HOW YOU FINISH DEPENDS ON HOW YOU START
HOW YOU FINISH DEPENDS ON HOW YOU START
A year ago last summer, I had the chance to spend an evening workout with the assistant strength coach of the Seattle Seahawks, Bill Gillespie. The discussion in between working sets was centered around my frustrations in the squat and the bench press. Bill shared with me some of his own philosophies which I have written about before and I incorporated into my own training. I have found these changes to be good for my strength as I was lucky enough to squat an 1141 and pull an 810 after making changes in my squat and deadlift routines. So a year goes by and my bench has stalled. Once again, Bill came to workout with us during a break in training camp in Cheney, WA and once again, our discussion centered around improving strength and improving training, but this time with the bench press.
For those that don’t know, Bill has rapidly made progress in the Bench game in the last year, rocketing to a near miss with 800 and a near miss in training at 855. I personally saw him do a 675 in a single ply shirt that looked like he could throw it off his chest and through the roof. The bar speed he has is incredible. I had to listen to what he was doing in this lift and it makes sense. But it isn’t the way most lifters are training now. More on Bill later.
About this same time, I called Louie Simmons at Westside Barbell and asked him some questions pertaining to a Tendo unit. A Tendo unit is a device that is able to measure bar speed with lifters when performing an exercise. I called Louie before my workout with Bill because I knew that Bill would be bringing a Tendo unit to our workout. As always, Louie helped answer some questions for me and was willing to part with advice.
Louie informed me his best lifters in the bench and squat have a bar speed of about .7 to .8 meters per second on speed day workouts. That’s nearly 2 and one-half feet per second! He also told me, and this was the key, that his fastest and strongest lifters, also had the fastest descents. In other words, the lifters who let the bar down the fastest, also came up the fastest.
The deadlift, in Lou’s experience, turned out to be slightly different. His best lifters were slightly over 1 meter per second. Why? Most likely due to the fact that the lift starts at a dead stop and has no descent before takeoff. You know what else makes that so interesting? If the bench starts with a pause, then shouldn’t it be the same? Well, Lou’s experiences proved otherwise with his lifters. I believe that it’s not the same because the bar speed down on the bench still uses stored potential energy from the descent to create a greater contraction to push the weight up. And yes, even with a pause!
Louie has been preaching this for years and I have found it to be true in my own experience in the last year. Bands have helped me learn this principle. The band tension used in a squat and bench help force the bar down faster and provide a greater rate of descent, thereby causing a more powerful and faster contraction on the way up.
I have looked back on my training logs from years past and noticed that my tension used in band training is directly related to my greatest squats. I have used three different tensions in the squat over the last three years-all with blue bands. The easiest tension I used netted me a squat of 1103. (A very difficult 1103). The medium tension I used netted me a squat of 1141 and I had more in me. I increased the tension even more and before injury was nearly 70 pounds ahead of my training from when I did 1141. I firmly believe that bar speed is an important element in your lifts. Keep in mind there is a difference between good bar speed and reckless abandon. The key is greater bar speed done in control.
LESSON NUMBER ONE: IMPROVING YOUR BAR SPEED UNDER A CONTROLLED DESCENT WILL MOST LIKELY IMPROVE YOUR BAR SPEED BACK UP
Well, the time came for Bill and I to train together and as luck would have it, we decided to do a max effort night rather than a speed workout. I never got to officially measure my own bar speed with the Tendo unit, but hopefully very soon I will.
As the workout came to a close and Bill had finished most of his heavy benches I told him what I had been doing to train my bench. My answer was the standard: lots of top end training, board presses, floor presses, lockouts, endless amounts of tricep work etc. Now Bill didn’t laugh, he kept it in. I know he did. But rather, very calmly, he said in one word, “Why?”
I stood looking at him as he rested against the smith machine and he could see the puzzled look on my face. Here is where Bill began to work his magic on me. Bill explained to me that he believes so many lifters train their top end so much that they forget to train their starting strength and beginning range of motion. As he kept explaining it to me, I caught myself thinking that Rickey Dale Crain has said this for years. When lifters have sticking points, don’t train the sticking point, train just under it. It’s the point under it that is causing the bar speed to stall that got you the sticking point in the first place.
I guess another way to look at is like the supplement industry that claims one of two things: Anabolic or Anti-Catabolic. Heck, these are the same thing. They both accomplish the same thing. The difference is in HOW it accomplishes what it needs to. The idea applies to the bench press, the squat and the deadlift as well. Specifically, with the bench press, one way to get the lockout is to train the top end. The other way is to train the bottom end so the speed up requires less top end strength to lock out.
I found his whole view on this refreshing because I make no claims to being a world-class bencher. But maybe for me this could work. Maybe for you it could too. I can’t tell you how many benches I have missed by 2 inches because I couldn’t lock out and every time I think I have to up my top end work. Maybe I’ve missed the boat the whole time. Maybe I needed to increase my bottom work to improve starting strength and bar speed up.
LESSON NUMBER TWO: TRAINING THE BOTTOM END FOR STARTING STRENGTH AND UPWARDS BAR SPEED ACCOMPLISHES THE SAME THING AS TRAINING THE TOP END.
Here’s how you can put these two ideas to work in your training.
- Combine the band training concept with the bottom end work simply by using a band tension in the bench that allows proper bar speed but also provides tension in the bottom of the lift. Tension at the bottom of the lift and not having the band go loose will provide starting strength off the chest and the high tension on the bands will help your descent speed as well. The same concept can be applied to the squat as well.
- Add pause squats and pause benches to your routines. I have not seen many lifters advocate these exercises in the last few years, but I have seen many IPF lifters use them for years with great results. The pause benches will help your starting strength off the bottom and the pause squats done at rock bottom will not only improve starting strength but the entire range of motion as well since they are done well below parallel.
- Finally, try adding cambered bar bench presses done for speed. If the bar is cambered 5 inches, then use a 2 board along with it, so you only go about 2 inches below your chest level. That extra 2 inches will force you to use muscles to improve starting strength and through a greater range of motion. One of the greatest bench pressers of all-time, Mike McDonald, advocated these for years. Bill recommends doing these for 2 sets of 6 done quickly. Change up the way you do these by altering grips, feet up, feet down, arch, no arch, etc.
Remember This: the only thing that matters on the platform is if you finished each of the 9 lifts, but you can’t finish any of them if you don’t start them with maximum force and power.
