how much ya bench?
it has to be one of the stupidest and most overused questions put to people in the gym! why does one lift consume the imagination of so many people? its like this one lift dictates your position in the gym! if you really want to know how "strong" someone is why dont you ask them how much they deadlift? this became apparent to me last monday when i was training my chest. i was setting myself up on the flat bench when two guys in their early 20’s walked in and decided to focus their attention on my next set! so i unracked the bar and slowly lowered it to my chest with perfect form, nice and slow. then began to perform 5 agonising reps that tortured every single muscle fibre in my pecs!racking the bar my training partners stripped off a plate either side and i continued another handful of strict reps, the last one agonisingly slow! as i came up from the bench sweating profusely i noticed the two guys looking at me in disbelief!
they were not in disbelief over the massive weight i was benching - they were in disbelief that a relatively big guy like me had just managed 5 reps with 225lb, lifting as is his life depended on it and the managed a handful at 135lb!!! yes they were so confused i nearly started laughing - as much as i would loved to explain to them that i had already done incline dumbell presses, flat dumbell presses and incline dumbell flyes to failure and with drop sets before performing my "spectacular" flat bench!
far from being embarresed by my flat bench effort, i was actually really delighted with it! having benched 350 for 5 or 6 reps in the previous months its hard to see why i would be so happy with such an effort? well firsti could literally feel every muscle fibre contracting when benching 225 and the reasulting pump was enormous! secondly, benching 225 after so many working sets was actually HARDER than benching 350 on my first exercise!
this has led to me experiment more with my training with exercises like 10 sets of ten reps with 315 on the squat and sets of fifty reps on the leg press! the reasults so far have been really good and the muscles are really responding to this different style of training without a heavy weight! yeah i know its still the basics of bodybuilding to change things every so often, but we are creatures of habit and if we are honest with ourselves do we really listen to everything were told! so the next time some punk or gym-rat asks you "how much ya bench?" tell him "on a good day i might push 225 for two or three reps" just to see the expression on his face 
