# COMPETITIVE BODYBUILDING - POWERLIFTING - ATHLETICS & SPORTS > POWERLIFTING FORUM >  My 405lbs raw bench @ 198lbs

## terraj

Mighty lifting Bro!!

----------


## Cheetah

Nice lift

----------


## Matt

Great lift bro....

----------


## bknoxx

nice man keep it going

----------


## bodybuilder

great lift bro i can only hope one day i can push that also bro.

----------


## oldschoolfitness

well done!! at what point did you decide to make 405 your goal (weight and max at that point) just curious how long it may have taken. because thats pretty damn impressive

----------


## deladude

@ 198!!!
congrats bro! i got excited cus i put up 300 last week and im 220!
way to realy kik some ass dude!

----------


## shortybrolick

Congrats!!

----------


## oldschoolfitness

keep it up bro! theory sounds good and solid to me keep us posted on your progress.

----------


## Stephen73ta

WOW! That's impressive!

----------


## Maverick_J8

Superb! 

And nice thread to compliment my previous thread. 

So... it can be done.  :Smilie: 

What kind of routine do you follow - principles etc - and how long has it taken you from a 100 kilo bench (say 15 reps max) to hit the 180? Or say a 140k 1rm.

----------


## Maverick_J8

> I have my own routine. It's noting special and I change it up whenever I see fit. I tried the 5/3/1 program but after a month I decided to go back to what I was doing. I have been benching since I was a teen but I was always small. When I was 16-17 years old I could bench 225 @ 160lbs. As I got bigger my bench went up. After hitting 315 my gains slowed to a crawl. I found that with out gaining weight I couldnt gain strength. I was also worried about how I looked, still am. This makes it very hard to gain strength. Lots of carbs helps a lot when trying to gain strength but will get your bf% higher. So now what I do is I gain weight in order to gain strength then I cut to stay lighter and leaner. You loose a little strength when cutting but it comes back fast even at the lighter weight. This worked wonders for me this year! 
> 
> I'll give you an example of my bench day routine from first exercise to last in that order.
> 
> Flat bench
> 135x10
> 225x8
> 315x4
> 365x as many as I can get 
> ...


Do you use gear? Especially when cutting? AT ALL?

----------


## Maverick_J8

> AAS? I have done 2 cycles before. It helped and it hurt. I gained a lot of strength but I also suffered two of the worst injuries of my life and by the time I healed from them I was almost back to square one in some of my lifts. My overhead press still suffers because of a shoulder injury.
> 
> I have never used aas to cut. Both cycles were lean bulks ment to gain strength only. When I cut I start drinking two gallons of water a day two days before the weigh in. On the day of the weigh in I hit the sauna for an hour, eat very very little, and drink nothing. I usually cut 8 lbs the day of the weigh in. Then as soon as I weigh in I go to a restaurant and eat like never before while drinking tons of gatoraid. I gain back 8 lbs over night.


Interesting. 

I personally find injuries manageable during a cycle, but I find my shoulder joints start to feel it with increases in mu bench until my body has chance to properly adapt. 

Inspiring that you've got to that level of lifting with pretty much no gear/aas assistance. 

I've just started my stated 'next cycle' in my previous thread - 1g test e/wk, 600mg tren e/wk, 50 drol/day, 40 dbol /day. 

Currently at a 140 bench (3 plates aside) for a now comfortably smooth rep. I'm hoping for some big gains on bench as this is the first time I've followed a powerlifting type approach while running a blast. 

My approach is huge calories to gain the strength, then immediately cut back down to around 6-8%. Using gear for the cut. 

Worked well last time, especially at maintaining the new strength.

----------


## cwc5569

Damn bro. Nice lift

----------


## MACHINE5150

congrats.. that is very impressive at 198

----------


## Maverick_J8

> I have my own routine. It's noting special and I change it up whenever I see fit. I tried the 5/3/1 program but after a month I decided to go back to what I was doing. I have been benching since I was a teen but I was always small. When I was 16-17 years old I could bench 225 @ 160lbs. As I got bigger my bench went up. After hitting 315 my gains slowed to a crawl. I found that with out gaining weight I couldnt gain strength. I was also worried about how I looked, still am. This makes it very hard to gain strength. Lots of carbs helps a lot when trying to gain strength but will get your bf% higher. So now what I do is I gain weight in order to gain strength then I cut to stay lighter and leaner. You loose a little strength when cutting but it comes back fast even at the lighter weight. This worked wonders for me this year! 
> 
> I'll give you an example of my bench day routine from first exercise to last in that order.
> 
> Flat bench
> 135x10
> 225x8
> 315x4
> 365x as many as I can get 
> ...



On you type of training, do you find you make continuous progress with this? It looks more bodybuilding rep scheme than powerlifting - do you not find this affects strength gains? (may sound stupid considering your lift in the video, but a very logical question. i.e. burning yourself out on the preceding sets before hitting the final heavier sets. 

What do you do to change things up?

----------


## dec11

good job, nice pushing. my bench always let me down, was the dif between competing nationally and european for me, just wasnt up to par

----------


## Maverick_J8

> It's all about centering your entire workout around what you want to be strong at. Stretch and then go right to the bench. I work up to about 80-90% of my 1RM every time I bench which is once a week. This is not recommended by many being that it's a little hard on the body but it's awesome for strength as long as you don't get hurt. As I get older I will have to change this a bit. Once you have bench out of the way then you can do your assistance work. Some like West Side believe assistance work is where you want to put all your effort and leave the main lift, which in this case is bench, to the DE part of your work out. I used this method for a month and found my assistance work was going up but my actual bench went down a hair. So I went back to what worked for me. I kill myself on the bench so I don't have a whole lot left for assistance work. Which is why it's higher reps lower weight.



