Linear-ish program, three sessions a week. Squat has gone from 100 to 122kg in that time, deadlift is moving, and bench has been 80kg for five reps since March. I've tried adding a fourth bench day, then dropping to one, neither changed anything. Bodyweight is stable at 78kg and I sleep about seven hours. Where do people usually find the problem with a stalled bench?
Eleven weeks of the same 5 reps at 80kg means the program stopped working eight weeks ago and you kept running it. Take 15% off, run 4 sets of 6 at 68kg for three weeks, then build back at 2.5kg a week. You'll blow past 80 in about six weeks. Small jumps also matter here — get microplates, 1.25kg increments are the difference between progress and grinding.
The deload feels like going backwards for two weeks and then it doesn't. I've broken every plateau I've had this way and I still resist doing it every time.
Microplates have been mentioned three times now and I keep putting off buying them because 2.5kg jumps felt normal. On bench that's a 3% increase a week which is clearly absurd.
Adding for anyone with the same problem: seven hours of sleep at 78kg bodyweight and stable weight also means you're eating at maintenance. Bench is a small-muscle lift and it responds to being in a slight surplus more obviously than squat does. Even 200 calories over maintenance changed things for me.
Film a set from the side at chest height. Half the stalls I've seen in myself and other people were a bar path drifting toward the face, or the elbows flaring to 90 degrees, and neither is visible from inside the lift.
Side-on at bar height is the correct angle. Filming from the foot end tells you almost nothing.
Just bench every day until it moves.
@thoracic_tim · 4mo ago · 3 replies
Three things stall a bench at that level, roughly in order of how often I see them.
First, upper back and setup. A bench with a loose, flat upper back has nothing to press from. Retract and depress the shoulder blades, get your feet planted so you can push into the floor, and keep tension the whole set rather than resetting each rep. People add 5kg from setup alone.
Second, volume. Squats respond to heavy triples, bench mostly doesn't at intermediate level. If your bench work is three heavy sets and nothing else, that's the problem — you want 10-15 hard sets a week across bench, incline, dips and some form of row.
Third, triceps. If you're missing at lockout rather than off the chest, add close grip bench or dips as a second movement twice a week for six weeks. If you're missing off the chest, add pause bench at 80% instead.
Also worth saying plainly: bench progresses far slower than squat for almost everyone. 22kg on squat and 0 on bench over eleven weeks is depressing but it isn't unusual.
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@deficit_dot · 4mo ago
I'm missing about two inches off the chest, so pause work it is. And my total bench-ish volume is six sets a week, which reading it back is nothing.
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@quiet_stacker · 4mo ago
The rowing volume point is underrated. Nobody wants to hear that their bench is limited by their back, but it usually is once you're past beginner numbers.
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