So how much do you benchpress? It is one of the most frequent questions that gym bros ask in the gym. Gym enthusiasts pay most of their attention to doing heavy bench presses because it is taken as a symbol of stamina, performance, and upper body strength. But the question remains, “How to increase your bench press?”
Whether you are hitting the gym on a Monday for an epic chest workout or you are simply trying to grow strong, the bench press is likely to be a not-to-skip exercise. But unfortunately, some gymgoers struggle a lot with the bench press yet are unable to increase their weight. It is frustrating, isn’t it?
To save you from this plight, I have done extensive research and given below the scientifically proven ideas on how to increase your bench press. So let’s buckle down!
Is there any benefit of using a bench press?
The bench press is one of the classical chest-building exercises that most bodybuilders consider in their upper-strength body workout. However, there are some who take bench press as one of the regular chest moves, and then there are others who know its benefits and never dare to overlook it.
A bench press does not only help your chest area grow but rather boosts all of the connected muscles, such as triceps, shoulders, and forearms, to have a complete blood pump and resultantly grow better and bigger.
Furthermore, as bench press targets multiple muscles simultaneously, you will have better stamina, strength, endurance, and agility.
How to Increase Your Bench Press?
No doubt, the internet is full of tons of ideas on how to increase your bench press. But most of them do more harm than good. Knowledge backed with science is always reliable and comes in handy when you try to perform it practically. That is why here are some proven scientific tricks to help you carry the day.
Gearing Yourself Up
Studies have shown that psyching yourself before a heavy lift can positively impact your muscle and the weight you carry. Does it mean stomping around the gym? Of course not. But you must perform some satanic rites to summon all the necessary elements.
What you need to do is to visualize yourself lifting heavy weights successfully before you actually try to raise them. Visualization will send your mind a message that “I can do it,” and you will end up successfully doing it. Remember, your mind has the most extraordinary power; you will become what you think of.
Increase the Weight and Lower the Reps
If you wish to improve your bench press weight fast, doing 3 sets with 10 repetitions won’t help you. No, don’t get me tarnished, 10 repetitions in every set of 3 is a great thing, but if you want to grow stronger, you will have to push harder in weights.
You can start with the following plan:
- Week # 1: 5×5 (80% 1RM)
2. Week # 2: 6×4 (85% 1RM)
3. Week # 3: 7×3 (90% 1RM)
4. Week # 4: 8×2 (95% 1RM)
5. Week # 5:10×1 (100% 1RM)
Moreover, as far as lifting heavy weights is concerned, the rest you take in sets can make or break your next set. For example, raising heavy will be more troublesome if your rest time is less than a minute.
The recommended time for your body to replenish the ATP-PC (energy) is 2-3 minutes. Plus, you should also bench press 2-3 times a week to push the weights.
Watch this video on How to Increase Your Bench Press
Keep Changing Your Rep Range
You shouldn’t need to employ any complicated rep schemes or periodization to increase your strength weekly if you’ve been training for less than a year.
Nonetheless, altering your rep ranges from workout to workout is an efficient approach to improve strength gain if you’re a little more advanced and bench more than once a week. Giving your body a variety can help it improve quicker with more details.
Prioritizing the Bench Press in the Workout
Logically, you are most effective on the exercises you complete first in your workout routine. At the start, your body has more stamina and energy to push harder, and as you sweat in the gym, your energy gets drained.
Therefore, starting your chest, push, or upper-body workouts with the bench press will give you the best chance to increase your bench press numbers.
Improve Your Triceps
In the bench press, your pecs and shoulders exert the majority of the force necessary to lift the bar off your chest, but your triceps are principally responsible for “locking the weight out” at the end of each rep.
For this reason, if you wish to finish reps with high weights, you need to build powerful triceps.
The finest exercises for developing powerful triceps are:
- Bench press with a tight grip
- Cable tricep pushdown
- Weighted dip
Increasing Nutritional Intake
The most popular and frequently heard piece of advice is to eat effectively. This is important because, no matter how much you train, your efforts will simply not produce the desired effects without the proper diet.
Getting enough calories will help you gain muscle and strength, which is likely the most crucial thing you can do while lifting heavy.
Although it’s not always simple but, becoming mentally and physically strong will help your meals pay off in the long run.
Take Enough Sleep
To bench more weight, you need to bench more frequently, according to almost every tip on how to increase your bench press. And to a certain extent, this is true too.
Unluckily, a lot of people overextend themselves by benching, which eventually results in plateaus, dissatisfaction, and overstepping. You may prevent this by giving yourself adequate time to rest between workouts.
Unless you’re doing a full-body routine, waiting at least one day between bench press sessions is a good idea. The more time you give to your body to recover, the more effectively it will perform during a bench press.
Conclusion- How to Increase Your Bench Press
It can be challenging to begin with while learning how to increase your bench press. But once you master it, it comes naturally. You can achieve a safe and highly efficient lift by learning how to engage and stabilize all the relevant muscles.
You will notice a significant improvement in the amount of weight lifted if you invest some time in learning and mastering the step-by-step procedure I’ve just explained above. So the key to a heavy bench press is consistency. Visit evepacifichealth to learn more.
