most recent letter had obviously proven that, and hadn’t he written it himself? Ignore my last letter, obviously, he’d said. Something must have changed Peter’s mind, but one thing was clear: it hadn’t been Tony. Because Tony had been so self-absorbed, so tangled in his own grief and ego and addictions he hadn’t even read the letter. If Pepper hadn’t saved it, then it might have been destroyed, no record left of Peter’s words at all.

“Tony,” Pepper says. She takes the letter from his fingers and he lets it go. His hands are numb. “This isn’t your fault. Peter obviously was unstable—he’d just watched his uncle being murdered in front of him. No one in their right mind would read Natasha’s death and think that you were encouraging them to take their own life.”

“I know that,” Tony snaps. Lying. Then: “I’m not an idiot, Pep.”

Maybe the biggest lie of all.

[weartirondad]

A Hodgepodge Of Clouds

FF.net I ao3

-

“Tell me a story.”

It’s phrased like a demand but when Tony blinks down at the kid shamelessly tucked into his side he sees the faintest of question marks reflected in his deep brown eyes half hidden by dark, long eyelashes.

He can see the blue sky through some strands of his curly hair and a peak of red just above the top of his head and he feels his soul settle at the peaceful image.

“I don’t have a story to tell,” he gives back, albeit gently, and reaches out to chase away a pollen somersaulting through the mild evening air before it can settle on Peter’s face.

The boy scrunches up his nose indignantly at the hand so close to his face and almost goes cross-eyed trying to follow the sudden movement but never leans away. He doesn’t even flinch. If possible at all he leans closer, resting his head on Tony’s shoulder and angling it so he can look at the sky soaked in the softest of red.

Tony, on the other hand, keeps watching him and when he sees the sun set and the clouds fly past in his eyes he is certain that his boy holds the entire universe in his eyes. His universe at least.

“Everyone has a story to tell,” Peter retorts with a smile directed at nothing in particular and yet everything all at once. It’s the way he’s been ever since Tony has met him – smiling at the world, giving and shining and all Tony can do is hope that the world will smile back. “Just make one up.”

It sounds so easy when he says it, so confident and trusting and good.

But Tony is not the guy to make up kid- friendly bed time stories. Every story his mind has come up with so far has always ended in catastrophe. Every worst possible outcome will always come true in his head. His demons will always leak into his stories and he’s trying his hardest to keep them away from Peter – to keep the kid as sheltered as he possibly can even when he knows it’s futile with what he’s already seen.

Still, sometimes Peter’s optimism feels like the world has spared him from all the trauma Tony knows he’s gone through and he’s glad. He’s ridiculously glad that the kid can still get up every morning with hope in his eyes and love in his heart. He knows how hard it can be and it goes to show how much stronger Peter Parker is than he could have ever imagined.

With a small sigh he leans down and rests his cheek on top of Peter’s head. “I don’t have a very good imagination.”

“Liar,” Peter scoffs and the eye roll is evident in his tone, “Your imagination is unparalleled. It’s not like you’re leading R&D with someone else’s ideas. Or are you?” he asks mockingly shocked.

“It’s a different kind of imagination,” he argues halfheartedly, watching two shapeless clouds slowly morph together.

“Maybe,” Peter hums, “But it’s not really. And you have to be able to tell stories once you’re a dad, right?”

“I don’t think my newborn will care much about whatever it is I have to say. For all she cares I could be talking about the Henderson- Hasselbalch equation.”

It’s ridiculous but it makes Peter giggle and nestle into him more firmly with the movement so, in his books, he’s pretty sure he’s done something right. “Please don’t do that, Mister Stark. Since when do you talk chemistry anyway?”

“Since a certain someone,” he pokes his side, “Has started preparing his web fluids in my lab and I have to try to keep him from blowing it up.”

The joke is meant to distract and deflect but Peter, being Peter, doesn’t care much for Tony’s unwillingness to pad into new territory and simply ignores the jab. Instead he releases one of his hands from where they’re intertwined in his lap and points upwards, the borrowed hoodie sliding down just far enough to free his index finger but his thumb stays covered.

“Tell me what you see.”

“A hodgepodge of clouds.”

“That –“ Peter turns and forces Tony to lean back so he can meet his eyes, “Since when have you ever used the word hodgepodge.”

“It’s just a word, Pete.” He wraps an arm around his shoulder and pulls him back in, missing the way his curls were tickling his nose and his every word reverberating through his side just seconds ago.

“It’s really not but it’s also not a point.” He nestles back into his original position easily and nudges Tony, “Tell me a story about the hodgepodge of clouds.”

“Well,” he frowns and looks at the assortment of clouds ahead.

They’re illuminated bright red and the first thing that comes to mind is a fire – an inferno burning through the sky, flames leaking and stretching, unfurling their clutches to swallow his world whole. There’s grey clouds in front of it, like ashes of what used to be scattering around the place. The whole scene makes his blood run cold and his left hand itch. Instead of burying his fingernails into the ball of his hand he smooths out a wrinkle in Peter’s – well, his – hoodie.  

“They used to be warm air and now they’re water. The Rayleigh scattering makes sure it looks creepily red and the wind moves the whole thing.”

“For a genius,” Peter starts, “You’re pretty dumb sometimes.”

“Oh, like you’re one to talk, Mister ‘I can totally drink while doing a one handed handstand and balance a Lego figure on my feet’.”

“In my defense, Darth Vader made me do it,” the kid has the audacity to giggle like the scream of him falling and landing on his Lego isn’t still echoing through his nightmares every once in a while. “Anyway, since you’re being a disaster I am going to tell you a story about those clouds.”

Before Tony can give some smartass retort, Peter has already untucked himself from his embrace and folds his legs crisscross in front of him, rocking back and forth on top of one of the tallest buildings in New York City.

Frankly, Tony hates it but he keeps quiet, instead reciting all the security precautions he has taken and why this specific kid could definitely not fall off this specific skyscraper.

“The clouds at the front are kind of all grey and dull and sad. Those are the people lacking imagination. Old people, cruel people. People stuck in the past.” Peter shoots him a pointed look but then goes back to focus on the sky instead, “They’re trying to keep everything the way it is, the status quo if you will, trying to hide the bright minds and the hope that’s marching on behind them.”  

“But you see,” he smiles softly and plays with the sleeves of the dark blue hoodie, “Where the light is strongest, the grey is already starting to break and it’s obvious they won’t be able to hold them in much longer.”

“They scream love louder than the others can silence them. It’s the new generation marching up, demanding its rights and demanding change. It’s hope that’s spreading like a wildfire in their hearts and eventually it’s going to be stronger than the cold faceless mass of grey. It’s like a dawn of a new era where everything is light instead of darkness.”

“Maybe this is God’s way of showing us that our time will be soon and to keep being hopeful. Or maybe,” he shrugs almost bashfully,” it’s just a really beautiful hodgepodge of clouds.”

“Or maybe,” Tony weighs the words on his tongue, meeting the kid’s eyes and thanking whatever God or universe of fate it was that made them meet, “Maybe you are right and it’s hope. I like your story.”

“You do?”

“Well, except for the fact that apparently I’m part of the faceless grey mass that is trying to kill the hope. Yes, I did.”

Peter laughs, open and young and faithful, “Oh, you’re not. You just try to act like it sometimes but I think you’re one of the brightest lights and you’ll always fight for a better future, Mister Futurist.”

Without looking he leans back, trusting Tony to make sure he lands with his head in his lap and he curls into himself on the hard concrete like it is a mattress, cushioned only by the loose sweatshirt, facing the same direction again to keep watching the slowly moving clouds with a small yawn.

Tony joins him, fingers finding a spot just right behind Peter’s ear and falling into a familiar pattern of untangling his curls.

“Next story is on you, by the way.”

“I’ll try my very best.”

When he looks up again the grey clouds have parted and scattered and the red has turned into a hopeful yellowy-orange and he promises himself and the kid slowly drifting off to look at the world a little more like Peter does from now on.

-

here’s the clouds I saw that forced me to sit down and write this (those are like phone pics taken by someone who’s got no clue what they’re doing, don’t judge):

[johnclapperne]

Benching Isn’t Even That Cool But If You’re Gonna Do It Here’s How to Add 50 Pounds In 3 Months

If you’re still doing straight sets for 5×5, don’t be surprised when your bench press stops going up.

That’s not to knock five-sets. They’re great—and safe—for newbies. They’ll get you benching more than your bodyweight. So that’s nice. 

They probably won’t get you to 1.5x your bodyweight, and they definitely won’t get you to 2x. 

The fact is, if you want a better bench press, you need a better program. And that means you need to re-think some of your assumptions 

Now before we go any further, I want to be clear about one thing: this article is for intermediate to advanced trainees. If you’re a man who can’t bench at least 1.2x his bodyweight, or a woman who can’t bench at least .75x her bodyweight, you’re not ready for the program I’m about to lay out—although items 2 and 3 on the list might still be helpful to you.

If you’ve already made serious progress on your bench press, only to find that, to paraphrase Francois Rabelais, the appetite for gainz has grown with the eating, read on.

Here are the four secret weapons (and a program) to maximize your bench press.  Secret Weapon #1: Cluster Sets

Cluster sets are a specialized training technique in which sets are divided into several (usually three) mini-sets, with short intra-set rest periods between them. In this program, you’ll be using two different types of cluster sets for two different purposes: building strength and practicing your technique.

Strength Cluster Sets

For strength clusters sets, you’ll use a weight that’s roughly your 3-rep max, or around 90% of your one-rep max. 

Perform two reps, then re-rack the barbell. Rest 20 seconds, then grab the barbell and do two more reps. Re-rack and rest another 20 seconds, then perform one final rep. That’s one strength cluster set. You’ll do five reps total at a weight you could normally only lift for three reps.

The advantage of strength cluster sets is clear: you can lift heavy weights for greater volume than traditional strength training methods allow.

By lifting heavy, you’re recruiting your high-threshold motor units on every rep, rather than just the later reps in each set. By doing five reps per set, you’re able to get enough volume while keeping your workouts short.

Technique Cluster Sets

Technique cluster sets are designed a bit differently from strength cluster sets. They’re designed to let you perform a large number of reps with minimal fatigue, focusing intently on your technique with each and every rep.

You’ll be using a lower weight, roughly your 6-rep max or around 80% of your one-rep max. Set a timer for ten minutes. Do one rep, then re-rack the weight and rest 15 seconds before the next rep. Repeat until the timer goes off. 

As you start to get fatigued, raise the rest periods in five-second increments, to a maximum of 30 seconds. If you reach a point where you feel like you’re not back to your full strength after 30 seconds of rest, end the set early. 

The beauty of technique cluster sets is that in the space of ten minutes, you can perform about 20-30 reps, at a weight only slightly lower than you use in your working sets, all with good form, and without producing enough fatigue to interfere with your strength training.

By re-racking and resting between each rep, you’re able to practice the entire movement (including picking up and re-racking the weight) with each rep rather than once per set. And by taking a short break to collect your thoughts with each rep, you’re able to focus on your technique better. 

Secret Weapon #2: A Friend and a Cell Phone

Check yourself before you wreck yourself. By that, I mean, check your form…on video.

At least once a month, get a trusted bro to record footage of you training your bench press, preferably on one of your technique days. Have them capture a couple reps each from the front, rear, side, and 45-degree front/side angles. 

Review the footage after your workout, and review it again prior to the next few bench press sessions.  Specifically, make sure you’re doing the following:

Bar Path: A vertical bar path over the chest puts you at a mechanical disadvantage, making the bench press unnecessarily difficult, and causes shoulder impingement (i.e. you’ll get hurt at high weights). You should have the bar follow a slightly diagonal path, such that it’s over your chest at the bottom of the movement, but over your shoulders at the top.

Chest: Your chest should be raised towards the ceiling via arching your back (while keeping your butt on the bench!) and rotating your rib cage up slightly. This shortens the bar path and points your body so that you’ll naturally press at a slight diagonal.

Shoulders: Keep your shoulders tucked in. Squeeze your shoulder blades together like you’re trying to hold something between them. When you push the bar, your shoulders should be pressing into the bench, not pressing towards the floor on either side of the bench.

