Get a Bigger RAW Bench, Buy a Shirt
But that doesn’t make any sense you say, but lets think about it.
OK using a bench shirt means you’ll use more weight, especially if you wear a tight shirt, your looking at 40-50 or more kilos added to your RAW bench press. All this extra weight will have quite a few advantages to your RAW bench press.
1. You’ll be accustomed to lifting bigger weights.
2. Your technique will HAVE to improve.
3. Your triceps and shoulders will get stronger
4. Your speed will improve.
You’ll be accustomed to lifting bigger weights. We all know that our minds are our biggest asset as well as sometimes being our greatest enemy to progress. We start to think “I can’t lift this”, or “This is far TOO heavy for me”, etc. But if you’ve been handling weights that are 40 to 50 kilos heavier when it comes time to do some RAW benching then the weights that are close to your limit no longer feel quite so heavy, this makes breaking through mental barriers far easier than they previously would have been.
Your technique will HAVE to improve. When your using a bench shirt, your technique has to be spot on, you have to grab the bar in exactly the correct place. When you take it off the racks, it has to be placed in exactly the right spot over your chest, too far forward and you’d better have abs of steel cause that bar gonna slam into them, too far back and the dentist is going to be making some serious money out of you.
Next you have to stay tight, no way you can hold 40-50 kilos over you best RAW bench and not be tight, you’d just be flopping all over the bench.
Your triceps and shoulders will get stronger. We all know that the bench shirt has changed the bench into a partial movement, the real work is now all at the top. So once that bar runs out of the spring the shirts given it, it then all comes down to your locking out power, and that’s your triceps and shoulders. So all this practise with weights well over your RAW best will mean that your triceps and shoulders take a beating and have to get much stronger than they were, that means a carry over to your RAW bench.
Your speed will improve. If you’ve never used a bench shirt then you don’t know about the pain, the pain across your chest, the pain in your arm pits, when that bar is just touching your chest, the shirt is stretching to its max and trying to squeeze your head like a giant zit. You count that one second pause and explode that bar off your chest just to get rid of the pain. Pain will make you focus on getting that bar moving off your chest as fast as it can go.
So there you have it 4 reasons why a bench shirt will improve your RAW bench press. Try using one for a month or so, focus on sets of 3 to 5 reps and then see your RAW bench press improve.