Wednesday Workout -- Throw Yourself A Curveball

Weekly excersize tips from the LTR:

Rule Number 1: When it comes to strength, the only question you’ll ever be asked is how big is your bench.

Rule Number 2: Like the size or scope of other things, most people also lie about the size of their bench.

But for those guys (and gals) who are interested in building a real bench that they can really brag about, you need to think about how to break through the inevitable plateau you hit as you build yourself towards that impressive one and a half times, or double body weight (or even bigger) bench.

The easy answer is to throw your body a curve ball. Conventional wisdom says that you do your biggest exercises (i.e. bench, squat, deadlift) at the beginning of the workout, and then your lighter exercises later. But to push your bench past its current peak, try pre-exhausting yourself with dumbbells.

That’s right. To break through that plateau, your first exercise on bench day should doing five sets of five with the heaviest set of dumbbell bench presses you can manage. That will pre-exhaust those stabilizer muscles in your shoulders, and your chest to some degree. After the last set of five, the next exercise should be the regular, flat barbell bench, for 3 sets of 3 using the most you can lift.

This will force growth in your shoulders, which will push your bench up, up, up. And for those of you who are really looking to grow, I think you might want to refer to a previous post on devoting a whole day to shoulders.

Try this pre-exhaustion route for a month, and then go back to flat benching first.