Grip: Keep the bar low (the bar should be resting on the heel of your hand, not mid-palm) and outside on your hands (you should feel most of the bar’s weight on the outer side of your hands, below your pinkie and directly above your wrist). That keeps your wrists straight and the bar directly above your wrist and forearm

Elbows: Your elbows should be tucked in so that they are directly below your wrists and they should stay in that position for the entire eccentric (descent) portion of the bench press. They should not be tucked in so far that they touch your torso at any point in the movement.

Elbows, Part 2: For the concentric (ascent) portion, things get slightly more complicated. The concentric should look like the eccentric in reverse, except that your elbows should flare out for a brief instant around the middle of the concentric portion. Done properly, this flare-out should be subtle enough that someone would have to be looking out for it to notice it.

Feet: Foot positioning is crucial for bracing the body and supporting leg drive. Your feet should be slightly behind your knees. There are two ways to do that: either your feet can be tucked under your thighs with the heel raised off the floor, or spread out to the sides and flat on the ground.

Leg Drive: The purpose of leg drive is not to directly aid in pushing the bar, and you shouldn’t be pushing upward with your legs. Instead, leg drive should push your body back towards your head. Done right, this helps keep your butt pressed into the bench while creating tension in the upper body, which helps the muscles of the upper body exert more force. Done wrong, it just makes your butt lift off the bench.

Consistency: The bar should be following the same path on every rep. It can be useful to touch the bar to your chest for this purpose; if it doesn’t touch your chest at the same place every time, you know you have a consistency issue.

Push Yourself Away from The Bar: This isn’t a specific technique fix so much as a mental technique. Instead of thinking about pressing the bar upward, imagine you’re pushing yourself away from the bar, down into the floor.

To Pause or Not to Pause

Pausing at the bottom of each rep saps your strength and deprives you of momentum, making it harder to lift the weight back up. If your only goal is to bench as much weight as possible, don’t do it.

However, pausing at the bottom does provide a good opportunity to spot-check your form. For that reason, you may want to pause at the bottom only on technique days, and only for the first few minutes of your technique workout.

On the other hand, if you’re training for a powerlifting meet or you just want to measure your max bench press in accordance with competitive powerlifting rules, you should always pause at the bottom, just as competition rules require. Train the way you compete. 

Secret Weapon #3: Elastic Bands

The standard bench press has one big flaw: an uneven strength curve. You’re weaker at the bottom of the motion than you are at the top. This sticking point at the bottom of the movement robs the bench press of much of its swolefication potential, particularly in the shoulders, which are maximally utilized at the top of the movement. 

Thankfully there is a way (or two) to fix this defect: variable resistance training.

By attaching chains or elastic bands to either end of the barbell, you can cause the level of resistance to decrease as the bar gets lower, and increase as it gets higher, evening out the strength curve. 

According to one study, this can double your strength and power gains compared to training with a standard bench press. 

You can use elastic bands, as they did in the study, or dangle chains from either end of the barbell. I strongly prefer bands, as they’re cheaper, quieter, and easy to carry in your gym bag, or to travel with.

Regardless of which you use, the bands or chains should provide about 20% of the total resistance. In other words, when the bar touches your chest it should weigh about 80% as much as it does when your elbows lock out at the top. 

So if you’re bench pressing 200 pounds, remove 40 pounds from the bar and use an elastic band that will provide roughly 40 pounds of resistance when raised to full extension. 

Secret Weapon #4: Auto-Regulation

Giving your body just the right amount of exercise is a tricky thing. Train with too little volume and intensity, and your progress will be slower than it could be, maybe even nonexistent. But push yourself too hard, and your training program is worse than useless.   

As you might have surmised, training too little is better than training too much. To that end, most training programs include more rest days than they need, and/or have pre-planned de-load weeks every four to six weeks. 

But there’s a whole family of techniques that can give your body precisely the optimal amount of growth stimulus it needs. They’re collectively known as autoregulation techniques and they’re the secret sauce that elite competitors use to accelerate their results.

In a nutshell, auto-regulation allows you to increase or decrease the training stimulus on the fly, mid-workout. And rather than making those decisions based on a subjective feeling or spur of the moment decision, auto-regulation use pre-planned rules to systematize this process. 

For this program, you’ll be using two such techniques (reactive de-loading and conditional contrast training): one for putting on the brakes and one for stepping on the gas.

Reactive De-Loading

The idea here is simple. When you fail to make the required number of reps on a set, you lower the weight for the remaining sets of that one exercise, just for the remainder of that workout. 

Additionally, the remaining sets will be performed at high-speed, allowing you to work on building explosive strength while minimizing time under tension, and therefore training fatigue.

Here’s how that works with cluster sets. In this program, you’ll be doing 3 sets of 2-2-1 clusters per workout. You’ll initiate a reactive de-load if you fail to hit five good reps- either you can’t complete the fifth rep, or the fifth rep is incredibly sloppy due to fatigue, or the fourth rep is extremely sloppy due to fatigue so you don’t even try for number five.

For the bench press, you’ll want to lower the weight by about 30% for the remaining sets.  You’ll also limit all remaining sets to four reps: a 2-1-1 cluster set, without that final rep. 

Example: you’re benching 225 pounds, but on the first set you fail to make the final rep.  You lower the weight to 165 pounds. The remaining two sets are performed as 2-1-1 cluster sets, at high speed.

Conditional Contrast Training

Now let’s consider the opposite scenario. Suppose you complete all fifteen planned reps, and after the last rep you feel like you could have kept going? That’s where you step on the gas. 

The way you do that is by incorporating post-activation potentiation, also known as contrast training.  PAP is a training method wherein a heavy, low-speed compound movement is paired with a low-weight explosive movement using the same movement pattern. In this case, the bench press with plyometric push-ups.

Here’s how you’ll be using it: when you complete your third and final strength cluster set, if you made all fifteen reps, and completed the last rep with good form, and you feel like you have enough left in you that you could do another set, immediately get on the floor and do a set of 5-6 plyometric pushups right next to the bench.

Now you have all the tools you need. 

Here are the workouts you’ll be doing.

You’ll be bench pressing three or four times a week, alternating between strength days and technique days. You’ll also be starting all of your workouts, including non-bench press workouts, with a warm-up specifically designed to support bench pressing.

The Warm-Up

Pushups: 10 reps

Wall stick-ups: 12 reps

Jump squats: 8 reps

Rear foot elevated kneeling hip flexor stretch: 10 reps per side

One-armed dumbbell rows: 8 per arm

Seated cable incline-decline press: 12 reps

Cobra pose: 4-5 reps, hold for 5-10 seconds each time

Here’s what’s going on with this warm-up: the pushups and cable presses prime your nervous system for the bench press, while the cable incline-decline press also helps to even out your chest, both from top to bottom and left to right.

The wall stick-ups, hip flexor stretch, and cobra pose will all improve your back and hip mobility, helping you put your back and lower body into the bench press.

If you’re doing a bodyweight workout at home, replace the cable incline/decline press with 8 pike pushups. I would also perform this workout once a day on non-workout days. 

Strength Workout

A1) Bench press strength cluster set – Sets: 3 – Reps: 2-2-1 – Rest: 20 seconds between mini-sets; 90-150 seconds after the last rep – Notes: Apply reactive de-loads and conditional contrast training as needed

A2) Goblet squat – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-10 – Rest: 90-150 seconds

B1) One-armed dumbbell row – Sets: 2 – Reps: 8 per arm – Rest: 30 seconds

B2) Dumbbell walking lunges – Sets: 2 – Reps: 8-12 – Rest: 30 seconds

B3) Dumbbell shoulder shrugs – Sets: 2 – Reps: 6-8 – Rest: 60 seconds

C1) Side plank – Sets: 2 – Time: to fatigue each side – Rest: 20-30 seconds

C2) Ab suction (on hands and knees) – Sets: 2 – Reps: 12-16 – Rest: 20-30 seconds

Note: on every exercise except the bench press, you should be stopping 2-3 reps short of failure. The idea here is to give the rest of your body enough of a workout to maintain muscle mass boost the testosterone and GH response from this workout, without compromising your recovery on the bench press. 

Technique Workout

A) Bench press technique cluster set – Weight: roughly your 6-rep max, or 10-15% less than what you use on strength days – Time: 10 minutes, or until fatigued – Rest: 15-30 seconds between reps.  Start at 15 seconds and raise by 5 seconds every few minutes.

B1) Yates bent row – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

B2) Military press – Sets: 3 – Reps: 6 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

C1) Barbell front squat – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-12 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

C2) Dumbbell hammer curls – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-10 per arm – Rest: 60-90 seconds

D1) Front plank – Sets: 2 – Time: to fatigue – Rest: 20-30 seconds

D2) Mountain climbers – Sets: 2 – Reps: 20-30 – Rest: 20-30 seconds

Note: you could replace everything from B1 onward with a different full-body workout if you want to. The important thing here is that you’re not overloading yourself by adding a bunch more chest and triceps work.   

The Schedule

You’ll be doing each of these workouts two days a week, which means you’ll be benching four days a week. To prevent overtraining, you shouldn’t be lifting heavy in the gym for any additional days, but I would add in a bodyweight workout for metabolic conditioning and to hit your slow-twitch fibers.

Here’s an example of how that would look for someone working a standard Monday-Friday schedule. 

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Strength workout Wed: Rest or brief cardio workout Thu: Technique workout Fri: Rest Sat: Strength workout Sun: Technique workout

Note: if you find yourself plateauing on this schedule, add two or three hundred extra calories on workout days, reduce bench pressing frequency to three times a week, and cut out all cardio, like this:

Week 1

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Strength workout Wed: Rest Thu: Technique workout Fri: Rest Sat: Strength workout Sun: Rest

Week 2

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Technique workout Wed: Rest Thu: Strength workout Fri: Bodyweight workout Sat: Rest Sun: Technique workout

Finally, once a month, add in an extra rest day and test your one-rep max on a day when it’s been three days since your last bench press workout.

This is how epic-level bros graduate to lifting epic-level weights.

You’ll work your ass off, your chest will ache, beads of creatine-flavored sweat will roll down your face, and you’ll grow. 

One Last Thing

If you’ve read this far, I’m going to assume you’re a devoted adept of the dark art of swoleomancy. Sup bro. 

As cool as they are, the techniques I’ve laid out here are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a whole world of advanced strength and hypertrophy methods out there.

I’ve put together a free guide to twelve of the most effective advanced practices from the science of human enlargement. It’s called The Dirty Dozen: 12 Techniques for Greater Gainz.  I’ve shown you two of these techniques so far, and this book will teach you ten more. Plus, you’ll learn not just how to do them, but if, when, and why to employ each one.

If you want to start customizing your workouts to deliver turbocharged results for your body, this book could be your ticket to Swolehalla.

Get your free copy of The Dirty Dozen: 12 Techniques for Greater Gainz now!

The post Benching Isn’t Even That Cool But If You’re Gonna Do It Here’s How to Add 50 Pounds In 3 Months appeared first on Roman Fitness Systems.

http://ift.tt/2uqRvWP

[almajonesnjna]

Benching Isn’t Even That Cool But If You’re Gonna Do It Here’s How to Add 50 Pounds In 3 Months

If you’re still doing straight sets for 5×5, don’t be surprised when your bench press stops going up.

That’s not to knock five-sets. They’re great—and safe—for newbies. They’ll get you benching more than your bodyweight. So that’s nice. 

They probably won’t get you to 1.5x your bodyweight, and they definitely won’t get you to 2x. 

The fact is, if you want a better bench press, you need a better program. And that means you need to re-think some of your assumptions 

Now before we go any further, I want to be clear about one thing: this article is for intermediate to advanced trainees. If you’re a man who can’t bench at least 1.2x his bodyweight, or a woman who can’t bench at least .75x her bodyweight, you’re not ready for the program I’m about to lay out—although items 2 and 3 on the list might still be helpful to you.

If you’ve already made serious progress on your bench press, only to find that, to paraphrase Francois Rabelais, the appetite for gainz has grown with the eating, read on.

Here are the four secret weapons (and a program) to maximize your bench press.  Secret Weapon #1: Cluster Sets

Cluster sets are a specialized training technique in which sets are divided into several (usually three) mini-sets, with short intra-set rest periods between them. In this program, you’ll be using two different types of cluster sets for two different purposes: building strength and practicing your technique.

Strength Cluster Sets

For strength clusters sets, you’ll use a weight that’s roughly your 3-rep max, or around 90% of your one-rep max. 

