Dot

The warm-up point applies to everyone over about 30 and nobody wants to hear it. Ten minutes of boring band work has kept me pressing for years.

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.

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.

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.

Deficit pulls get all the attention and blocks get none, but for most people with this problem blocks are the useful tool.

Plenty of strong people train four short sessions a week. Consistency over two years beats an optimal program you can't actually attend.

Upper lower four days, for the exact reason you spotted: 45 minutes is the binding constraint, and a full body session with three main lifts plus accessories does not fit into it without rushing your rest periods, which is how you turn strength work into conditioning.

A workable shape for 45 minutes:

• lower A: squat 4x5, RDL 3x8, one leg accessory 3x10
• upper A: bench 4x5, row 4x8, one press and one pull accessory 2-3x12
• lower B: deadlift 3x3, front squat or leg press 3x8, one accessory
• upper B: overhead press 4x5, chin-ups 4x max, accessories

That's roughly 40 minutes with honest 2-3 minute rests on the main lift and 60-90 seconds on the rest. Each lift gets hit twice a week, which is plenty at intermediate level.

Worth naming the thing to actually watch for: soreness that's dramatically worse than this, with swelling, dark urine, or an arm or leg you genuinely can't straighten, is a different problem and needs a doctor the same day rather than advice from a forum. Ordinary stairs-are-hard soreness is not that. But it's the one exception where "push through" is bad advice.