“The moment you want to quit is the moment you need to keep pushing.” -Unknown
Sometimes the most basic, often overlooked, exercises are the ones that will open the door to new progress in both fitness and performance.
Many years ago, a female powerlifter I was coaching hit a wall with her bench press. She could bench 185lbs pretty much any day of the week, but anything over 185lbs would staple her to the bench. Not good considering her goal at that time was 200lbs in competition.
My crew followed the Conjugate Method of training popularized by Louie Simmons and his famous gym, Westside Barbell. Typically, the triceps were to be trained immediately after the main bench movement as most bench press issues can be traced back to weak triceps. So, for weeks and months we would hammer our triceps with close grip bench press, all manner of barbell and dumbbell extensions, and pushdowns. The deltoids, lats, and upper back muscles were trained after annihilating the triceps. Even though our triceps exercise weights and reps were going up, her bench press wasn’t.
At some point we all made a road trip to Columbus, Ohio to spend some time with Louie and train at Westside for a couple of days. This visit opened my eyes to the massive failure I experienced. I was relying on program outline as it was commonly written in all the books and articles, and not on my coaching eye and assessing my lifters. Louie pulled up a chair and sat down next to the bench press stations while I had my lifters work up to a max. This particular female crushed 185lbs, so we put 195lbs on and it pinned her to the bench. After a few unsuccessful attempts, Louie said, “It’s not her triceps and it’s not her form. Your technique is perfect. She has no front delts. That’s what’s holding her back.” I looked at her arms and thought, “f@#$ing hell, her triceps are massive and her delts are non-existent.” Louie was right.
His fix was simple. Work the crap out of push-ups and throw in some front shoulder raises with dumbbells or holding a plate. Then he put me through a hellacious push-up workout by holding onto a barbell laying across the base of a power rack. The exercises were simple and brilliant. After returning to Atlanta, we absolutely hammered the push-up variations in our training. We followed with the front delt work, then back and triceps exercises.
The results were nothing short of amazing. After only 6 weeks of prioritizing push-ups after our main bench press exercises, she accomplished her 200lb bench press goal easily. After a 165lb opener, we chose 190lbs for the 5lb PR we always insisted on. After the 190lb second attempt flew off her chest, her third attempt at 200lbs came up just as fast, and at a meet shortly after 209lbs became the new competition PR. Shortly after she hit a solid 225lbs in training. That’s all it took, rearranging our accessory exercises to prioritize push-ups and the competition max increased 24lbs and the training max increased 40lbs.
This isn’t to say that simply working push-ups will add 40lbs to your bench press, but it should remind you that if you are stuck on a particular lift, assessing your weak points and implementing a simple, overlooked exercise, may be all the is required to get the progress ball rolling again.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s article and, until next time, stay strong and healthy!
If I had to choose one exercise only, it might very well be the push up. There are ample variations of the push up, so it's possible to work every single muscle for whole body training, and target specific muscles and joints if/when doing splits. The push up, along with pull ups/chin ups are the top two exercises I'd suggest for people over forty.
Massive fan of the push up. Been doing them all year, literally. Every day. Challenge I wanted to take on this year. It’s been interesting. Now up over 250 per day.