Perform two reps, then re-rack the barbell. Rest 20 seconds, then grab the barbell and do two more reps. Re-rack and rest another 20 seconds, then perform one final rep. That’s one strength cluster set. You’ll do five reps total at a weight you could normally only lift for three reps.

The advantage of strength cluster sets is clear: you can lift heavy weights for greater volume than traditional strength training methods allow.

By lifting heavy, you’re recruiting your high-threshold motor units on every rep, rather than just the later reps in each set. By doing five reps per set, you’re able to get enough volume while keeping your workouts short.

Technique Cluster Sets

Technique cluster sets are designed a bit differently from strength cluster sets. They’re designed to let you perform a large number of reps with minimal fatigue, focusing intently on your technique with each and every rep.

You’ll be using a lower weight, roughly your 6-rep max or around 80% of your one-rep max. Set a timer for ten minutes. Do one rep, then re-rack the weight and rest 15 seconds before the next rep. Repeat until the timer goes off. 

As you start to get fatigued, raise the rest periods in five-second increments, to a maximum of 30 seconds. If you reach a point where you feel like you’re not back to your full strength after 30 seconds of rest, end the set early. 

The beauty of technique cluster sets is that in the space of ten minutes, you can perform about 20-30 reps, at a weight only slightly lower than you use in your working sets, all with good form, and without producing enough fatigue to interfere with your strength training.

By re-racking and resting between each rep, you’re able to practice the entire movement (including picking up and re-racking the weight) with each rep rather than once per set. And by taking a short break to collect your thoughts with each rep, you’re able to focus on your technique better. 

Secret Weapon #2: A Friend and a Cell Phone

Check yourself before you wreck yourself. By that, I mean, check your form…on video.

At least once a month, get a trusted bro to record footage of you training your bench press, preferably on one of your technique days. Have them capture a couple reps each from the front, rear, side, and 45-degree front/side angles. 

Review the footage after your workout, and review it again prior to the next few bench press sessions.  Specifically, make sure you’re doing the following:

Bar Path: A vertical bar path over the chest puts you at a mechanical disadvantage, making the bench press unnecessarily difficult, and causes shoulder impingement (i.e. you’ll get hurt at high weights). You should have the bar follow a slightly diagonal path, such that it’s over your chest at the bottom of the movement, but over your shoulders at the top.

Chest: Your chest should be raised towards the ceiling via arching your back (while keeping your butt on the bench!) and rotating your rib cage up slightly. This shortens the bar path and points your body so that you’ll naturally press at a slight diagonal.

Shoulders: Keep your shoulders tucked in. Squeeze your shoulder blades together like you’re trying to hold something between them. When you push the bar, your shoulders should be pressing into the bench, not pressing towards the floor on either side of the bench.

Grip: Keep the bar low (the bar should be resting on the heel of your hand, not mid-palm) and outside on your hands (you should feel most of the bar’s weight on the outer side of your hands, below your pinkie and directly above your wrist). That keeps your wrists straight and the bar directly above your wrist and forearm

Elbows: Your elbows should be tucked in so that they are directly below your wrists and they should stay in that position for the entire eccentric (descent) portion of the bench press. They should not be tucked in so far that they touch your torso at any point in the movement.

Elbows, Part 2: For the concentric (ascent) portion, things get slightly more complicated. The concentric should look like the eccentric in reverse, except that your elbows should flare out for a brief instant around the middle of the concentric portion. Done properly, this flare-out should be subtle enough that someone would have to be looking out for it to notice it.

Feet: Foot positioning is crucial for bracing the body and supporting leg drive. Your feet should be slightly behind your knees. There are two ways to do that: either your feet can be tucked under your thighs with the heel raised off the floor, or spread out to the sides and flat on the ground.

Leg Drive: The purpose of leg drive is not to directly aid in pushing the bar, and you shouldn’t be pushing upward with your legs. Instead, leg drive should push your body back towards your head. Done right, this helps keep your butt pressed into the bench while creating tension in the upper body, which helps the muscles of the upper body exert more force. Done wrong, it just makes your butt lift off the bench.

Consistency: The bar should be following the same path on every rep. It can be useful to touch the bar to your chest for this purpose; if it doesn’t touch your chest at the same place every time, you know you have a consistency issue.

Push Yourself Away from The Bar: This isn’t a specific technique fix so much as a mental technique. Instead of thinking about pressing the bar upward, imagine you’re pushing yourself away from the bar, down into the floor.

To Pause or Not to Pause

Pausing at the bottom of each rep saps your strength and deprives you of momentum, making it harder to lift the weight back up. If your only goal is to bench as much weight as possible, don’t do it.

However, pausing at the bottom does provide a good opportunity to spot-check your form. For that reason, you may want to pause at the bottom only on technique days, and only for the first few minutes of your technique workout.

On the other hand, if you’re training for a powerlifting meet or you just want to measure your max bench press in accordance with competitive powerlifting rules, you should always pause at the bottom, just as competition rules require. Train the way you compete. 

Secret Weapon #3: Elastic Bands

The standard bench press has one big flaw: an uneven strength curve. You’re weaker at the bottom of the motion than you are at the top. This sticking point at the bottom of the movement robs the bench press of much of its swolefication potential, particularly in the shoulders, which are maximally utilized at the top of the movement. 

Thankfully there is a way (or two) to fix this defect: variable resistance training.

By attaching chains or elastic bands to either end of the barbell, you can cause the level of resistance to decrease as the bar gets lower, and increase as it gets higher, evening out the strength curve. 

According to one study, this can double your strength and power gains compared to training with a standard bench press. 

You can use elastic bands, as they did in the study, or dangle chains from either end of the barbell. I strongly prefer bands, as they’re cheaper, quieter, and easy to carry in your gym bag, or to travel with.

Regardless of which you use, the bands or chains should provide about 20% of the total resistance. In other words, when the bar touches your chest it should weigh about 80% as much as it does when your elbows lock out at the top. 

So if you’re bench pressing 200 pounds, remove 40 pounds from the bar and use an elastic band that will provide roughly 40 pounds of resistance when raised to full extension. 

Secret Weapon #4: Auto-Regulation

Giving your body just the right amount of exercise is a tricky thing. Train with too little volume and intensity, and your progress will be slower than it could be, maybe even nonexistent. But push yourself too hard, and your training program is worse than useless.   

As you might have surmised, training too little is better than training too much. To that end, most training programs include more rest days than they need, and/or have pre-planned de-load weeks every four to six weeks. 

But there’s a whole family of techniques that can give your body precisely the optimal amount of growth stimulus it needs. They’re collectively known as autoregulation techniques and they’re the secret sauce that elite competitors use to accelerate their results.

In a nutshell, auto-regulation allows you to increase or decrease the training stimulus on the fly, mid-workout. And rather than making those decisions based on a subjective feeling or spur of the moment decision, auto-regulation use pre-planned rules to systematize this process. 

For this program, you’ll be using two such techniques (reactive de-loading and conditional contrast training): one for putting on the brakes and one for stepping on the gas.

Reactive De-Loading

The idea here is simple. When you fail to make the required number of reps on a set, you lower the weight for the remaining sets of that one exercise, just for the remainder of that workout. 

Additionally, the remaining sets will be performed at high-speed, allowing you to work on building explosive strength while minimizing time under tension, and therefore training fatigue.

Here’s how that works with cluster sets. In this program, you’ll be doing 3 sets of 2-2-1 clusters per workout. You’ll initiate a reactive de-load if you fail to hit five good reps- either you can’t complete the fifth rep, or the fifth rep is incredibly sloppy due to fatigue, or the fourth rep is extremely sloppy due to fatigue so you don’t even try for number five.

For the bench press, you’ll want to lower the weight by about 30% for the remaining sets.  You’ll also limit all remaining sets to four reps: a 2-1-1 cluster set, without that final rep. 

Example: you’re benching 225 pounds, but on the first set you fail to make the final rep.  You lower the weight to 165 pounds. The remaining two sets are performed as 2-1-1 cluster sets, at high speed.

Conditional Contrast Training

Now let’s consider the opposite scenario. Suppose you complete all fifteen planned reps, and after the last rep you feel like you could have kept going? That’s where you step on the gas. 

The way you do that is by incorporating post-activation potentiation, also known as contrast training.  PAP is a training method wherein a heavy, low-speed compound movement is paired with a low-weight explosive movement using the same movement pattern. In this case, the bench press with plyometric push-ups.

Here’s how you’ll be using it: when you complete your third and final strength cluster set, if you made all fifteen reps, and completed the last rep with good form, and you feel like you have enough left in you that you could do another set, immediately get on the floor and do a set of 5-6 plyometric pushups right next to the bench.

Now you have all the tools you need. 

Here are the workouts you’ll be doing.

You’ll be bench pressing three or four times a week, alternating between strength days and technique days. You’ll also be starting all of your workouts, including non-bench press workouts, with a warm-up specifically designed to support bench pressing.

The Warm-Up

Pushups: 10 reps

Wall stick-ups: 12 reps

Jump squats: 8 reps

Rear foot elevated kneeling hip flexor stretch: 10 reps per side

One-armed dumbbell rows: 8 per arm

Seated cable incline-decline press: 12 reps

Cobra pose: 4-5 reps, hold for 5-10 seconds each time

Here’s what’s going on with this warm-up: the pushups and cable presses prime your nervous system for the bench press, while the cable incline-decline press also helps to even out your chest, both from top to bottom and left to right.

The wall stick-ups, hip flexor stretch, and cobra pose will all improve your back and hip mobility, helping you put your back and lower body into the bench press.

If you’re doing a bodyweight workout at home, replace the cable incline/decline press with 8 pike pushups. I would also perform this workout once a day on non-workout days. 

Strength Workout

A1) Bench press strength cluster set – Sets: 3 – Reps: 2-2-1 – Rest: 20 seconds between mini-sets; 90-150 seconds after the last rep – Notes: Apply reactive de-loads and conditional contrast training as needed

A2) Goblet squat – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-10 – Rest: 90-150 seconds

B1) One-armed dumbbell row – Sets: 2 – Reps: 8 per arm – Rest: 30 seconds

B2) Dumbbell walking lunges – Sets: 2 – Reps: 8-12 – Rest: 30 seconds

B3) Dumbbell shoulder shrugs – Sets: 2 – Reps: 6-8 – Rest: 60 seconds

C1) Side plank – Sets: 2 – Time: to fatigue each side – Rest: 20-30 seconds

C2) Ab suction (on hands and knees) – Sets: 2 – Reps: 12-16 – Rest: 20-30 seconds

Note: on every exercise except the bench press, you should be stopping 2-3 reps short of failure. The idea here is to give the rest of your body enough of a workout to maintain muscle mass boost the testosterone and GH response from this workout, without compromising your recovery on the bench press. 

Technique Workout

A) Bench press technique cluster set – Weight: roughly your 6-rep max, or 10-15% less than what you use on strength days – Time: 10 minutes, or until fatigued – Rest: 15-30 seconds between reps.  Start at 15 seconds and raise by 5 seconds every few minutes.

B1) Yates bent row – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

B2) Military press – Sets: 3 – Reps: 6 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

C1) Barbell front squat – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-12 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

C2) Dumbbell hammer curls – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-10 per arm – Rest: 60-90 seconds

D1) Front plank – Sets: 2 – Time: to fatigue – Rest: 20-30 seconds

D2) Mountain climbers – Sets: 2 – Reps: 20-30 – Rest: 20-30 seconds

Note: you could replace everything from B1 onward with a different full-body workout if you want to. The important thing here is that you’re not overloading yourself by adding a bunch more chest and triceps work.   

The Schedule

You’ll be doing each of these workouts two days a week, which means you’ll be benching four days a week. To prevent overtraining, you shouldn’t be lifting heavy in the gym for any additional days, but I would add in a bodyweight workout for metabolic conditioning and to hit your slow-twitch fibers.

Here’s an example of how that would look for someone working a standard Monday-Friday schedule. 

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Strength workout Wed: Rest or brief cardio workout Thu: Technique workout Fri: Rest Sat: Strength workout Sun: Technique workout

Note: if you find yourself plateauing on this schedule, add two or three hundred extra calories on workout days, reduce bench pressing frequency to three times a week, and cut out all cardio, like this:

Week 1

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Strength workout Wed: Rest Thu: Technique workout Fri: Rest Sat: Strength workout Sun: Rest

Week 2

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Technique workout Wed: Rest Thu: Strength workout Fri: Bodyweight workout Sat: Rest Sun: Technique workout

Finally, once a month, add in an extra rest day and test your one-rep max on a day when it’s been three days since your last bench press workout.

