Wednesday, May 10, 2006

ME Chest and new lift -"Angel Press"

ME Bench: 4 x 275, 3 x 315, 2 x 335, 0 x 355
Tate Press: 6 x 8 x 50
Incline Press: 8 x 205, 6 x 225, 4 x 245
Decline DB Flys: 3 x 4 x 60
Angel Press: 8 x 25, 8 x 20

On the second to last set I called Luke down to spot me. I was glad I got the 335 twice, but very disappointed I didn't get the 355 once. I felt a little pressure to hurry into it instead of taking more rest to recover.

During my DB Flys (which were very hard), I noticed that my arms weren't as straight as I wanted them to, so I was toying with the idea of an "Angel Press" which is what I'm calling them. I haven't seen these done before and figured it would help my shoulders, lats and chest. The idea is that instead of doing a press its a combination of press resistance and rotator work.

Angel Press starts out lying on a flat bench on your back. With DB in each hand hold your arms to your hips along your side with your palms up. Then move your arms out keeping them parallel to the ground and keeping your elbows locks and rotating your arms all the way till your are reaching far above your head and the DB touch. The point is to keep the weights level with your body and to fight gravity with the weight. Move the weights slowly back down to your side and that is one repetition.

I call them Angel press because its like making snow angels. It isn't really a press, but a good resistance exercise and good for stretching out the entire pec muscle. Let me know what you think if you try it.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice job on the bench. You've got the right idea. You definitely got 3+ lifts over 90%. Do you plan to use a variation of the benchpress for the Max Effort days? If you do, consider what your weakpoints are and target a lift that will train you thru it. Where did you miss with 355?

Anonymous said...

Nice job on the bench. You've got the right idea. You definitely got 3+ lifts over 90%. Do you plan to use a variation of the benchpress for the Max Effort days? If you do, consider what your weakpoints are and target a lift that will train you thru it. Where did you miss with 355?

Anonymous said...

Right at the bottom about an inch after coming up off the chest. So it looks like I could use less block work, and more off the chest work. Usually if I can make it halfway, its all mine and I can stick the rest. It's that lower half that is still my weak point.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions I really appreciate it.

Anonymous said...

One more thing, so the lower half means that its more of a tricep weakness right, rather than chest?

Anonymous said...

That's where I miss too. It could be a number of things. The DE or speed bench will help with this, but generally people recommend paused benchpresses, high rep dumbell benchpresses, and cambered bar benchpresses. Could be a shoulder strength issue too. Read this article by Dave Tate (westside/elitefts). http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=459799

Anonymous said...

One more thing you can try is to get in the power rack, set the saftey bars so they will be a few inches above the chest. The bar is to rest on your chest and UNDER the saftey bars. Now press as hard as possible up into the saftey bars.

Good luck.