rev210

do your 4-5 full reps , then straight away do 10 negatives (jump up to the top , then lower controlled).

Leave it out completely if you want. If you are chasing lean first, then you can focus on the shoulders and upper back. As mentioned the Dips and things like flys can do the chest muscles for activation. If you want to be a bench press hero later then you can go back to it. At least with stronger balanced supporting muscles.

Soon enough Leesh. This experience will give you smarter training and you will be stronger. Mentally & physically.

How many do you want to do? 4-5 is still good. Lots of people can't do even 1. You can get to 20+ if you want to easy enough takes a few weeks. Just have to put in the effort. You can do it.

Thats a challenge for sure. Takes time to realise that adopting a new way to live is the secret to getting there and staying there. Your friend sounds like they are 'dieting' in the approach to both training and eating. She will fail long term and may even fail short term. The decision to live differently needs to be embraced. Then changes will be permanent and the body look will be also. Works when the changes are enjoyable and not punishment without reward.

Put a HKS sticker on your head. BOOM 50 rear wheel kw extra !

Yes different understandings of the situation .People have relative levels of understanding what hard work is (weight training wise) and what can result from it. It's normal to think about other factors as you mention when trying to figure it out. What probably colours my view a bit is , in the past, I have added 40kg to a squat . Going from 180kg to 240kg in the same 2 week time frame many years ago. I worked very very hard to achieve this (hardest work in the gym I had ever done). Of course I had plenty of people say ' you are a freak' & ' you have genetics, it won't work for me....' . They were right only about the 'it won't work for me' bit because they don't wan't to train the same way. Different goals or maybe just in a comfort zone. Markos has posted plenty of similar improvement statements Also, my opinion on why I did best on all the forum challenges, is I think because my token efforts to train the different movements came with experience and the abillity to apply more intensity. Than the much younger and fitter dudes competing with me. Not becasue I think I have mega genetics and secret hidden potential (I appreciate you aren't saying that). From my limited experience perhaps this can offer something to consider. That a great effort can be an equally powerful explanation for such fast gains. Again only my opinion offered as food for thought.

I see no issue with a 40kg increase in 2 weeks on that movement. Maybe it is from your own mindset and experience. Fair enough . Do you not think that in order to achieve such gains the guy has likely been challenging his limits regularly? If you challege yourself more, do you think the gains will be smaller or larger? Not sleeping or eating for a week is an excuse. If you don't lift 260kg then you haven't . If you did lift 260kg and you go on to say you didn't eat or sleep, well it's not going to add a gram to the weight you lifted. It's 260kg.

Sorry birds thats not right at all . The range of motion and the position is bad compared to standard. It's got far more stress on the rotator cuff due to the position of the shoulder. You can do them in relative safety, provided you are in correct shoulder position (and can get there with enough shoulder mobility).However, It will place much much more stress on the rotator, scapular and traps than front style. Maybe people don't like the regualr military press as much because sometimes the amount of weight they can do is less , relative to behind the neck (people like bragging rights). Add to this the 'standing' as opposed to sitting component and it's easier to get it wrong. To help illustrate as to why these are strong on the rotator cuff , look at the elbow position. In the same way as the other pressing movement bench press. elbows out for gym punter bench press (ouch my rotators) vs the elbows in version for powerlifting. Front press starts with the elbows in front and in. Moving the bar upwards vertically. Behind the neck is out to the sides and up out a little. Either press needs a good strong shoulder girdle and upperback. Both assist slightly in actually building stronger supporting muscles as a compound movement. But, that aint enough. My shoulders are pretty strong, I didn't need them.

Just use a squat rack when you get back into it. get the technique sorted on the standing press. It's pretty easy with practice and one less thing to worry about while getting it perfect.

It would be the technique then Leesh. Were you also taking the bar off the ground with a 'clean' or did you take it out of a rack? Picking it up off the ground is good training but, you need to know how to do it right also. I did test of a few 100kg military press sets today (I clean & press these) ,speaking with some reasonable past experience. I would not consider behind the neck press at any weight a part of my training if I was to seriously bother. It requires more scapular strength to stabilise if you do it right and stresses the rotator more, pretty much for no other reason than to be a hero. Once you get better drop the behind the neck thing. You can get tips on Military press if you want to do it correctly, I think it's a good compund movement.

Standing press is a good movement , however it needs good technique like all good movements as it's a compound one. It's not hard to do but, you should understand it. People get taught to do it wrong or not at all. The stabilisation strength of the upper back and shoulders is very important. If you are managing a challenging weight , then not doing things correctly can hurt your upper back/spine. Mostly people do the basics wrong. Not drawing in lots of air and stabilising the core (abs are tense but, pushed out). I. Also,pre-fatiguing the shoulder stabilsing muscles with things like volume bench press or other isolation shoulder movements beforehand is a fail. Behind the head is not a beginners variation let alone snatch grip width.