This is how epic-level bros graduate to lifting epic-level weights.

You’ll work your ass off, your chest will ache, beads of creatine-flavored sweat will roll down your face, and you’ll grow. 

One Last Thing

If you’ve read this far, I’m going to assume you’re a devoted adept of the dark art of swoleomancy. Sup bro. 

As cool as they are, the techniques I’ve laid out here are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a whole world of advanced strength and hypertrophy methods out there.

I’ve put together a free guide to twelve of the most effective advanced practices from the science of human enlargement. It’s called The Dirty Dozen: 12 Techniques for Greater Gainz.  I’ve shown you two of these techniques so far, and this book will teach you ten more. Plus, you’ll learn not just how to do them, but if, when, and why to employ each one.

If you want to start customizing your workouts to deliver turbocharged results for your body, this book could be your ticket to Swolehalla.

Get your free copy of The Dirty Dozen: 12 Techniques for Greater Gainz now!

The post Benching Isn’t Even That Cool But If You’re Gonna Do It Here’s How to Add 50 Pounds In 3 Months appeared first on Roman Fitness Systems.

http://ift.tt/2uqRvWP

[albertcaldwellne]

Benching Isn’t Even That Cool But If You’re Gonna Do It Here’s How to Add 50 Pounds In 3 Months

If you’re still doing straight sets for 5×5, don’t be surprised when your bench press stops going up.

That’s not to knock five-sets. They’re great—and safe—for newbies. They’ll get you benching more than your bodyweight. So that’s nice. 

They probably won’t get you to 1.5x your bodyweight, and they definitely won’t get you to 2x. 

The fact is, if you want a better bench press, you need a better program. And that means you need to re-think some of your assumptions 

Now before we go any further, I want to be clear about one thing: this article is for intermediate to advanced trainees. If you’re a man who can’t bench at least 1.2x his bodyweight, or a woman who can’t bench at least .75x her bodyweight, you’re not ready for the program I’m about to lay out—although items 2 and 3 on the list might still be helpful to you.

If you’ve already made serious progress on your bench press, only to find that, to paraphrase Francois Rabelais, the appetite for gainz has grown with the eating, read on.

Here are the four secret weapons (and a program) to maximize your bench press.  Secret Weapon #1: Cluster Sets

Cluster sets are a specialized training technique in which sets are divided into several (usually three) mini-sets, with short intra-set rest periods between them. In this program, you’ll be using two different types of cluster sets for two different purposes: building strength and practicing your technique.

Strength Cluster Sets

For strength clusters sets, you’ll use a weight that’s roughly your 3-rep max, or around 90% of your one-rep max. 

Perform two reps, then re-rack the barbell. Rest 20 seconds, then grab the barbell and do two more reps. Re-rack and rest another 20 seconds, then perform one final rep. That’s one strength cluster set. You’ll do five reps total at a weight you could normally only lift for three reps.

The advantage of strength cluster sets is clear: you can lift heavy weights for greater volume than traditional strength training methods allow.

By lifting heavy, you’re recruiting your high-threshold motor units on every rep, rather than just the later reps in each set. By doing five reps per set, you’re able to get enough volume while keeping your workouts short.

Technique Cluster Sets

Technique cluster sets are designed a bit differently from strength cluster sets. They’re designed to let you perform a large number of reps with minimal fatigue, focusing intently on your technique with each and every rep.

You’ll be using a lower weight, roughly your 6-rep max or around 80% of your one-rep max. Set a timer for ten minutes. Do one rep, then re-rack the weight and rest 15 seconds before the next rep. Repeat until the timer goes off. 

As you start to get fatigued, raise the rest periods in five-second increments, to a maximum of 30 seconds. If you reach a point where you feel like you’re not back to your full strength after 30 seconds of rest, end the set early. 

The beauty of technique cluster sets is that in the space of ten minutes, you can perform about 20-30 reps, at a weight only slightly lower than you use in your working sets, all with good form, and without producing enough fatigue to interfere with your strength training.

By re-racking and resting between each rep, you’re able to practice the entire movement (including picking up and re-racking the weight) with each rep rather than once per set. And by taking a short break to collect your thoughts with each rep, you’re able to focus on your technique better. 

Secret Weapon #2: A Friend and a Cell Phone

Check yourself before you wreck yourself. By that, I mean, check your form…on video.

At least once a month, get a trusted bro to record footage of you training your bench press, preferably on one of your technique days. Have them capture a couple reps each from the front, rear, side, and 45-degree front/side angles. 

Review the footage after your workout, and review it again prior to the next few bench press sessions.  Specifically, make sure you’re doing the following:

Bar Path: A vertical bar path over the chest puts you at a mechanical disadvantage, making the bench press unnecessarily difficult, and causes shoulder impingement (i.e. you’ll get hurt at high weights). You should have the bar follow a slightly diagonal path, such that it’s over your chest at the bottom of the movement, but over your shoulders at the top.

Chest: Your chest should be raised towards the ceiling via arching your back (while keeping your butt on the bench!) and rotating your rib cage up slightly. This shortens the bar path and points your body so that you’ll naturally press at a slight diagonal.

Shoulders: Keep your shoulders tucked in. Squeeze your shoulder blades together like you’re trying to hold something between them. When you push the bar, your shoulders should be pressing into the bench, not pressing towards the floor on either side of the bench.

Grip: Keep the bar low (the bar should be resting on the heel of your hand, not mid-palm) and outside on your hands (you should feel most of the bar’s weight on the outer side of your hands, below your pinkie and directly above your wrist). That keeps your wrists straight and the bar directly above your wrist and forearm

Elbows: Your elbows should be tucked in so that they are directly below your wrists and they should stay in that position for the entire eccentric (descent) portion of the bench press. They should not be tucked in so far that they touch your torso at any point in the movement.

Elbows, Part 2: For the concentric (ascent) portion, things get slightly more complicated. The concentric should look like the eccentric in reverse, except that your elbows should flare out for a brief instant around the middle of the concentric portion. Done properly, this flare-out should be subtle enough that someone would have to be looking out for it to notice it.

Feet: Foot positioning is crucial for bracing the body and supporting leg drive. Your feet should be slightly behind your knees. There are two ways to do that: either your feet can be tucked under your thighs with the heel raised off the floor, or spread out to the sides and flat on the ground.

Leg Drive: The purpose of leg drive is not to directly aid in pushing the bar, and you shouldn’t be pushing upward with your legs. Instead, leg drive should push your body back towards your head. Done right, this helps keep your butt pressed into the bench while creating tension in the upper body, which helps the muscles of the upper body exert more force. Done wrong, it just makes your butt lift off the bench.

Consistency: The bar should be following the same path on every rep. It can be useful to touch the bar to your chest for this purpose; if it doesn’t touch your chest at the same place every time, you know you have a consistency issue.

Push Yourself Away from The Bar: This isn’t a specific technique fix so much as a mental technique. Instead of thinking about pressing the bar upward, imagine you’re pushing yourself away from the bar, down into the floor.

To Pause or Not to Pause

Pausing at the bottom of each rep saps your strength and deprives you of momentum, making it harder to lift the weight back up. If your only goal is to bench as much weight as possible, don’t do it.

However, pausing at the bottom does provide a good opportunity to spot-check your form. For that reason, you may want to pause at the bottom only on technique days, and only for the first few minutes of your technique workout.

On the other hand, if you’re training for a powerlifting meet or you just want to measure your max bench press in accordance with competitive powerlifting rules, you should always pause at the bottom, just as competition rules require. Train the way you compete. 

Secret Weapon #3: Elastic Bands

The standard bench press has one big flaw: an uneven strength curve. You’re weaker at the bottom of the motion than you are at the top. This sticking point at the bottom of the movement robs the bench press of much of its swolefication potential, particularly in the shoulders, which are maximally utilized at the top of the movement. 

Thankfully there is a way (or two) to fix this defect: variable resistance training.

By attaching chains or elastic bands to either end of the barbell, you can cause the level of resistance to decrease as the bar gets lower, and increase as it gets higher, evening out the strength curve. 

According to one study, this can double your strength and power gains compared to training with a standard bench press. 

You can use elastic bands, as they did in the study, or dangle chains from either end of the barbell. I strongly prefer bands, as they’re cheaper, quieter, and easy to carry in your gym bag, or to travel with.

Regardless of which you use, the bands or chains should provide about 20% of the total resistance. In other words, when the bar touches your chest it should weigh about 80% as much as it does when your elbows lock out at the top. 

So if you’re bench pressing 200 pounds, remove 40 pounds from the bar and use an elastic band that will provide roughly 40 pounds of resistance when raised to full extension. 

Secret Weapon #4: Auto-Regulation

Giving your body just the right amount of exercise is a tricky thing. Train with too little volume and intensity, and your progress will be slower than it could be, maybe even nonexistent. But push yourself too hard, and your training program is worse than useless.   

As you might have surmised, training too little is better than training too much. To that end, most training programs include more rest days than they need, and/or have pre-planned de-load weeks every four to six weeks. 

But there’s a whole family of techniques that can give your body precisely the optimal amount of growth stimulus it needs. They’re collectively known as autoregulation techniques and they’re the secret sauce that elite competitors use to accelerate their results.

In a nutshell, auto-regulation allows you to increase or decrease the training stimulus on the fly, mid-workout. And rather than making those decisions based on a subjective feeling or spur of the moment decision, auto-regulation use pre-planned rules to systematize this process. 

For this program, you’ll be using two such techniques (reactive de-loading and conditional contrast training): one for putting on the brakes and one for stepping on the gas.

Reactive De-Loading

The idea here is simple. When you fail to make the required number of reps on a set, you lower the weight for the remaining sets of that one exercise, just for the remainder of that workout. 

Additionally, the remaining sets will be performed at high-speed, allowing you to work on building explosive strength while minimizing time under tension, and therefore training fatigue.

Here’s how that works with cluster sets. In this program, you’ll be doing 3 sets of 2-2-1 clusters per workout. You’ll initiate a reactive de-load if you fail to hit five good reps- either you can’t complete the fifth rep, or the fifth rep is incredibly sloppy due to fatigue, or the fourth rep is extremely sloppy due to fatigue so you don’t even try for number five.

For the bench press, you’ll want to lower the weight by about 30% for the remaining sets.  You’ll also limit all remaining sets to four reps: a 2-1-1 cluster set, without that final rep. 

Example: you’re benching 225 pounds, but on the first set you fail to make the final rep.  You lower the weight to 165 pounds. The remaining two sets are performed as 2-1-1 cluster sets, at high speed.

Conditional Contrast Training

Now let’s consider the opposite scenario. Suppose you complete all fifteen planned reps, and after the last rep you feel like you could have kept going? That’s where you step on the gas. 

The way you do that is by incorporating post-activation potentiation, also known as contrast training.  PAP is a training method wherein a heavy, low-speed compound movement is paired with a low-weight explosive movement using the same movement pattern. In this case, the bench press with plyometric push-ups.

Here’s how you’ll be using it: when you complete your third and final strength cluster set, if you made all fifteen reps, and completed the last rep with good form, and you feel like you have enough left in you that you could do another set, immediately get on the floor and do a set of 5-6 plyometric pushups right next to the bench.

Now you have all the tools you need. 

Here are the workouts you’ll be doing.

You’ll be bench pressing three or four times a week, alternating between strength days and technique days. You’ll also be starting all of your workouts, including non-bench press workouts, with a warm-up specifically designed to support bench pressing.

The Warm-Up

Pushups: 10 reps

Wall stick-ups: 12 reps

Jump squats: 8 reps

Rear foot elevated kneeling hip flexor stretch: 10 reps per side

One-armed dumbbell rows: 8 per arm

Seated cable incline-decline press: 12 reps

Cobra pose: 4-5 reps, hold for 5-10 seconds each time

Here’s what’s going on with this warm-up: the pushups and cable presses prime your nervous system for the bench press, while the cable incline-decline press also helps to even out your chest, both from top to bottom and left to right.

The wall stick-ups, hip flexor stretch, and cobra pose will all improve your back and hip mobility, helping you put your back and lower body into the bench press.

If you’re doing a bodyweight workout at home, replace the cable incline/decline press with 8 pike pushups. I would also perform this workout once a day on non-workout days. 

