I benched anywhere between once a week and four times a week over the course of my competitive powerlifting career. Everyone will have an ideal bench press frequency based on their level of experience and goals, so the adage “more is better” is not always true.
So how often should you bench press each week? The majority of powerlifters train their bench press two to three times per week. You can plan different training adaptations (strength, hypertrophy, and power) on separate workouts and gain enough practice with the bench press technique by doing this. Lifters should be “well-rounded” by focusing on other aspects of their training while benching frequently each week, so they should make sure they are healthy and able to do so.
I’ll give you a plan to use if you’re considering bench pressing more to help you decide if it’s the right exercise for you. To determine whether you ought to bench more, let’s go into more detail.
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Why You Should Not Bench More Often?
I should first go over some of the reasons why you might want to think about doing something different before deciding whether you should bench more frequently.
You may only be benching one time per week right now, and as I said: “more is not better”. Therefore, before deciding whether to increase the frequency or not, you should evaluate your own unique training context.
1. You’re Within 6-8 Weeks Of A Competition
Before increasing their bench frequency, competitive powerlifters should think about the season.
Your training volume should be gradually decreasing as the competition date approaches. It should be static if not reducing.
The volume of your overall training program will increase as you increase the number of bench press workouts you do each week, not decrease. It is therefore generally not recommended to increase training frequency 6–8 weeks prior to a competition.
2. You Don’t Have Time
The majority of people will have a weekly training schedule restriction. As a result, you’ll be constrained by your “economy of training,” or the amount of time you can spend working out each week.
For instance, if you can only spend 45 minutes in the gym three times a week, you’ll want to make sure that every minute you spend there is fully optimized around your goals. You won’t have as much time as someone who works out for two hours five days a week in the gym to perform pointless exercises.
3. You Have Injuries
Consider keeping your frequency the same or even reducing it if you currently have injuries that negatively affect your bench press.
Being able to function normally again as soon as possible after an injury should be your priority.
This does not mean that you can never bench press; it all depends on the injury. However, it does imply that you should exercise caution before putting additional strain on your tendons, joints, and muscles. When you’re free of pain or injury, you should gradually increase how often your bench.
Why You Should Bench More Often?
So, if none of the aforementioned categories apply to you, you might be a good candidate to bench press more frequently.
You might think about increasing your bench workouts to two or three times per week if you only bench press once or twice per week.
1. Opportunity To Work On Technique Improvements
Bench pressing should be considered a sport skill.
You’ll see that, when viewed in this light, every sports skill requires a specific amount of practice time in order to advance.
Say, for instance, that you want to develop your free-throw shooting technique as a basketball player. You obviously need to practice if you want to improve your shooting technique and success rate. You’ll probably gain technical proficiency much more quickly if you practice more frequently than once per week than you would otherwise.
2. Your Progress Has Stalled
Contrast “rate of progress” and “your progress has stalled” to avoid misunderstandings.
How quickly you’re gaining strength is determined by your rate of progress. For instance, you’re gaining 20 pounds of strength each month. Your rate of progress will be quicker if you have less experience with strength training. Your rate of advancement will slow as you approach your biological limit. You can’t anticipate moving forward at the same pace indefinitely. It will eventually slow down, which is completely normal.
This is distinct from stalling, which would be shown by a lack of strong growth over a medium time period (between four and six months). It’s time to address this issue in your training if your strength has plateaued and you haven’t noticed any recent improvements.
Many things could be holding back your progress, but one of them is that your bench press frequency has been static for far too long. If you continually run the same training program, this would be the case. In this situation, you might want to think about a bench press program with more frequent training sessions.
3. You Require More Training Volume
You aren’t getting enough training volume, which is another factor contributing to your bench press strength plateau.
Bench press strength may have plateaued and your training volume has remained constant over an extended period of time, in which case the two variables may be related.
Earlier, when I spoke of the “stress-adaptation response,” do you recall? Over time, the body will stop responding to the same amount of stress. As a result, you’ll need more training volume (stress) to keep making positive adaptations.
4. Do A bench Focused Phase Of Training
In comparison to other strength objectives, some people might want to concentrate solely on their bench press training.
If you decide that you want to advance in the bench press more quickly than in other lifts, increasing your training frequency will enable you to do so while also increasing your training volume and technical proficiency.
Remember that over the course of the year, you may bench press more or fewer times per week. It doesn’t have to be a fixed number. As a result, you might choose to decide to increase your bench press frequency to three times per week for eight weeks, and then reduce it to one or two times per week when you want to concentrate on a more comprehensive training program.
5. Experiment With Different Periodization Strategies
Periodization is the deliberate manipulation of your training variables over an extended period of time.
Some periodization strategies are predicated on the notion that you train your lifts more than once per week.
The Daily Undulating Periodization (DUP) method allows you to concentrate on various training attributes throughout the same week. A DUP system would involve performing bench presses several times a week, with varying numbers of reps, intensities, and rep ranges.
Common Mistakes People Make With Bench Press Training
The minimum requirement for many people is the ability to bench press their own weight. Give yourself a high five if you are able to accomplish this. You are one of the very few who can. Then again, resist letting your ego win. Both advantages and disadvantages of this renowned exercise are numerous. Here are the most frequent errors people make when bench pressing and how to prevent them.
- Overtraining is not a good idea and can result in injuries. Instead, try taking regular breaks from your bench press training; you’ll find that you recover stronger each time.
- It’s not advisable to split your bench press workouts. Give each muscle the attention it requires, and train each area of the body once or twice a week to allow for adequate rest.
- Bench pressing’s advantages can be completely negated by poor form. Before lifting more weight, practice your technique. This entails strengthening your grip, pulling back your shoulder blades, arching your back, and resting your feet on the floor when you lift.
- Although warm-ups are necessary, doing too many warm-up sets can be detrimental because they exhaust you before your sets. Stretching should be a part of your warm-up, which should also involve using light weights.
The majority of powerlifters bench press a minimum of twice weekly. Although there is no “ideal” frequency that will work for everyone, using the framework described above will enable you to determine whether the time is appropriate or not. Keep in mind that just because you increase your bench press frequency for a while doesn’t mean you have to maintain those levels all year. Adjust it upward or downward in accordance with your present objectives, then evaluate its efficacy. By giving my athletes one day of boarded bench presses, which temporarily restricts their range of motion while they adjust to the high frequency of bench days, I can increase the frequency of bench presses for my athletes.