by Roman Mustaccio
Speed benching has been the subject of much criticism in recent times- certainly the most out of any conjugate ideas. Some people say it doesn’t work, others swear by it. On one hand, a small part of me thinks the dynamic effort method in its entirety may have been a misstep for powerlifting; but on the other I cannot deny the many great lifters who did speed work in some capacity.
Over the years, I’ve had many different trains of thoughts when it comes to my “secondary upper” day. Initially, as a young Louie disciple; I started out doing speed bench by the book in 3 week waves. Then eventually two week waves. Then changing every week… and ultimately ditching the “speed” part altogether and just doing some volume work (or bamboo bar work on shirt weeks).
Recently, I’ve brought speed benching back in my own training.
While my more recent, non-dynamic-effort methods have worked fine, I could feel my bench was missing something. My pressing- while strong- became sluggish. This immediately rang a bell in my head that speed benching could be beneficial. I think this scenario is important to document, as it shapes my current view on speed benching: it’s not something you need year round, but it can be useful for short periods of time. This could be either when you realize your pressing has slowed down, or right at the end of a training cycle before a meet to make your bench feel snappy.
The cycle I recently went through was one my long-time training partner Zach Huihui passed on to me back in high school. He saw it when he interned at Westside back in the early 2000s, and I thought it would be a good way to start my post-WPO training cycle as I have ample time to experiment right now.
I don’t want to be too exact with percentages because I mostly did this by feel, so as a low-400-ish raw bencher/700 shirted bencher here’s the exact weights and accommodating resistance setups I used:
Weeks 1-2: 165lbs+2 chains/side (80lbs total chain weight) 8x3
Weeks 3-4: 165lbs+2 chains/side+doubled micros 8x3
Weeks 5-6: 165lbs+2 chains/side+doubled minis 8x3
Weeks 7-8: 255lbs (no A/R) 8x3
You don’t have to do it exactly like this, but it paints the appropriate picture: keep the straight weight the same, start the accommodating resistance off a little below where you should, and every two weeks add a bit more accommodating resistance. Then for the last two weeks, take all the accommodating resistance off and add a bit to the weight on the bar. As it was told to me, after week 8 you would restart the cycle with another bar. As of now, I intend to just go back to my more usual secondary day programming until I feel the need for speed work again or a meet comes up.
In the midst of this cycle my shirt days have gone great and I’ve noticed good carryover to the aggression with which I press and my concentric bar speed, which is exactly what I wanted it to do. Now I know even a short bout with speed benching will get my press its “oomf” back- and I can use this knowledge to peak my bench better.
I am overall not the biggest fan of speed benching. However, it is very ignorant to blanketly say it “doesn’t work” given the great benchers throughout history that have used it in some shape or form. In this instance, I don’t think it’s about the method- I think it’s about the dosage and the frequency.