Strength Workout

A1) Bench press strength cluster set – Sets: 3 – Reps: 2-2-1 – Rest: 20 seconds between mini-sets; 90-150 seconds after the last rep – Notes: Apply reactive de-loads and conditional contrast training as needed

A2) Goblet squat – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-10 – Rest: 90-150 seconds

B1) One-armed dumbbell row – Sets: 2 – Reps: 8 per arm – Rest: 30 seconds

B2) Dumbbell walking lunges – Sets: 2 – Reps: 8-12 – Rest: 30 seconds

B3) Dumbbell shoulder shrugs – Sets: 2 – Reps: 6-8 – Rest: 60 seconds

C1) Side plank – Sets: 2 – Time: to fatigue each side – Rest: 20-30 seconds

C2) Ab suction (on hands and knees) – Sets: 2 – Reps: 12-16 – Rest: 20-30 seconds

Note: on every exercise except the bench press, you should be stopping 2-3 reps short of failure. The idea here is to give the rest of your body enough of a workout to maintain muscle mass boost the testosterone and GH response from this workout, without compromising your recovery on the bench press. 

Technique Workout

A) Bench press technique cluster set – Weight: roughly your 6-rep max, or 10-15% less than what you use on strength days – Time: 10 minutes, or until fatigued – Rest: 15-30 seconds between reps.  Start at 15 seconds and raise by 5 seconds every few minutes.

B1) Yates bent row – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

B2) Military press – Sets: 3 – Reps: 6 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

C1) Barbell front squat – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-12 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

C2) Dumbbell hammer curls – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-10 per arm – Rest: 60-90 seconds

D1) Front plank – Sets: 2 – Time: to fatigue – Rest: 20-30 seconds

D2) Mountain climbers – Sets: 2 – Reps: 20-30 – Rest: 20-30 seconds

Note: you could replace everything from B1 onward with a different full-body workout if you want to. The important thing here is that you’re not overloading yourself by adding a bunch more chest and triceps work.   

The Schedule

You’ll be doing each of these workouts two days a week, which means you’ll be benching four days a week. To prevent overtraining, you shouldn’t be lifting heavy in the gym for any additional days, but I would add in a bodyweight workout for metabolic conditioning and to hit your slow-twitch fibers.

Here’s an example of how that would look for someone working a standard Monday-Friday schedule. 

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Strength workout Wed: Rest or brief cardio workout Thu: Technique workout Fri: Rest Sat: Strength workout Sun: Technique workout

Note: if you find yourself plateauing on this schedule, add two or three hundred extra calories on workout days, reduce bench pressing frequency to three times a week, and cut out all cardio, like this:

Week 1

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Strength workout Wed: Rest Thu: Technique workout Fri: Rest Sat: Strength workout Sun: Rest

Week 2

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Technique workout Wed: Rest Thu: Strength workout Fri: Bodyweight workout Sat: Rest Sun: Technique workout

Finally, once a month, add in an extra rest day and test your one-rep max on a day when it’s been three days since your last bench press workout.

This is how epic-level bros graduate to lifting epic-level weights.

You’ll work your ass off, your chest will ache, beads of creatine-flavored sweat will roll down your face, and you’ll grow. 

One Last Thing

If you’ve read this far, I’m going to assume you’re a devoted adept of the dark art of swoleomancy. Sup bro. 

As cool as they are, the techniques I’ve laid out here are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a whole world of advanced strength and hypertrophy methods out there.

I’ve put together a free guide to twelve of the most effective advanced practices from the science of human enlargement. It’s called The Dirty Dozen: 12 Techniques for Greater Gainz.  I’ve shown you two of these techniques so far, and this book will teach you ten more. Plus, you’ll learn not just how to do them, but if, when, and why to employ each one.

If you want to start customizing your workouts to deliver turbocharged results for your body, this book could be your ticket to Swolehalla.

Get your free copy of The Dirty Dozen: 12 Techniques for Greater Gainz now!

The post Benching Isn’t Even That Cool But If You’re Gonna Do It Here’s How to Add 50 Pounds In 3 Months appeared first on Roman Fitness Systems.

http://ift.tt/2uqRvWP

[neilmillerne]

Benching Isn’t Even That Cool But If You’re Gonna Do It Here’s How to Add 50 Pounds In 3 Months

If you’re still doing straight sets for 5×5, don’t be surprised when your bench press stops going up.

That’s not to knock five-sets. They’re great—and safe—for newbies. They’ll get you benching more than your bodyweight. So that’s nice. 

They probably won’t get you to 1.5x your bodyweight, and they definitely won’t get you to 2x. 

The fact is, if you want a better bench press, you need a better program. And that means you need to re-think some of your assumptions 

Now before we go any further, I want to be clear about one thing: this article is for intermediate to advanced trainees. If you’re a man who can’t bench at least 1.2x his bodyweight, or a woman who can’t bench at least .75x her bodyweight, you’re not ready for the program I’m about to lay out—although items 2 and 3 on the list might still be helpful to you.

If you’ve already made serious progress on your bench press, only to find that, to paraphrase Francois Rabelais, the appetite for gainz has grown with the eating, read on.

Here are the four secret weapons (and a program) to maximize your bench press.  Secret Weapon #1: Cluster Sets

Cluster sets are a specialized training technique in which sets are divided into several (usually three) mini-sets, with short intra-set rest periods between them. In this program, you’ll be using two different types of cluster sets for two different purposes: building strength and practicing your technique.

Strength Cluster Sets

For strength clusters sets, you’ll use a weight that’s roughly your 3-rep max, or around 90% of your one-rep max. 

Perform two reps, then re-rack the barbell. Rest 20 seconds, then grab the barbell and do two more reps. Re-rack and rest another 20 seconds, then perform one final rep. That’s one strength cluster set. You’ll do five reps total at a weight you could normally only lift for three reps.

The advantage of strength cluster sets is clear: you can lift heavy weights for greater volume than traditional strength training methods allow.

By lifting heavy, you’re recruiting your high-threshold motor units on every rep, rather than just the later reps in each set. By doing five reps per set, you’re able to get enough volume while keeping your workouts short.

Technique Cluster Sets

Technique cluster sets are designed a bit differently from strength cluster sets. They’re designed to let you perform a large number of reps with minimal fatigue, focusing intently on your technique with each and every rep.

You’ll be using a lower weight, roughly your 6-rep max or around 80% of your one-rep max. Set a timer for ten minutes. Do one rep, then re-rack the weight and rest 15 seconds before the next rep. Repeat until the timer goes off. 

As you start to get fatigued, raise the rest periods in five-second increments, to a maximum of 30 seconds. If you reach a point where you feel like you’re not back to your full strength after 30 seconds of rest, end the set early. 

The beauty of technique cluster sets is that in the space of ten minutes, you can perform about 20-30 reps, at a weight only slightly lower than you use in your working sets, all with good form, and without producing enough fatigue to interfere with your strength training.

By re-racking and resting between each rep, you’re able to practice the entire movement (including picking up and re-racking the weight) with each rep rather than once per set. And by taking a short break to collect your thoughts with each rep, you’re able to focus on your technique better. 

Secret Weapon #2: A Friend and a Cell Phone

Check yourself before you wreck yourself. By that, I mean, check your form…on video.

At least once a month, get a trusted bro to record footage of you training your bench press, preferably on one of your technique days. Have them capture a couple reps each from the front, rear, side, and 45-degree front/side angles. 

Review the footage after your workout, and review it again prior to the next few bench press sessions.  Specifically, make sure you’re doing the following:

Bar Path: A vertical bar path over the chest puts you at a mechanical disadvantage, making the bench press unnecessarily difficult, and causes shoulder impingement (i.e. you’ll get hurt at high weights). You should have the bar follow a slightly diagonal path, such that it’s over your chest at the bottom of the movement, but over your shoulders at the top.

Chest: Your chest should be raised towards the ceiling via arching your back (while keeping your butt on the bench!) and rotating your rib cage up slightly. This shortens the bar path and points your body so that you’ll naturally press at a slight diagonal.

Shoulders: Keep your shoulders tucked in. Squeeze your shoulder blades together like you’re trying to hold something between them. When you push the bar, your shoulders should be pressing into the bench, not pressing towards the floor on either side of the bench.

Grip: Keep the bar low (the bar should be resting on the heel of your hand, not mid-palm) and outside on your hands (you should feel most of the bar’s weight on the outer side of your hands, below your pinkie and directly above your wrist). That keeps your wrists straight and the bar directly above your wrist and forearm

Elbows: Your elbows should be tucked in so that they are directly below your wrists and they should stay in that position for the entire eccentric (descent) portion of the bench press. They should not be tucked in so far that they touch your torso at any point in the movement.

Elbows, Part 2: For the concentric (ascent) portion, things get slightly more complicated. The concentric should look like the eccentric in reverse, except that your elbows should flare out for a brief instant around the middle of the concentric portion. Done properly, this flare-out should be subtle enough that someone would have to be looking out for it to notice it.

Feet: Foot positioning is crucial for bracing the body and supporting leg drive. Your feet should be slightly behind your knees. There are two ways to do that: either your feet can be tucked under your thighs with the heel raised off the floor, or spread out to the sides and flat on the ground.

Leg Drive: The purpose of leg drive is not to directly aid in pushing the bar, and you shouldn’t be pushing upward with your legs. Instead, leg drive should push your body back towards your head. Done right, this helps keep your butt pressed into the bench while creating tension in the upper body, which helps the muscles of the upper body exert more force. Done wrong, it just makes your butt lift off the bench.

Consistency: The bar should be following the same path on every rep. It can be useful to touch the bar to your chest for this purpose; if it doesn’t touch your chest at the same place every time, you know you have a consistency issue.

Push Yourself Away from The Bar: This isn’t a specific technique fix so much as a mental technique. Instead of thinking about pressing the bar upward, imagine you’re pushing yourself away from the bar, down into the floor.

To Pause or Not to Pause

Pausing at the bottom of each rep saps your strength and deprives you of momentum, making it harder to lift the weight back up. If your only goal is to bench as much weight as possible, don’t do it.

However, pausing at the bottom does provide a good opportunity to spot-check your form. For that reason, you may want to pause at the bottom only on technique days, and only for the first few minutes of your technique workout.

On the other hand, if you’re training for a powerlifting meet or you just want to measure your max bench press in accordance with competitive powerlifting rules, you should always pause at the bottom, just as competition rules require. Train the way you compete. 

Secret Weapon #3: Elastic Bands

The standard bench press has one big flaw: an uneven strength curve. You’re weaker at the bottom of the motion than you are at the top. This sticking point at the bottom of the movement robs the bench press of much of its swolefication potential, particularly in the shoulders, which are maximally utilized at the top of the movement. 

Thankfully there is a way (or two) to fix this defect: variable resistance training.

By attaching chains or elastic bands to either end of the barbell, you can cause the level of resistance to decrease as the bar gets lower, and increase as it gets higher, evening out the strength curve. 

According to one study, this can double your strength and power gains compared to training with a standard bench press. 

You can use elastic bands, as they did in the study, or dangle chains from either end of the barbell. I strongly prefer bands, as they’re cheaper, quieter, and easy to carry in your gym bag, or to travel with.

Regardless of which you use, the bands or chains should provide about 20% of the total resistance. In other words, when the bar touches your chest it should weigh about 80% as much as it does when your elbows lock out at the top. 

So if you’re bench pressing 200 pounds, remove 40 pounds from the bar and use an elastic band that will provide roughly 40 pounds of resistance when raised to full extension. 

Secret Weapon #4: Auto-Regulation

Giving your body just the right amount of exercise is a tricky thing. Train with too little volume and intensity, and your progress will be slower than it could be, maybe even nonexistent. But push yourself too hard, and your training program is worse than useless.   

As you might have surmised, training too little is better than training too much. To that end, most training programs include more rest days than they need, and/or have pre-planned de-load weeks every four to six weeks. 

But there’s a whole family of techniques that can give your body precisely the optimal amount of growth stimulus it needs. They’re collectively known as autoregulation techniques and they’re the secret sauce that elite competitors use to accelerate their results.

In a nutshell, auto-regulation allows you to increase or decrease the training stimulus on the fly, mid-workout. And rather than making those decisions based on a subjective feeling or spur of the moment decision, auto-regulation use pre-planned rules to systematize this process. 

For this program, you’ll be using two such techniques (reactive de-loading and conditional contrast training): one for putting on the brakes and one for stepping on the gas.

