New Bench: Smart Idea or Nah?

We posted this on T Nation’s Instagram and opinions were mixed to say the least. What do you think?

Note: This was an IG repost. Not sure who makes it.

Do some bench presses, go to failure. Then drop the height of the bench and bang out some partials. Sounds intense!

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That lever is begging to get stepped on as a prank.

I like it. I was scrolling through the comments on IG to get a feel for what people DIDN’T like about it. And I think that the criticism I saw was pretty silly.

  1. The biggest criticism I saw was ‘you can’t plant your feet, the bench is too high.’ And I thought that was very silly. I don’t THINK this bench sits any higher than most benches. I think the person in the video is just short, lol. But when she brings the bar down, it does get pretty close to the fixed rails of the rack, which makes me think ‘standard height’. If you’re benching out of a rack like that, you don’t want the bench to sit lower, because you won’t be able to lower the bar to your chest.

  2. Safeties do the same thing. Yes, yes they do. But depending on the style of rack you’re working with, safeties can be a pain in the ass, and most of us (myself included) kinda suck at adjusting safeties religiously. It’s not a bad thing to have an ‘extra’ safety mechanism.

  3. The bench might not hold up to heavier weights. This one… could be correct. I have no idea. I don’t think I’d want to see a 500+ bench presser using this. But at the same time, this bench isn’t made for the 500+ presser. This is clearly made for ‘normal’ people. And I think, for that purpose, it’s plenty useful.

My 2 cents! I’ve never seen one in person, but it LOOKS like a really cool product.

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I’d classify it as a solution looking for a problem. I think safeties work just fine for basically everybody. If you are too lazy to adjust the safeties (myself included here), the bench dropping down might not save you anyways. So you have to adjust the safeties anyways, so I don’t see much benefit.

I also kinda like a super sturdy bench. I’d be skeptical if this bench was as rigid as one that is just welded metal. The introduction of a mechanism almost always is going to make the bench less rigid.

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I think they do too, but a LOT of commercial gyms have benches that don’t have safeties. Hell, half the benches at the strongman gym I train at don’t. The rack in the video is a good example of that. It’s just got fixed arms that can be useful for squatting, but not benching. And as I mentioned previously, I don’t always think to adjust the safeties when I bench. This would be a nice ‘last resort’ if I fuck up.

As do I. And if I was attempting really heavy weights, I wouldn’t use this, I’d use a ‘good’ bench. This seems like a good idea for a more casual gym-goer, not a powerlifter. I can’t imagine powerlifters touching something like this, lol.

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It kind of looks like something that would be a “selling point” or neat feature that would attract casual people at the Health Club or Wellness Center.

And lifters who aren’t into that atmosphere probably think it’s pretty silly.

It’s interesting to see what Tinkerer type people come up with for lifting weights.

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I can agree with this, but at the same time, we are getting very specific with the application for where it is useful.

It may make sense for gyms that already have those non-adjustable safeties (like the squat rack style).

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I dont like where the world is going. In old soviet schools we had ropes hanging from ceilings at the school gym that went like 20m high. I dont know the exact height but the fact is - if someone falls, they die. No safety. We climbed that shit, then slipped down, burnt our hands and climbed again. We had metal swings in playgrounds, metal slides that burned red in sun during summer. Everyone has a scar on their skull from childhood from some of these “toys” and it was all fine. Now you need 10 different guards and a helmet to drive a bycycle on a special soft ground supervised by 5 people. Its retarded.
Same goes with all this shit… I never understood why the fuck were even safeties invented. When i started my gym life, there were no safeties anywhere. No one died.
First - you didnt attempt stupid lifts. Second - if you failed a squat - you fell. If you failed a bench, you rolled that bitch over and then you bragged about it with your black ribs. Or you just asked for a spot.

In my home gym my rack is just these 2 metal tubes with hooks on top so the bar doesnt roll off. When you re-rack, you can actually miss em, like after a squat when you dont see where you are putting the bar, i have to let go slow, so im sure that both ends are on top of the rack and there isnt one end of the bar already too far from it.
Nothing has ever happened.

I believe people in fitness and in world generally are looking for problems and then comming up with fixes.
Like we feed people pre workouts because their sleep sucked, and then we feed them sleeping meds because they cant sleep because of the pre workout.
Soon you will need a helmet in the gym also.

Here’s my wallet. I’ll take two please

The benches I used back in 24hr fitness and LA fitness didn’t have safeties. I’ve been pinned during the bench press twice in my life, and I am pretty sure I would have been in serious trouble one of those times if I didn’t start really flailing around and making a lot of noise because people didn’t seem to notice.

I now have a squat rack that has safeties, but I’m not sure if I set the safety pins at the right height. I did test it with an empty bar and confirmed that the bar doesn’t crush me but I’m in no hurry to try it out with a max effort lift.

I think this is a fantastic thing to have in those big box gyms where people cannot rely on spotters.

I’m sorry, but I’m missing the part where this is a good thing?

I don’t know how old you are, but if the ‘89’ in your name is your birth year, I’m older than you. I also grew up with the things you’re talking about. And now, I have a 7 year old son. You know what’s great about the playgrounds now? Fucking everything. They’ve got WAY more interesting things to do, small rock climbing walls, they’ve still got monkey bars and stuff like that. AND you don’t risk fucking death/3rd degree burns from playing on it. I’m not sure what the draw of burns and scars and shit on young children is for you, but I’ll pass on that.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, but that’s not a thing here (other than helmets, but those ALSO go back to when I was a kid… they’re not a new thing). And as far as helmets go, I’ll say this. Biking is a really big thing in my area, and a lot of serious bikers. They ALL wear helmets. It’s fucking stupid not to. I actually have a good friend who nearly died because she decided to go out without a helmet about a year ago. Significant brain damage, was in a coma. I’ll take basic safety precautions over this ‘if I die, I die’ mentality all day.

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