Instead of moving right into another 12-week bench press training cycle, I decided to mess around with partial lifts (progressive distance training) for a few weeks and see what happens.
There are some partial lift programs floating around teh Interwebz, but I did my own thing. Press off pins at a certain height, work up to a heavy set, then lower the pins in the next workout and see how heavy I can go. Not a lot of structure, so I mostly pushed the weight until I couldn't push it any further. Sometimes I did a back-off set, other times not.
To keep the "groove greased", or whatever, I followed up every partial workout with 1-2 full-ROM sets with a medium heavy weight (e.g. 185x10 on seated presses, 275x10 on bench presses, close and normal grip). Or incline bench presses to follow up partial flat pressing. Supplemented these with isometrics - empty bar pressed into pins for max effort sets of 10-12 seconds, usually below whatever range I was working that day.
I applied this method to the following exercises:
Seated overhead press
Close-grip flat bench press
Regular-grip flat bench press
Squats and deadlifts were trained as normal. I don't have enough weight plates for partial squats/pulls, and I don't care about PRing these that much.
After 4 weeks of gradually working my way down the rack, the full-ROM results were:
Seated overhead press 245 lbs. x 1
Regular-grip flat bench press 375 lbs. x 1 (went up very easily, but 395 lbs. was a no-go)
Squat: 530 lbs. x 3, 550 lbs. x 1 (tied PR)
Deadlift: 505 lbs. x 3 (did not max out as I ran out of time)
I thought I'd set a new squat PR, then went through my training logs and realized I'd already done 550 lbs. for a single. This was mildly disappointing, as I'm sure I could have added an extra 5 lbs.
As much as I hate to judge by the mirror, my shoulders and arms seem noticeably bigger. Most important - I was definitely in less overall pain, even when using ridiculous weights (405x10 and 445x5 on partial bench presses).
So am I 100% sold on progressive distance partial training? Maybe. I feel it might work better as a shock tactic than as regular training. Maybe it's just an irrational resistance toward partials after 20+ years of "normal" lifting. Studies seem to dismiss partial-ROM training, but I've never found exercise studies to align with what works for me.
Either way, who can resist repping 405 lbs. for double digits on the bench?
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