Reactive De-Loading

The idea here is simple. When you fail to make the required number of reps on a set, you lower the weight for the remaining sets of that one exercise, just for the remainder of that workout. 

Additionally, the remaining sets will be performed at high-speed, allowing you to work on building explosive strength while minimizing time under tension, and therefore training fatigue.

Here’s how that works with cluster sets. In this program, you’ll be doing 3 sets of 2-2-1 clusters per workout. You’ll initiate a reactive de-load if you fail to hit five good reps- either you can’t complete the fifth rep, or the fifth rep is incredibly sloppy due to fatigue, or the fourth rep is extremely sloppy due to fatigue so you don’t even try for number five.

For the bench press, you’ll want to lower the weight by about 30% for the remaining sets.  You’ll also limit all remaining sets to four reps: a 2-1-1 cluster set, without that final rep. 

Example: you’re benching 225 pounds, but on the first set you fail to make the final rep.  You lower the weight to 165 pounds. The remaining two sets are performed as 2-1-1 cluster sets, at high speed.

Conditional Contrast Training

Now let’s consider the opposite scenario. Suppose you complete all fifteen planned reps, and after the last rep you feel like you could have kept going? That’s where you step on the gas. 

The way you do that is by incorporating post-activation potentiation, also known as contrast training.  PAP is a training method wherein a heavy, low-speed compound movement is paired with a low-weight explosive movement using the same movement pattern. In this case, the bench press with plyometric push-ups.

Here’s how you’ll be using it: when you complete your third and final strength cluster set, if you made all fifteen reps, and completed the last rep with good form, and you feel like you have enough left in you that you could do another set, immediately get on the floor and do a set of 5-6 plyometric pushups right next to the bench.

Now you have all the tools you need. 

Here are the workouts you’ll be doing.

You’ll be bench pressing three or four times a week, alternating between strength days and technique days. You’ll also be starting all of your workouts, including non-bench press workouts, with a warm-up specifically designed to support bench pressing.

The Warm-Up

Pushups: 10 reps

Wall stick-ups: 12 reps

Jump squats: 8 reps

Rear foot elevated kneeling hip flexor stretch: 10 reps per side

One-armed dumbbell rows: 8 per arm

Seated cable incline-decline press: 12 reps

Cobra pose: 4-5 reps, hold for 5-10 seconds each time

Here’s what’s going on with this warm-up: the pushups and cable presses prime your nervous system for the bench press, while the cable incline-decline press also helps to even out your chest, both from top to bottom and left to right.

The wall stick-ups, hip flexor stretch, and cobra pose will all improve your back and hip mobility, helping you put your back and lower body into the bench press.

If you’re doing a bodyweight workout at home, replace the cable incline/decline press with 8 pike pushups. I would also perform this workout once a day on non-workout days. 

Strength Workout

A1) Bench press strength cluster set – Sets: 3 – Reps: 2-2-1 – Rest: 20 seconds between mini-sets; 90-150 seconds after the last rep – Notes: Apply reactive de-loads and conditional contrast training as needed

A2) Goblet squat – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-10 – Rest: 90-150 seconds

B1) One-armed dumbbell row – Sets: 2 – Reps: 8 per arm – Rest: 30 seconds

B2) Dumbbell walking lunges – Sets: 2 – Reps: 8-12 – Rest: 30 seconds

B3) Dumbbell shoulder shrugs – Sets: 2 – Reps: 6-8 – Rest: 60 seconds

C1) Side plank – Sets: 2 – Time: to fatigue each side – Rest: 20-30 seconds

C2) Ab suction (on hands and knees) – Sets: 2 – Reps: 12-16 – Rest: 20-30 seconds

Note: on every exercise except the bench press, you should be stopping 2-3 reps short of failure. The idea here is to give the rest of your body enough of a workout to maintain muscle mass boost the testosterone and GH response from this workout, without compromising your recovery on the bench press. 

Technique Workout

A) Bench press technique cluster set – Weight: roughly your 6-rep max, or 10-15% less than what you use on strength days – Time: 10 minutes, or until fatigued – Rest: 15-30 seconds between reps.  Start at 15 seconds and raise by 5 seconds every few minutes.

B1) Yates bent row – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

B2) Military press – Sets: 3 – Reps: 6 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

C1) Barbell front squat – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-12 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

C2) Dumbbell hammer curls – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-10 per arm – Rest: 60-90 seconds

D1) Front plank – Sets: 2 – Time: to fatigue – Rest: 20-30 seconds

D2) Mountain climbers – Sets: 2 – Reps: 20-30 – Rest: 20-30 seconds

Note: you could replace everything from B1 onward with a different full-body workout if you want to. The important thing here is that you’re not overloading yourself by adding a bunch more chest and triceps work.   

The Schedule

You’ll be doing each of these workouts two days a week, which means you’ll be benching four days a week. To prevent overtraining, you shouldn’t be lifting heavy in the gym for any additional days, but I would add in a bodyweight workout for metabolic conditioning and to hit your slow-twitch fibers.

Here’s an example of how that would look for someone working a standard Monday-Friday schedule. 

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Strength workout Wed: Rest or brief cardio workout Thu: Technique workout Fri: Rest Sat: Strength workout Sun: Technique workout

Note: if you find yourself plateauing on this schedule, add two or three hundred extra calories on workout days, reduce bench pressing frequency to three times a week, and cut out all cardio, like this:

Week 1

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Strength workout Wed: Rest Thu: Technique workout Fri: Rest Sat: Strength workout Sun: Rest

Week 2

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Technique workout Wed: Rest Thu: Strength workout Fri: Bodyweight workout Sat: Rest Sun: Technique workout

Finally, once a month, add in an extra rest day and test your one-rep max on a day when it’s been three days since your last bench press workout.

This is how epic-level bros graduate to lifting epic-level weights.

You’ll work your ass off, your chest will ache, beads of creatine-flavored sweat will roll down your face, and you’ll grow. 

One Last Thing

If you’ve read this far, I’m going to assume you’re a devoted adept of the dark art of swoleomancy. Sup bro. 

As cool as they are, the techniques I’ve laid out here are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a whole world of advanced strength and hypertrophy methods out there.

I’ve put together a free guide to twelve of the most effective advanced practices from the science of human enlargement. It’s called The Dirty Dozen: 12 Techniques for Greater Gainz.  I’ve shown you two of these techniques so far, and this book will teach you ten more. Plus, you’ll learn not just how to do them, but if, when, and why to employ each one.

If you want to start customizing your workouts to deliver turbocharged results for your body, this book could be your ticket to Swolehalla.

Get your free copy of The Dirty Dozen: 12 Techniques for Greater Gainz now!

The post Benching Isn’t Even That Cool But If You’re Gonna Do It Here’s How to Add 50 Pounds In 3 Months appeared first on Roman Fitness Systems.

http://ift.tt/2uqRvWP

[ruthellisneda]

Benching Isn’t Even That Cool But If You’re Gonna Do It Here’s How to Add 50 Pounds In 3 Months

If you’re still doing straight sets for 5×5, don’t be surprised when your bench press stops going up.

That’s not to knock five-sets. They’re great—and safe—for newbies. They’ll get you benching more than your bodyweight. So that’s nice. 

They probably won’t get you to 1.5x your bodyweight, and they definitely won’t get you to 2x. 

The fact is, if you want a better bench press, you need a better program. And that means you need to re-think some of your assumptions 

Now before we go any further, I want to be clear about one thing: this article is for intermediate to advanced trainees. If you’re a man who can’t bench at least 1.2x his bodyweight, or a woman who can’t bench at least .75x her bodyweight, you’re not ready for the program I’m about to lay out—although items 2 and 3 on the list might still be helpful to you.

If you’ve already made serious progress on your bench press, only to find that, to paraphrase Francois Rabelais, the appetite for gainz has grown with the eating, read on.

Here are the four secret weapons (and a program) to maximize your bench press.  Secret Weapon #1: Cluster Sets

Cluster sets are a specialized training technique in which sets are divided into several (usually three) mini-sets, with short intra-set rest periods between them. In this program, you’ll be using two different types of cluster sets for two different purposes: building strength and practicing your technique.

Strength Cluster Sets

For strength clusters sets, you’ll use a weight that’s roughly your 3-rep max, or around 90% of your one-rep max. 

Perform two reps, then re-rack the barbell. Rest 20 seconds, then grab the barbell and do two more reps. Re-rack and rest another 20 seconds, then perform one final rep. That’s one strength cluster set. You’ll do five reps total at a weight you could normally only lift for three reps.

The advantage of strength cluster sets is clear: you can lift heavy weights for greater volume than traditional strength training methods allow.

By lifting heavy, you’re recruiting your high-threshold motor units on every rep, rather than just the later reps in each set. By doing five reps per set, you’re able to get enough volume while keeping your workouts short.

Technique Cluster Sets

Technique cluster sets are designed a bit differently from strength cluster sets. They’re designed to let you perform a large number of reps with minimal fatigue, focusing intently on your technique with each and every rep.

You’ll be using a lower weight, roughly your 6-rep max or around 80% of your one-rep max. Set a timer for ten minutes. Do one rep, then re-rack the weight and rest 15 seconds before the next rep. Repeat until the timer goes off. 

As you start to get fatigued, raise the rest periods in five-second increments, to a maximum of 30 seconds. If you reach a point where you feel like you’re not back to your full strength after 30 seconds of rest, end the set early. 

The beauty of technique cluster sets is that in the space of ten minutes, you can perform about 20-30 reps, at a weight only slightly lower than you use in your working sets, all with good form, and without producing enough fatigue to interfere with your strength training.

By re-racking and resting between each rep, you’re able to practice the entire movement (including picking up and re-racking the weight) with each rep rather than once per set. And by taking a short break to collect your thoughts with each rep, you’re able to focus on your technique better. 

Secret Weapon #2: A Friend and a Cell Phone

Check yourself before you wreck yourself. By that, I mean, check your form…on video.

At least once a month, get a trusted bro to record footage of you training your bench press, preferably on one of your technique days. Have them capture a couple reps each from the front, rear, side, and 45-degree front/side angles. 

Review the footage after your workout, and review it again prior to the next few bench press sessions.  Specifically, make sure you’re doing the following:

Bar Path: A vertical bar path over the chest puts you at a mechanical disadvantage, making the bench press unnecessarily difficult, and causes shoulder impingement (i.e. you’ll get hurt at high weights). You should have the bar follow a slightly diagonal path, such that it’s over your chest at the bottom of the movement, but over your shoulders at the top.

Chest: Your chest should be raised towards the ceiling via arching your back (while keeping your butt on the bench!) and rotating your rib cage up slightly. This shortens the bar path and points your body so that you’ll naturally press at a slight diagonal.

Shoulders: Keep your shoulders tucked in. Squeeze your shoulder blades together like you’re trying to hold something between them. When you push the bar, your shoulders should be pressing into the bench, not pressing towards the floor on either side of the bench.

Grip: Keep the bar low (the bar should be resting on the heel of your hand, not mid-palm) and outside on your hands (you should feel most of the bar’s weight on the outer side of your hands, below your pinkie and directly above your wrist). That keeps your wrists straight and the bar directly above your wrist and forearm

Elbows: Your elbows should be tucked in so that they are directly below your wrists and they should stay in that position for the entire eccentric (descent) portion of the bench press. They should not be tucked in so far that they touch your torso at any point in the movement.

Elbows, Part 2: For the concentric (ascent) portion, things get slightly more complicated. The concentric should look like the eccentric in reverse, except that your elbows should flare out for a brief instant around the middle of the concentric portion. Done properly, this flare-out should be subtle enough that someone would have to be looking out for it to notice it.

Feet: Foot positioning is crucial for bracing the body and supporting leg drive. Your feet should be slightly behind your knees. There are two ways to do that: either your feet can be tucked under your thighs with the heel raised off the floor, or spread out to the sides and flat on the ground.

Leg Drive: The purpose of leg drive is not to directly aid in pushing the bar, and you shouldn’t be pushing upward with your legs. Instead, leg drive should push your body back towards your head. Done right, this helps keep your butt pressed into the bench while creating tension in the upper body, which helps the muscles of the upper body exert more force. Done wrong, it just makes your butt lift off the bench.

Consistency: The bar should be following the same path on every rep. It can be useful to touch the bar to your chest for this purpose; if it doesn’t touch your chest at the same place every time, you know you have a consistency issue.

