NO RESPECT

(Hey folks, full disclosure, I started writing this post, got hit with a stomach bug midway through, and finished it in between bouts of vomiting and delirium.  If it sounds crazy, it probably is.)

I’m really tempted to open this one with a Rodney Dangerfield bit, but he was too awesome of a comedian for me to butcher one of his routines for my blog.  Instead, go watch “Back to School”, one of the greatest 80s college movies ever, featuring a very young Robert Downing Jr and home to one of the best scenes ever that summarizes the whole “experience vs education” paradigm.

 I live this experience constantly

Anyway, what I’m here to discuss today is the concept of NOT giving respect to certain lifts.  The two biggest issues I see this in are the bench and the strict press (known as the Overhead press to many…despite being silly, considering there’s no such named lift and overhead press refers to any manner of pressing a weight overhead).  Trainees get themselves so wrapped up on these two lifts, get in their own heads, spin their wheels forever, make zero progress, and come up with zero plans for success.  Meanwhile, I’ve got Stretch Armstrong arms and a right shoulder that is effectively hamburger after a torn labrum, 6 shoulder dislocations and a dozen subluxations, and I’ve never encountered the struggle that trainees run into with these lifts, and I attribute this to the fact that I’ve NEVER considered them somehow special compared to any other lift.  These lifts get no respect from me; why do they get it from you?

Let’s start with the bench, because hell, everyone else does.  (That’s a Monday “international bench press day” joke, and yes, I hate myself for making it).  I’m by no means a great bencher, but I’ve bypassed many of the stalls other trainees have hit and, specifically, I’ve done it knowing absolutely nothing about benching.  I hit my first 300lb bench at age 18, on a standard bench press (as in, 15lb non-olympic barbell and skinny bench) with zero arch, following a program of basically 10 heavy triples, and then some tricep work.  I did it as a dare from my dad, after hitting a 275 max in the fall of my freshmen year of college and then just stalling there until the summer.  It was only after doing this that I got on the internet that I heard all the typical moaning of “I hate the bench/it’s a dumb lift/who cares about benching anyway” etc etc.

Not like benching builds a solid physique or anything...

Holy crap, the bench press isn’t that hard folks. It’s a lift in the special AND para Olympics; it can literally be done by anyone.  Yeah yeah, sure, if you wanna super duper powerlift it, you’ll need to master your arch, grip the bar, set your lats, perform 8 voodoo rituals, spray hairspray on the bench, etc etc, but if you just want to bench?  Go to any gym, anywhere on the planet and you’ll see guys doing it.  “But they’re doing it wrong!”  Maybe, but are they benching more than you the “wrong way”?  It just means the gap will be even crazier once they do it the right way.  So maybe, just maybe, you need to take a lesson from them instead.

“But I already say I hate benching; aren’t I disrespecting it enough?”  No you fool; you are being BULLIED by the bench press.  Hate isn’t the opposite of respect, hate is just a few degrees off of love.  The opposite of respect is apathy and ambivalence.  The dudes benching with flat backs and flared elbows clearly don’t give the bench any respect: it’s just laying down and pressing.  The “trick” is to just get big and strong.  If you get strong pecs, strong shoulders and strong triceps, you’ll probably have a strong bench press.  You’ll PROBABLY even get it even IF you only bench press once a week (GASP!) because you’re following a “bro-split” (DOUBLE GASP!) that has you hitting chest once a week, despite the fact that the internet swears up and down on a stack of Bibles that you MUST bench press 3 times a week if you ever want it to grow.  Quit respecting the bench so much that you have to fit your training schedule around it and start making it grow on YOUR time.

Ok, so SOMETIMES the bench gets to decide the schedule

The press is the same damn animal.  I legit did not do any manner of overhead pressing until I was a college senior, and only because at that point I had read “Beyond Bodybuilding” by Pavel Tsastouline, where they were described as quite the bee’s pajamas.  My very first workout, I managed to hit 135 for an easy 5x5 (once again, Pavel).  And then, years later, I saw people online stalling at 95lbs for even fewer reps, only for the internet to assure them that it was ok, the press was just a lift that was impossible to progress on, and it was VERY uncommon to just reset the weights, 4, 5, 6, 900 times before you actually make some progress. 

What the hell is wrong with you people?  It’s just a press overhead.  It’s literally the most instinctive thing to do with a weight.  At my 6th strongman competition, we were at an outside venue, and a methead wondered onto the scene, spotter a barbell loaded with some bumper plates, and proceeded to clean and press it overhead a bunch of times.  Two points of interest are that the weight he used was above a stalling weight most internet denizens encounter while training “the right way”, but also of interest is that, when I paid the dude $10 and told him to go get some lunch, he gave me a bro-fist pound and proceeded to do 3 BACK HANDSPRINGS away from me before running down the street to Carl’s Jr.  It was honestly the most athletic thing I ever saw at a strongman competition.

And here you suckers were running imitation meth...

Quit giving these lifts respect and treat them like any other thing: expect results!  If you go into your training anticipating failure, it’s exactly what you will get.  If you go in thinking that of COURSE your bench and press are going to go up, they will as well.  Learn from the meatheads in your gym that figured out that, if you make the muscles involved in pressing strong, you’ll get strong at pressing.  Treat the lifts without respect and you will develop lifts that are respectable.