This is some mad pressing , snatch grip behind the head as well

been helping train a mate with deads and a few other things (too slack to bother lifting myself, just doing token demos). 3 weeks 3 training sessions. His weight 78kg. Height 6ft 2 . 40 years old, Skinny -fat dude. No weight training experience. Nothing special. Starting deadlift weight 60kg . Did 140kg tonight.

You have got it bozo Im not 'training' at the moment . I am mucking around. I will be training when i get serious and go to a gym Not what i do at the moment All these factors are in context that i mention. Training. Not pissing around

Don't agree with you, I see no evidence of it with regular people. No one says you have to do 5 days, it could be 2 or it could be 2 weeks,who knows it's muscle specific too. You do what is necessary. In all cases the best results will always be delivered throughy 'hard' choices and hard work. Rest challenges can be the same old things like ego , worry and doubt. You think you are faster to recover than you what you measure. You are worried you will get weaker if you wait another day. You doubt that longer rest will deliver.

Dude. Is there a reason you think the hammy is going to get better when you train it? It won't. rest up buddy.

I matters if you are not mindfull of the fact that you are damaging the body to stimulate it. That basis gives great benifit to how you plan and adapt training shedules. It's ignored. People alter diet and reps and weight to suit. Not rest. To me thats a gap.

The key I was trying to focus on was the treatment of strength training as a form of controlled 'damage' . As you say , the study of the growth or not of additional cells in living humans is a tad difficult. This 'grey area' means there is plenty of bulldust science in the world of bodybuilding. It's about selling a different kind of cosmetics. There is plenty of sports science covering the recovery and increase of strength in study form. As it relates to the decrease and then increase of strength over time following a session. Thats probably enough to go on for most, given human experiment to look deeper into muscles when this is the case, is not going to happen real soon.

I'm guessing it's not a 'mass gainer' shake tho'. Different thing.

bottom line is how many people are trying to understand what the optimal recovery periods are for the muscles they have and the movements they do. Coaches take note of progression and adapt for athletes the programs around limits and time frames. Individuals can pay attention to this also and try to figure out the optimum. Arbitary rest periods are just that. For many the same period of time resting is inadequate. It depends on factors including genetic/ diet and the actual effects of the training session. If you aren't training hard then it's of much smaller concern.

I said I was generalising. I deleted the word 'cells' for you, people don't know what sarcomeres are generally. Microtrauma repair isn't hyperplasia. Debate about hyperplasia exsists. Doesn't matter for us in terms of what works at the micro levels. The concept that the body adapts to both the nervous system training and the microtrauma caused by heavy loads is well established. Microtrauma is the key to strength training in the area of hypertrophy. Treating it as controlled damage helps condition the thinking towards correct training methodology. Most gym goers actually believe they are 'getting stronger/bigger' in the gym. They aren't, they are getting controlled damage and stress it's just the ticket to the dance. Sleeping, resting & eating is the 'growth part'

Here's my tip for you. Stop benching for 6months. Build yourself a powerful upper back and shoulders. Go back to it and you will instantly lift like a hero compared to your best effort so far. That injury at what is a pretty light weight I am guessing, is about inbalance.

At the moment I'm not doing anything training wise in that manner, just bits and bobs to get my body moving. Long rests and lifting maximal weight goes hand in hand. If the weight is near maximal then the body is taxed in a bigger way. Including nervous system & heart/blood pressure. Long rests are about 'long enough'. Long enough to be ready to lift will full system support. Good nervous system activation of muscle plays a big part in lifting heavy. Rest gaps between days in training is also about the system recovery and peak recovery growth/repair of muscle. I would rest for sometimes weeks between workouts. Depending on what I had worked out was the recovery cycle for that movement. This next bit about recovery time, contains some generalisations. When you lift heavy to stimulate growth , you tear muscles down. It's a series of micro injuries. The body repairs and adds extra muscle to adapt. There is a period of recovery, where you have less functional muscle that can be used (you destroyed some) upto the 100% point. Then there is another period of additional growth beyond that. You will then have more muscle cells than before. Train too early and you can go backwards, though it may not be apparent as you can possibly move the same weight or slightly more. This is because we don't activate 100% of our muscle fibres in lifts and the body will switch to available ones to complete the effort. There is a resource demand in terms of food and a 'rate' of recovery effected by lots of factors. One factor is demmand on the resources. If other parts of the body are being trained during this period (to a reasonably intense level) this will slow the rate of recovery. It can also cap the amount of additional repair growth. What this means is that if you have done a decent job in the gym and are eating enough as an example. You can take 2 months or more off after a killer session and return to the gym lifting more weight.

and lazy...