Push Yourself Away from The Bar: This isn’t a specific technique fix so much as a mental technique. Instead of thinking about pressing the bar upward, imagine you’re pushing yourself away from the bar, down into the floor.

To Pause or Not to Pause

Pausing at the bottom of each rep saps your strength and deprives you of momentum, making it harder to lift the weight back up. If your only goal is to bench as much weight as possible, don’t do it.

However, pausing at the bottom does provide a good opportunity to spot-check your form. For that reason, you may want to pause at the bottom only on technique days, and only for the first few minutes of your technique workout.

On the other hand, if you’re training for a powerlifting meet or you just want to measure your max bench press in accordance with competitive powerlifting rules, you should always pause at the bottom, just as competition rules require. Train the way you compete. 

Secret Weapon #3: Elastic Bands

The standard bench press has one big flaw: an uneven strength curve. You’re weaker at the bottom of the motion than you are at the top. This sticking point at the bottom of the movement robs the bench press of much of its swolefication potential, particularly in the shoulders, which are maximally utilized at the top of the movement. 

Thankfully there is a way (or two) to fix this defect: variable resistance training.

By attaching chains or elastic bands to either end of the barbell, you can cause the level of resistance to decrease as the bar gets lower, and increase as it gets higher, evening out the strength curve. 

According to one study, this can double your strength and power gains compared to training with a standard bench press. 

You can use elastic bands, as they did in the study, or dangle chains from either end of the barbell. I strongly prefer bands, as they’re cheaper, quieter, and easy to carry in your gym bag, or to travel with.

Regardless of which you use, the bands or chains should provide about 20% of the total resistance. In other words, when the bar touches your chest it should weigh about 80% as much as it does when your elbows lock out at the top. 

So if you’re bench pressing 200 pounds, remove 40 pounds from the bar and use an elastic band that will provide roughly 40 pounds of resistance when raised to full extension. 

Secret Weapon #4: Auto-Regulation

Giving your body just the right amount of exercise is a tricky thing. Train with too little volume and intensity, and your progress will be slower than it could be, maybe even nonexistent. But push yourself too hard, and your training program is worse than useless.   

As you might have surmised, training too little is better than training too much. To that end, most training programs include more rest days than they need, and/or have pre-planned de-load weeks every four to six weeks. 

But there’s a whole family of techniques that can give your body precisely the optimal amount of growth stimulus it needs. They’re collectively known as autoregulation techniques and they’re the secret sauce that elite competitors use to accelerate their results.

In a nutshell, auto-regulation allows you to increase or decrease the training stimulus on the fly, mid-workout. And rather than making those decisions based on a subjective feeling or spur of the moment decision, auto-regulation use pre-planned rules to systematize this process. 

For this program, you’ll be using two such techniques (reactive de-loading and conditional contrast training): one for putting on the brakes and one for stepping on the gas.

Reactive De-Loading

The idea here is simple. When you fail to make the required number of reps on a set, you lower the weight for the remaining sets of that one exercise, just for the remainder of that workout. 

Additionally, the remaining sets will be performed at high-speed, allowing you to work on building explosive strength while minimizing time under tension, and therefore training fatigue.

Here’s how that works with cluster sets. In this program, you’ll be doing 3 sets of 2-2-1 clusters per workout. You’ll initiate a reactive de-load if you fail to hit five good reps- either you can’t complete the fifth rep, or the fifth rep is incredibly sloppy due to fatigue, or the fourth rep is extremely sloppy due to fatigue so you don’t even try for number five.

For the bench press, you’ll want to lower the weight by about 30% for the remaining sets.  You’ll also limit all remaining sets to four reps: a 2-1-1 cluster set, without that final rep. 

Example: you’re benching 225 pounds, but on the first set you fail to make the final rep.  You lower the weight to 165 pounds. The remaining two sets are performed as 2-1-1 cluster sets, at high speed.

Conditional Contrast Training

Now let’s consider the opposite scenario. Suppose you complete all fifteen planned reps, and after the last rep you feel like you could have kept going? That’s where you step on the gas. 

The way you do that is by incorporating post-activation potentiation, also known as contrast training.  PAP is a training method wherein a heavy, low-speed compound movement is paired with a low-weight explosive movement using the same movement pattern. In this case, the bench press with plyometric push-ups.

Here’s how you’ll be using it: when you complete your third and final strength cluster set, if you made all fifteen reps, and completed the last rep with good form, and you feel like you have enough left in you that you could do another set, immediately get on the floor and do a set of 5-6 plyometric pushups right next to the bench.

Now you have all the tools you need. 

Here are the workouts you’ll be doing.

You’ll be bench pressing three or four times a week, alternating between strength days and technique days. You’ll also be starting all of your workouts, including non-bench press workouts, with a warm-up specifically designed to support bench pressing.

The Warm-Up

Pushups: 10 reps

Wall stick-ups: 12 reps

Jump squats: 8 reps

Rear foot elevated kneeling hip flexor stretch: 10 reps per side

One-armed dumbbell rows: 8 per arm

Seated cable incline-decline press: 12 reps

Cobra pose: 4-5 reps, hold for 5-10 seconds each time

Here’s what’s going on with this warm-up: the pushups and cable presses prime your nervous system for the bench press, while the cable incline-decline press also helps to even out your chest, both from top to bottom and left to right.

The wall stick-ups, hip flexor stretch, and cobra pose will all improve your back and hip mobility, helping you put your back and lower body into the bench press.

If you’re doing a bodyweight workout at home, replace the cable incline/decline press with 8 pike pushups. I would also perform this workout once a day on non-workout days. 

Strength Workout

A1) Bench press strength cluster set – Sets: 3 – Reps: 2-2-1 – Rest: 20 seconds between mini-sets; 90-150 seconds after the last rep – Notes: Apply reactive de-loads and conditional contrast training as needed

A2) Goblet squat – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-10 – Rest: 90-150 seconds

B1) One-armed dumbbell row – Sets: 2 – Reps: 8 per arm – Rest: 30 seconds

B2) Dumbbell walking lunges – Sets: 2 – Reps: 8-12 – Rest: 30 seconds

B3) Dumbbell shoulder shrugs – Sets: 2 – Reps: 6-8 – Rest: 60 seconds

C1) Side plank – Sets: 2 – Time: to fatigue each side – Rest: 20-30 seconds

C2) Ab suction (on hands and knees) – Sets: 2 – Reps: 12-16 – Rest: 20-30 seconds

Note: on every exercise except the bench press, you should be stopping 2-3 reps short of failure. The idea here is to give the rest of your body enough of a workout to maintain muscle mass boost the testosterone and GH response from this workout, without compromising your recovery on the bench press. 

Technique Workout

A) Bench press technique cluster set – Weight: roughly your 6-rep max, or 10-15% less than what you use on strength days – Time: 10 minutes, or until fatigued – Rest: 15-30 seconds between reps.  Start at 15 seconds and raise by 5 seconds every few minutes.

B1) Yates bent row – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

B2) Military press – Sets: 3 – Reps: 6 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

C1) Barbell front squat – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-12 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

C2) Dumbbell hammer curls – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-10 per arm – Rest: 60-90 seconds

D1) Front plank – Sets: 2 – Time: to fatigue – Rest: 20-30 seconds

D2) Mountain climbers – Sets: 2 – Reps: 20-30 – Rest: 20-30 seconds

Note: you could replace everything from B1 onward with a different full-body workout if you want to. The important thing here is that you’re not overloading yourself by adding a bunch more chest and triceps work.   

The Schedule

You’ll be doing each of these workouts two days a week, which means you’ll be benching four days a week. To prevent overtraining, you shouldn’t be lifting heavy in the gym for any additional days, but I would add in a bodyweight workout for metabolic conditioning and to hit your slow-twitch fibers.

Here’s an example of how that would look for someone working a standard Monday-Friday schedule. 

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Strength workout Wed: Rest or brief cardio workout Thu: Technique workout Fri: Rest Sat: Strength workout Sun: Technique workout

Note: if you find yourself plateauing on this schedule, add two or three hundred extra calories on workout days, reduce bench pressing frequency to three times a week, and cut out all cardio, like this:

Week 1

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Strength workout Wed: Rest Thu: Technique workout Fri: Rest Sat: Strength workout Sun: Rest

Week 2

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Technique workout Wed: Rest Thu: Strength workout Fri: Bodyweight workout Sat: Rest Sun: Technique workout

Finally, once a month, add in an extra rest day and test your one-rep max on a day when it’s been three days since your last bench press workout.

This is how epic-level bros graduate to lifting epic-level weights.

You’ll work your ass off, your chest will ache, beads of creatine-flavored sweat will roll down your face, and you’ll grow. 

One Last Thing

If you’ve read this far, I’m going to assume you’re a devoted adept of the dark art of swoleomancy. Sup bro. 

As cool as they are, the techniques I’ve laid out here are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a whole world of advanced strength and hypertrophy methods out there.

I’ve put together a free guide to twelve of the most effective advanced practices from the science of human enlargement. It’s called The Dirty Dozen: 12 Techniques for Greater Gainz.  I’ve shown you two of these techniques so far, and this book will teach you ten more. Plus, you’ll learn not just how to do them, but if, when, and why to employ each one.

If you want to start customizing your workouts to deliver turbocharged results for your body, this book could be your ticket to Swolehalla.

Get your free copy of The Dirty Dozen: 12 Techniques for Greater Gainz now!

The post Benching Isn’t Even That Cool But If You’re Gonna Do It Here’s How to Add 50 Pounds In 3 Months appeared first on Roman Fitness Systems.

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Benching Isn’t Even That Cool But If You’re Gonna Do It Here’s How to Add 50 Pounds In 3 Months

If you’re still doing straight sets for 5×5, don’t be surprised when your bench press stops going up.

That’s not to knock five-sets. They’re great—and safe—for newbies. They’ll get you benching more than your bodyweight. So that’s nice. 

They probably won’t get you to 1.5x your bodyweight, and they definitely won’t get you to 2x. 

The fact is, if you want a better bench press, you need a better program. And that means you need to re-think some of your assumptions 

Now before we go any further, I want to be clear about one thing: this article is for intermediate to advanced trainees. If you’re a man who can’t bench at least 1.2x his bodyweight, or a woman who can’t bench at least .75x her bodyweight, you’re not ready for the program I’m about to lay out—although items 2 and 3 on the list might still be helpful to you.

If you’ve already made serious progress on your bench press, only to find that, to paraphrase Francois Rabelais, the appetite for gainz has grown with the eating, read on.

Here are the four secret weapons (and a program) to maximize your bench press.  Secret Weapon #1: Cluster Sets

Cluster sets are a specialized training technique in which sets are divided into several (usually three) mini-sets, with short intra-set rest periods between them. In this program, you’ll be using two different types of cluster sets for two different purposes: building strength and practicing your technique.

Strength Cluster Sets

For strength clusters sets, you’ll use a weight that’s roughly your 3-rep max, or around 90% of your one-rep max. 

Perform two reps, then re-rack the barbell. Rest 20 seconds, then grab the barbell and do two more reps. Re-rack and rest another 20 seconds, then perform one final rep. That’s one strength cluster set. You’ll do five reps total at a weight you could normally only lift for three reps.

The advantage of strength cluster sets is clear: you can lift heavy weights for greater volume than traditional strength training methods allow.

By lifting heavy, you’re recruiting your high-threshold motor units on every rep, rather than just the later reps in each set. By doing five reps per set, you’re able to get enough volume while keeping your workouts short.

Technique Cluster Sets

Technique cluster sets are designed a bit differently from strength cluster sets. They’re designed to let you perform a large number of reps with minimal fatigue, focusing intently on your technique with each and every rep.

You’ll be using a lower weight, roughly your 6-rep max or around 80% of your one-rep max. Set a timer for ten minutes. Do one rep, then re-rack the weight and rest 15 seconds before the next rep. Repeat until the timer goes off. 

As you start to get fatigued, raise the rest periods in five-second increments, to a maximum of 30 seconds. If you reach a point where you feel like you’re not back to your full strength after 30 seconds of rest, end the set early. 

The beauty of technique cluster sets is that in the space of ten minutes, you can perform about 20-30 reps, at a weight only slightly lower than you use in your working sets, all with good form, and without producing enough fatigue to interfere with your strength training.

