Week4

To give some of you a little insight to my training I am currently preparing to compete in a Strongman competition for the lightweight class(175lbs).  As of right now I have completed my first three weeks of my eight week training program and am about to begin my fourth week today.  This particular competition is not your average strongman competition as there is not a lot of odd object lifts involved i.e car dead lifts, atlas stones, kegs, yokes, frame holds and so on.  This event is actually only composed of two lifts, a one rep max over head press and a one rep max dead lift. That being said I am sure many of you can imagine what most of my training program is composed of....you guessed it overhead presses and dead lifts.!!

This brings me to the purpose of this post, so often people will ask me how to improve certain lifts whether it be a squat, dead lift, bench press or even something such as a pull up.  Often times people are searching for elaborate responses and multiple tips, techniques and loopholes. When it comes to fitness people are constantly looking for an easy way out and any shortcut possible.  But the answer is really quite simple. Are you ready for it?!? Drum roll..........if you really want to improve your bench press you should......BENCH PRESS......(crickets chirping).  Not exactly the answer you were looking for huh? Seriously though if you want to improve your bench or any lift for that matter the best way to do it is simply by focusing on that lift.  Yes you can approach the muscles from different angles and methods, such as dumbbell bench press and push ups but even though you are still training your chest you aren't working on your bench press.  Same goes for the pull up yes you can use bands for support, do slow negatives and do jumping pull ups but at the end of the day those are all still pull ups, if you want to get better at pull ups then do pull ups.  Doing inverted rows, pull downs and bent over rows will help to increase the strength in your back and develop your lats and rhomboids but they will not improve your pull up as well as simply doing a pull up.

It's like the old saying folks, "Practice what you suck at."

Fins Up!