Josh

I've been thinking of focusing on increasing my 1RM for barbell bench press for my next training period, but I have questions about this move.

You may recall that I have underdeveloped chest (I've posted about this several times in this forum). Lately I see several posts talking about increasing 1RM for bench press, so I am thinking if I also attempt to increase my bench press max would that strengthen my chest and thus making it bigger? I know there are several programs available to achieve this, but I have the following questions:

1. I see most of these programs do not fail to stress that max bench press should be achieved not only by strong chest but also by strong shoulders and triceps. I understand that bench press does use these 3 muscles (not chest exclusively), but this make me wonder, does increasing bench press max involve more shoulders and/or triceps rather than chest? I wonder about this because when I first learned how to improve my chest size I was told not to care about the weight I could bench press ("to leave my ego at the door"). I understand that this advise means I should focus on form rather than weight lifted, but this also makes me wonder if weight lifted does not necessarily correspond to chest size. If so, then max bench programs are really not appropriate for the purpose to increase chest size and form.

2. To improve my chest I was also advised to switched to using dumbells for the reason they provide greater rom. I think that the greater rom achieved by using dbs is at the lower position where using dbs we can bring the elbows to max low so that the chest is stretched to the max. But I think also because only about 1/3 of the lower position of bench press involve more chest, while the rest 2/3 of the movement (the lifting part, probably from where our upper arms are almost parallel to floor) involve more triceps and shoulders (CMIIW). This makes me wonder, if now I use bb instead of dbs, then this would limit my 1/3 chest part, therefore bb bench press really make more use of triceps and shoulders rather than chest, thus maxing bench press weight really means strengthening triceps and shoulders more than chest. If this is correct, then attempting to increase 1RM of bb bench press is useless in regards to improving chest size and form.

So, I guess my questions are basically: In order to develop my chest, should I use a program to increase 1RM of bench press? In other words, would any of these programs be effective to improve my chest size / form?

- Josh

Prince

I do not believe that using 1RM will benefit the size and and shape of your chest. I have always had a thick chest and good pec development and I never go under 4-reps on any pressing movement. Furthermore you risk injury by maxing out.

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Josh

I am seriously considering to increase my 1RM for bench press because reading the chart in www.criticalbench.com/benchpress-ratings.htm makes me realize that my bench press is way behind. I have to add around 20 kgs just to meet JH Letter weight (which is the lowest one). I have slowly increased my press by other methods (Gopro's, HST), but since I am very far behind I'm wondering maybe I need to focus more specifically to chest, therefore I'm considering such programs. But having no experience at all, I am now asking this forums, would such programs really beneficial for me or not?

- Josh

Scotty the Body

It would help you to increase your strength more than anything.

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