Thread: Overtraining on Bench?

9 out of 10 high school teachers are fuckin morons, they can barely teach a gym class (they fill your head with bullshit muscle and fitness 'facts') let alone put together a decent program for a team.

Originally Posted by Yanick

9 out of 10 high school teachers are fuckin morons, they can barely teach a gym class (they fill your head with bullshit muscle and fitness 'facts') let alone put together a decent program for a team.

never took that into account

In the past I would workout chest twice a week, and usually 8 sets of 6-8 reps consisting of bench, incline, and dips. The gains I made took forever (went up 30lbs on bench in 1.5 years) and then I stopped gaining anything at all. The last 4 months I have worked out chest once every 7 days and have gone up 40lbs on bench and haven't stopped progressing yet.

So yes, in my opinion those guys are overtraining.

Even if it's not overtraining, it's unecessary. Yeah, the bench press is similar to the arm drive of a lineman, but I bet he doesn't even have you tuck your elbows like in a game. If I were your coach, I would devote more time to variations of squats and deadlifts.

I would also vary the parameters to train your rate of force generation, promote maximal neural adaptations, etc.

are you a member of the team or part of the coaching staff?

As Pimp said, that may be fine for a lineman, but different positions require different routines. Also, it is hard to say whether that is too much or not. What else do you guys do? Are all sets to failure? I would have to think they would be since 8 is not an endurance rep range. Are the inclines and DB presses done on each of those days or just one other time.

Also, when is this routine done, throughout the year or is it a periodized program where you train differently during preseason, postseason, etc.?

Originally Posted by BulkBoy

When I thought about my highschool football team's workout routine, it really seemed to me as though they are really trying to overtrain their players on bench. 3 of 4 workout days of the week consist of 3x8 benchpress, also, during workouts every 15 minutes the players must do 20 pushups. During the week they will also hit incline doing 3x8, and DB press 3x8. Does anyone else think that this is overtraining?

First of all I think your Fb coach is wacked if he is encouraging this type of a workout during the season. Bench press is only a small part of what you should be doing. It seems that your coach has blown it out of porportion. THe work out should include sport specific activities like push presses, Cleans, Jammer work, Squats, and a lot of core work. Curls, Skull Crushers, Bench (to some extent) are not needed to build a football player!

Just and old coaches opinion.

I think the coach was tackled one to many times.

personally as a football player .........cleans, squat and bench are really the only lifts that should be done in season....but offseason is a whole differnt story

9 sets of chest 3-4 times a week is over training big time and very stupid of the coach to allow.
2x a week per muscle group in the off season is ok for teenagers but no more than that.

The middleschool coaches made us do bench and squat every single day.
That's why I got out of ahtletics for high school, to make some gains...

Highschool coaches don't quite do that, more like everything 2-3 times a week.

But I still see dumbass kids doing bench almost everyday, Just want to slap them.

I reccomend EH training. I couldn't have gained 183 LB's in my bench in 2 weeks any other way.

I do full body everytime I go to the gym. Is 2 days off one day on overtraining? If my muscles are sore when It's time to go back I skip another day though.