By re-racking and resting between each rep, you’re able to practice the entire movement (including picking up and re-racking the weight) with each rep rather than once per set. And by taking a short break to collect your thoughts with each rep, you’re able to focus on your technique better. 

Secret Weapon #2: A Friend and a Cell Phone

Check yourself before you wreck yourself. By that, I mean, check your form…on video.

At least once a month, get a trusted bro to record footage of you training your bench press, preferably on one of your technique days. Have them capture a couple reps each from the front, rear, side, and 45-degree front/side angles. 

Review the footage after your workout, and review it again prior to the next few bench press sessions.  Specifically, make sure you’re doing the following:

Bar Path: A vertical bar path over the chest puts you at a mechanical disadvantage, making the bench press unnecessarily difficult, and causes shoulder impingement (i.e. you’ll get hurt at high weights). You should have the bar follow a slightly diagonal path, such that it’s over your chest at the bottom of the movement, but over your shoulders at the top.

Chest: Your chest should be raised towards the ceiling via arching your back (while keeping your butt on the bench!) and rotating your rib cage up slightly. This shortens the bar path and points your body so that you’ll naturally press at a slight diagonal.

Shoulders: Keep your shoulders tucked in. Squeeze your shoulder blades together like you’re trying to hold something between them. When you push the bar, your shoulders should be pressing into the bench, not pressing towards the floor on either side of the bench.

Grip: Keep the bar low (the bar should be resting on the heel of your hand, not mid-palm) and outside on your hands (you should feel most of the bar’s weight on the outer side of your hands, below your pinkie and directly above your wrist). That keeps your wrists straight and the bar directly above your wrist and forearm

Elbows: Your elbows should be tucked in so that they are directly below your wrists and they should stay in that position for the entire eccentric (descent) portion of the bench press. They should not be tucked in so far that they touch your torso at any point in the movement.

Elbows, Part 2: For the concentric (ascent) portion, things get slightly more complicated. The concentric should look like the eccentric in reverse, except that your elbows should flare out for a brief instant around the middle of the concentric portion. Done properly, this flare-out should be subtle enough that someone would have to be looking out for it to notice it.

Feet: Foot positioning is crucial for bracing the body and supporting leg drive. Your feet should be slightly behind your knees. There are two ways to do that: either your feet can be tucked under your thighs with the heel raised off the floor, or spread out to the sides and flat on the ground.

Leg Drive: The purpose of leg drive is not to directly aid in pushing the bar, and you shouldn’t be pushing upward with your legs. Instead, leg drive should push your body back towards your head. Done right, this helps keep your butt pressed into the bench while creating tension in the upper body, which helps the muscles of the upper body exert more force. Done wrong, it just makes your butt lift off the bench.

Consistency: The bar should be following the same path on every rep. It can be useful to touch the bar to your chest for this purpose; if it doesn’t touch your chest at the same place every time, you know you have a consistency issue.

Push Yourself Away from The Bar: This isn’t a specific technique fix so much as a mental technique. Instead of thinking about pressing the bar upward, imagine you’re pushing yourself away from the bar, down into the floor.

To Pause or Not to Pause

Pausing at the bottom of each rep saps your strength and deprives you of momentum, making it harder to lift the weight back up. If your only goal is to bench as much weight as possible, don’t do it.

However, pausing at the bottom does provide a good opportunity to spot-check your form. For that reason, you may want to pause at the bottom only on technique days, and only for the first few minutes of your technique workout.

On the other hand, if you’re training for a powerlifting meet or you just want to measure your max bench press in accordance with competitive powerlifting rules, you should always pause at the bottom, just as competition rules require. Train the way you compete. 

Secret Weapon #3: Elastic Bands

The standard bench press has one big flaw: an uneven strength curve. You’re weaker at the bottom of the motion than you are at the top. This sticking point at the bottom of the movement robs the bench press of much of its swolefication potential, particularly in the shoulders, which are maximally utilized at the top of the movement. 

Thankfully there is a way (or two) to fix this defect: variable resistance training.

By attaching chains or elastic bands to either end of the barbell, you can cause the level of resistance to decrease as the bar gets lower, and increase as it gets higher, evening out the strength curve. 

According to one study, this can double your strength and power gains compared to training with a standard bench press. 

You can use elastic bands, as they did in the study, or dangle chains from either end of the barbell. I strongly prefer bands, as they’re cheaper, quieter, and easy to carry in your gym bag, or to travel with.

Regardless of which you use, the bands or chains should provide about 20% of the total resistance. In other words, when the bar touches your chest it should weigh about 80% as much as it does when your elbows lock out at the top. 

So if you’re bench pressing 200 pounds, remove 40 pounds from the bar and use an elastic band that will provide roughly 40 pounds of resistance when raised to full extension. 

Secret Weapon #4: Auto-Regulation

Giving your body just the right amount of exercise is a tricky thing. Train with too little volume and intensity, and your progress will be slower than it could be, maybe even nonexistent. But push yourself too hard, and your training program is worse than useless.   

As you might have surmised, training too little is better than training too much. To that end, most training programs include more rest days than they need, and/or have pre-planned de-load weeks every four to six weeks. 

But there’s a whole family of techniques that can give your body precisely the optimal amount of growth stimulus it needs. They’re collectively known as autoregulation techniques and they’re the secret sauce that elite competitors use to accelerate their results.

In a nutshell, auto-regulation allows you to increase or decrease the training stimulus on the fly, mid-workout. And rather than making those decisions based on a subjective feeling or spur of the moment decision, auto-regulation use pre-planned rules to systematize this process. 

For this program, you’ll be using two such techniques (reactive de-loading and conditional contrast training): one for putting on the brakes and one for stepping on the gas.

Reactive De-Loading

The idea here is simple. When you fail to make the required number of reps on a set, you lower the weight for the remaining sets of that one exercise, just for the remainder of that workout. 

Additionally, the remaining sets will be performed at high-speed, allowing you to work on building explosive strength while minimizing time under tension, and therefore training fatigue.

Here’s how that works with cluster sets. In this program, you’ll be doing 3 sets of 2-2-1 clusters per workout. You’ll initiate a reactive de-load if you fail to hit five good reps- either you can’t complete the fifth rep, or the fifth rep is incredibly sloppy due to fatigue, or the fourth rep is extremely sloppy due to fatigue so you don’t even try for number five.

For the bench press, you’ll want to lower the weight by about 30% for the remaining sets.  You’ll also limit all remaining sets to four reps: a 2-1-1 cluster set, without that final rep. 

Example: you’re benching 225 pounds, but on the first set you fail to make the final rep.  You lower the weight to 165 pounds. The remaining two sets are performed as 2-1-1 cluster sets, at high speed.

Conditional Contrast Training

Now let’s consider the opposite scenario. Suppose you complete all fifteen planned reps, and after the last rep you feel like you could have kept going? That’s where you step on the gas. 

The way you do that is by incorporating post-activation potentiation, also known as contrast training.  PAP is a training method wherein a heavy, low-speed compound movement is paired with a low-weight explosive movement using the same movement pattern. In this case, the bench press with plyometric push-ups.

Here’s how you’ll be using it: when you complete your third and final strength cluster set, if you made all fifteen reps, and completed the last rep with good form, and you feel like you have enough left in you that you could do another set, immediately get on the floor and do a set of 5-6 plyometric pushups right next to the bench.

Now you have all the tools you need. 

Here are the workouts you’ll be doing.

You’ll be bench pressing three or four times a week, alternating between strength days and technique days. You’ll also be starting all of your workouts, including non-bench press workouts, with a warm-up specifically designed to support bench pressing.

The Warm-Up

Pushups: 10 reps

Wall stick-ups: 12 reps

Jump squats: 8 reps

Rear foot elevated kneeling hip flexor stretch: 10 reps per side

One-armed dumbbell rows: 8 per arm

Seated cable incline-decline press: 12 reps

Cobra pose: 4-5 reps, hold for 5-10 seconds each time

Here’s what’s going on with this warm-up: the pushups and cable presses prime your nervous system for the bench press, while the cable incline-decline press also helps to even out your chest, both from top to bottom and left to right.

The wall stick-ups, hip flexor stretch, and cobra pose will all improve your back and hip mobility, helping you put your back and lower body into the bench press.

If you’re doing a bodyweight workout at home, replace the cable incline/decline press with 8 pike pushups. I would also perform this workout once a day on non-workout days. 

Strength Workout

A1) Bench press strength cluster set – Sets: 3 – Reps: 2-2-1 – Rest: 20 seconds between mini-sets; 90-150 seconds after the last rep – Notes: Apply reactive de-loads and conditional contrast training as needed

A2) Goblet squat – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-10 – Rest: 90-150 seconds

B1) One-armed dumbbell row – Sets: 2 – Reps: 8 per arm – Rest: 30 seconds

B2) Dumbbell walking lunges – Sets: 2 – Reps: 8-12 – Rest: 30 seconds

B3) Dumbbell shoulder shrugs – Sets: 2 – Reps: 6-8 – Rest: 60 seconds

C1) Side plank – Sets: 2 – Time: to fatigue each side – Rest: 20-30 seconds

C2) Ab suction (on hands and knees) – Sets: 2 – Reps: 12-16 – Rest: 20-30 seconds

Note: on every exercise except the bench press, you should be stopping 2-3 reps short of failure. The idea here is to give the rest of your body enough of a workout to maintain muscle mass boost the testosterone and GH response from this workout, without compromising your recovery on the bench press. 

Technique Workout

A) Bench press technique cluster set – Weight: roughly your 6-rep max, or 10-15% less than what you use on strength days – Time: 10 minutes, or until fatigued – Rest: 15-30 seconds between reps.  Start at 15 seconds and raise by 5 seconds every few minutes.

B1) Yates bent row – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

B2) Military press – Sets: 3 – Reps: 6 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

C1) Barbell front squat – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-12 – Rest: 60-90 seconds

C2) Dumbbell hammer curls – Sets: 3 – Reps: 8-10 per arm – Rest: 60-90 seconds

D1) Front plank – Sets: 2 – Time: to fatigue – Rest: 20-30 seconds

D2) Mountain climbers – Sets: 2 – Reps: 20-30 – Rest: 20-30 seconds

Note: you could replace everything from B1 onward with a different full-body workout if you want to. The important thing here is that you’re not overloading yourself by adding a bunch more chest and triceps work.   

The Schedule

You’ll be doing each of these workouts two days a week, which means you’ll be benching four days a week. To prevent overtraining, you shouldn’t be lifting heavy in the gym for any additional days, but I would add in a bodyweight workout for metabolic conditioning and to hit your slow-twitch fibers.

Here’s an example of how that would look for someone working a standard Monday-Friday schedule. 

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Strength workout Wed: Rest or brief cardio workout Thu: Technique workout Fri: Rest Sat: Strength workout Sun: Technique workout

Note: if you find yourself plateauing on this schedule, add two or three hundred extra calories on workout days, reduce bench pressing frequency to three times a week, and cut out all cardio, like this:

Week 1

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Strength workout Wed: Rest Thu: Technique workout Fri: Rest Sat: Strength workout Sun: Rest

Week 2

Mon: Bodyweight workout Tue: Technique workout Wed: Rest Thu: Strength workout Fri: Bodyweight workout Sat: Rest Sun: Technique workout

Finally, once a month, add in an extra rest day and test your one-rep max on a day when it’s been three days since your last bench press workout.

This is how epic-level bros graduate to lifting epic-level weights.

You’ll work your ass off, your chest will ache, beads of creatine-flavored sweat will roll down your face, and you’ll grow. 

One Last Thing

If you’ve read this far, I’m going to assume you’re a devoted adept of the dark art of swoleomancy. Sup bro. 

As cool as they are, the techniques I’ve laid out here are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a whole world of advanced strength and hypertrophy methods out there.

I’ve put together a free guide to twelve of the most effective advanced practices from the science of human enlargement. It’s called The Dirty Dozen: 12 Techniques for Greater Gainz.  I’ve shown you two of these techniques so far, and this book will teach you ten more. Plus, you’ll learn not just how to do them, but if, when, and why to employ each one.

If you want to start customizing your workouts to deliver turbocharged results for your body, this book could be your ticket to Swolehalla.

Get your free copy of The Dirty Dozen: 12 Techniques for Greater Gainz now!

The post Benching Isn’t Even That Cool But If You’re Gonna Do It Here’s How to Add 50 Pounds In 3 Months appeared first on Roman Fitness Systems.

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