Tokar's Training Log

Why leave the benching out?

I'd go with DB benches, benches and CG benches.

I find that if I don't specificaly bench for a period of time even with other chest work I loose my benching edge.

Definitely my best performance - even better than the 9/9 and 3 PBs in my second competition!

Getting a 15kg PB was just incredible. I knew I had a big deadlift in me, but even now I can hardly believe I pulled that off. I'm looking forward to seeing Boar's video of the 250, and my reaction when I realised I'd got the qualifying total!

Not sure I'd want to go a month without benching either - it's such a groove and setup lift, I'd be worried I'd have to relearn it all.

The reason is that anything above 3s on bench always seems to have no carryover whatsoever so I'm inclined to just concentrate on building strength in other exercises. I even tend to lose my benching groove doing higher reps.

I see where you're coming from though - maybe will go with bench, DB bench and close grips. More thought needed...

Don't do 5s then. Do threes, doubles and singles.

This would be the obvious solution. The only thing is that after the volume phase in squats and deads, there's the intensity phase - 80/85/90/95% of projected max, and I kind of wanted to do the same for bench at that stage. In which case I wouldn't really want to be doing heavy doubles and singles already. Still, it could work that way.

One of my earlier thoughts was just benching 3 times a week, like on Korte, but doing 8x3 (rather than 8x6) with much heavier weights. Do we like this option better?

i would probably go with some kind of mixture, do the planned korte reps and sets as your main exercise since it worked well for you (though bench did not respond as well as squat and dead), but choose a day when you would do speed and form work with 55-70% up to triples, nothing dramatic, nothing too taxing, but getting that form work and speed work in as well.

I like that idea, I think you need to be benching much heavier than Korte suggests. Although Id have you going heavy on narrow/close grips and dumbell benches too. So maybe a day for each?

Btw, I really think you should start paying more attention to your diet, I think having made the effort to qualify for nationals, it seems silly to come in at anything less than ~98-99kg. Granted you want it to be good weight, but remember you can easily strip a kilo or two of fat after the event and with the amount of cardio you do, I doubt you'd put much on anyway!

Im gonna say it again mate, really impressed with your comp, glad to see you pull it all together.

(and just as soon as my shoulder is better, I'll happily race you to 600lbs!)

I definitely agree with the weight comment I have always wondered why you hover at 95.

Milk?

* It doesn't make you fat. Honest.

I'm not doing the set Korte sets/reps for bench; it just doesn't work. I think bench really needs heavier work. I think that's what I'll settle on.

I don't actually do that much cardio - I need to put more effort in on that front, because it's too easy to just drop it when you don't feel like it. So over the next few weeks Monday is going to be rowing day, without exception - 500m intervals most of the time. And Friday is going to include high rep dumbbell swings.

I don't want to get fat for the competition and then have to lost it afterwards; that would just depress me and I wouldn't have the commitment to lose it (while probably losing strength as well) once I'd put it on. And the fact is, I do put on fat very easily even with a pretty decent diet. (Sure it's far from perfect but I'm not about to go all BBer and note down every morsel that passes my lips.) Muscle, on the other hand, is hard to come by. I'll certainly try and put on a couple of quality kilos before September but I'm definitely not going to go all out to get to 99kg when a fair bit would definitely be fat.

the fat will be great for your squats

LOL - does anyone actually know why getting chunky helps squatting and benching, but deadlifting often feels better when bodyweight goes down? (I know Joni notices this as well as me!)

We were discussing this in another thread, can't remember which. The reason often cited is the obvious one that a big gut is nice to bounce off in the squat but makes deadlifting difficult - but it's not only big fat guys whose deadlifts suffer from the added weight, so that can't be the whole story.

3/5/07

Getting back into it...

Power Clean & Press/Jerk

Singles and doubles from 50 to 100x1, going up in 5kg increments. Then a 105 power clean and a miss at 110. Pretty slow but not at all bad for the first workout back and not having jerked for months and months.

DB Swing (16kg DB)
7x20 / 20 second rests

Going to be doing these on Fridays for at least the next 4 weeks. They are very hard. Have to get up to 10x20.