New IPF Bench Record - 353kg

Japan's Midote took the IPF bench record from Brian Siders yesterday - pressing 353kg. Siders also competed (the day after doing the strongman event presumably) and put up 350kg - which is even more impressive in my opinion.

No videos yet.

Results (excel) http://usapowerliftingforum.com/download/file.php?id=76

strong stuff from him and siders

siders doesnt pull alot more than that does he?

I see that one of the women is out-benching me by 30kg (and the men are so far ahead, they might as well be a different species). Please tell me that they were equipped, at least.

Awesome benching, just awesome.

guy has a 6" stroke:

Japanese lifters always look like technical masters from videos I've seen... tiny strokes, huge arches and good leverages.

Siders 350kilos the day after a brutal strongman comp is better

yup. Much more impressive in my opinion regardless of circumstances:

And questionable lockouts!

That 350 looked easy as hell, surely good for 380 or 400?

There's just something about the Japanese guys bench that doesn't feel right. I don't know what the answer is, but such a small ROM just sticks in the craw. There was a guy in disabled lifting that used to lift humungous amounts raw, but he was a dwarf and used maximum width and his ROM was about 4 inches. Still strong as hell to move that amount, but not really what the lift is supposed to be about. I don't know if it's feasible to introduce a rule that the ROM must be say 9 or 12 or 15 inches. You could enforce it by hanging a ribbon of the minimum length from the centre of the bar, and if it touched the lifter's chest the referee wouldn't give the start signal. Probably a daft idea, possibly a visionary one...

Doesn't that put shorter lifters at a disadvantage?

He has a smaller ROM but he also has smaller bones and muscles.

There was talk a couple of years back of introducing a rule on minimum stroke for bench, but it was too difficult to design a method that coul dbe enforced. This was one of the reasons that they introduced the rule about placement on the chest and not abdomen. This was thought to increase the stroke required for some very flexible lifters.

A shorter lifter (say sub-5 ft) taking an 81 cm grip has a huge advantage over a 6ft+ lifter taking the same grip. Introducing a ROM rule would only level the playing field a bit. Otherwise abandon the 81 cm rule and let us all develop 3 inch ROM (I don't want that btw, just trying to illustrate a point).

I think most of us would agree that Siders's lift is the more impressive of the two, and if that's the case then there's clearly a degree of dissatisfaction with the 353. Why? He only had to move the bar a few inches and to many people that's not a proper bench press.

am i right to assume this is only true for shirted lifters? Would be pretty f**king hard to bench anything heavy with ultra wide grip with shoulders breaking in pieces!

The guy I mentioned in my first post on this thread lifted raw with a tiny ROM and did 180 @ 67.5. If that's how you practice, that's how you develop.