I'm very tempted to tweak my own plan slightly to reflect your own approach.

Lower reps at the beginning of each set, but one final set to failure.

----------


## bb-sm-pl

> Some like West Side believe assistance work is where you want to put all your effort and leave the main lift, which in this case is bench, to the DE part of your work out. I used this method for a month and found my assistance work was going up but my actual bench went down a hair. So I went back to what worked for me. I kill myself on the bench so I don't have a whole lot left for assistance work. Which is why it's higher reps lower weight.


You are obviously missing some large details of the Westside principles. In fact, you have it almost completely backwards. ME and DE work are the main focus of each session, and the accessories are done afterwards to compliment the main lift and address weaknesses.

For those of you who are wondering why SportBikeBob is now no1tou, let me explain:

Mr. Bob recently started posting at another forum, and was generally accepted and fared well for a while. He posted the video at the beginning of this thread and received his due praise. However, in the past couple of days, he made the mistake of insisting that the 100% RAW federation was the best and only reputable federation for powerlifting. While not a bad federation, this is certainly not the case. When notified of this fact and presented with evidence, rather than admit his error, he proceeded to argue with one of the most knowledgeable and accomplished powerlifters on the board, which quickly degraded into insults and personal attacks. He then tried to defend another poster whose infamy is derived not from his lifting prowess, but from his terrible form, gigantic ego, and the fact that he posted a picture of himself on the internet with his own penis in his mouth. As this was pointed out to him, he resorted to more personal attacks, which prompted the forum regulars to go on a fact-finding mission. This led them to the discovery of this forum, in which it was noted that Mr. Bob used AAS immediately before his two drug-tested bench/curl meets, and knowingly tried to circumvent the testing. This is generally frowned upon in the powerlifting world, as there are plenty of non-tested federations for those who choose to utilize PEDs in their training. When this was pointed out to him, he first tried to feign ignorance, then resorted to flawed justifications and yet more unprovoked personal attacks, this time mostly against one of the board's most accomplished female lifters, repeatedly insulting her and accusing her of drug use.

While he has since deleted his account and his posts in that thread, it was too little, too late, and the thread now contains his full name, screenshots of his posts on this forum, pictures of his daughter and his license plate number. Anonymous mailings of said screenshots are now en route to the meet director. He may not have deserved what he got, but he certainly asked for it.

----------


## Maverick_J8

Funny - I was Browsing over another forum I sometimes frequent, and see a post of this video by the same username. 
A few clicks and I was interested to see some of his posts. Weird - he openly discusses steroid use with other members, when I could of sworn he claimed he has only ever done 2 cycles in this thread.

----------


## Narkissos

Nice lift bro

----------


## Brewster

> You are obviously missing some large details of the Westside principles. In fact, you have it almost completely backwards. ME and DE work are the main focus of each session, and the accessories are done afterwards to compliment the main lift and address weaknesses.
> 
> For those of you who are wondering why SportBikeBob is now no1tou, let me explain:
> 
> Mr. Bob recently started posting at another forum, and was generally accepted and fared well for a while. He posted the video at the beginning of this thread and received his due praise. However, in the past couple of days, he made the mistake of insisting that the 100% RAW federation was the best and only reputable federation for powerlifting. While not a bad federation, this is certainly not the case. When notified of this fact and presented with evidence, rather than admit his error, he proceeded to argue with one of the most knowledgeable and accomplished powerlifters on the board, which quickly degraded into insults and personal attacks. He then tried to defend another poster whose infamy is derived not from his lifting prowess, but from his terrible form, gigantic ego, and the fact that he posted a picture of himself on the internet with his own penis in his mouth. As this was pointed out to him, he resorted to more personal attacks, which prompted the forum regulars to go on a fact-finding mission. This led them to the discovery of this forum, in which it was noted that Mr. Bob used AAS immediately before his two drug-tested bench/curl meets, and knowingly tried to circumvent the testing. This is generally frowned upon in the powerlifting world, as there are plenty of non-tested federations for those who choose to utilize PEDs in their training. When this was pointed out to him, he first tried to feign ignorance, then resorted to flawed justifications and yet more unprovoked personal attacks, this time mostly against one of the board's most accomplished female lifters, repeatedly insulting her and accusing her of drug use.
> 
> While he has since deleted his account and his posts in that thread, it was too little, too late, and the thread now contains his full name, screenshots of his posts on this forum, pictures of his daughter and his license plate number. Anonymous mailings of said screenshots are now en route to the meet director. He may not have deserved what he got, but he certainly asked for it.


That was a great post on our forum....lol

----------


## 119gold

benching over double your body weight. Very very impressive!

----------


## Crispin

very impressive picures and tips i am also a weight lifter with a good shaped body soon i shared my pictuers there
health savings account minnesota

----------


## DFRELAT

You've got a nice badge of honor now. I'm always joking with the guys in the gym when they talk to me about benching that you can start saying you're strong once you've done at least double your weight on the bench. Nice work!

----------


## defiant1

a most respectable lift at 198..

----------


## cro

congrats. love maxin bench...

----------

