8-Week Bench Programming

Hey everyone,

I was hoping to get some ideas from people on what a good bench program would be to run leading up to a meet. I’ll have 8 weeks of training for it before the deload week. Right now I bench twice a week using some numbers from a sheiko template. So each day usually has me doing around 75-80% for 5-6 sets of 2-3 reps. My current max is 285. I’d like to get in the 295-300 range if possible for this meet. I’ll be squatting twice a week and deadlifting once a week, so I’d be looking for a bench program centered around 2 days a week (at most).

If anyone can provide some input on this I’d really appreciate it.

http://www.joeskopec.com/edcoanbench.html

Can probably just modify that slightly, the general idea is not hard to change for 8 vs 12 weeks.

First week 10 reps
Last week 1 or 2 reps
Middle weeks everything in-between

[quote]sufiandy wrote:
http://www.joeskopec.com/edcoanbench.html

Can probably just modify that slightly, the general idea is not hard to change for 8 vs 12 weeks.

First week 10 reps
Last week 1 or 2 reps
Middle weeks everything in-between[/quote]

Weird. I had actually been looking at that as an option for the past few days. I would just have to tweak it like you said.

sheiko 5 week comp cycle did wonders for me.

i used my actual max, paused ALL reps, and added 20-50 lbs of chains.

didnt miss a single rep.

If you enjoy training something similar to the planning that Sheiko prepared for the athletes he trained, then you could consider trying out one of such plans. I always remind people that these are not routines, but merely examples of monthly plans he wrote as a coach for an athlete he trained. As such, don’t follow it like law but rather appreciate the rationale behind the training and make it suitable to your needs.

If you have 8 weeks, just copying two 4 week plans could work and would allow you to evaluate how you can adapt the program to your needs. You could always try 37/32 as many people would suggest. That being said, it is not a law. Should you feel that you really such at pausing, really do long pauses. In general still pause everything no matter what. Should your lockout suck, maybe add chains on your days 2nd bench that is lighter or I personally often add in sets of 2/3bd AFTER i do my planned 5x3 80%. Of course I have been doing this a long time so perhaps adding is not recommended when you are new. Anyways, look up prelipins table as well. Its gold.

This exceeds your twice a week guideline but it will also likely do the most for your bench in the specified time frame