Great tool! Now can it help me do the bench press?

June 2, 2009 9:50 AM

Is there a site structured like onehundredpushups.com, but setup for free weight weightlifting?

Exercise questions get asked here a lot, I realize, but I don't think this one has been asked...

I've been using the 100 pushups Web site for a bit now and have found that the ease and specificity of the information really help. I just go to the day on my schedule and do the sets of pushups in number and order that's described. I had two previous attempts at weightlifting that faded away in part because I seem to plateau easily and I think something that has specific numbers to follow will help me break through that better. It would be nice to have a site where you can enter your bench press and military press maximums and get a six-week or twelve-week setup for steadily escalating that weight with numbers of reps, etc. I would be willing to consider software as well.

Some info about me in case it would help : I am 5' 9" and 135 pounds. I play basketball twice a week, full court for an hour. I have started running a bit again, as well. I would like to initially focus on upper body strength as the basketball and running have given me pretty solid legs.

Thanks!

posted by Slothrop to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (16 answers total)

Try stronglifts.com, although it does include a lot of lower body stuff (squats).
posted by sevenyearlurk at 9:52 AM on June 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

Upper body weight training without lower body weight training is suboptimal because it excludes many types of compound lifts. If you're looking for a starting point from known one-rep or three-rep maximum lifts, try using one of the Westside For Skinny Bastards templates and spreadsheets floating around bodybuilding.com, t-nation, etc. In short, that takes the Westside Barbell strength training approach and broadens it beyond a powerlifting focus by replacing "dynamic effort" (speed) power lifts with volume repetition for relative newcomers to lifting.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 9:59 AM on June 2, 2009

CrossFit. Each day, they post the workout of the day (WOD) which you are to follow. It isn't strictly weightlifting as it involves plyometric work, gymnastics, lots of body-weight work as well as Olympic and power lifting.

It goes so far to tell you weights, and there is a site that offers scaled versions until you -can- do the prescribed weights.
posted by Loto at 10:25 AM on June 2, 2009

I'm sorry, it goes so far to tell you weights for most things. With the lifting (today is overhead squats, for example) you will have to discover what you can do.
posted by Loto at 10:26 AM on June 2, 2009

I follow CrossFit but I would recommend building up some strength first as always having to scale gets a little disheartening.

I would follow starting strength for a while then jump over to something like CrossFit.

I agree with the poster above concentrating on upper body sounds like a bad idea a full body workout will do you more good
posted by moochoo at 10:30 AM on June 2, 2009

On second thoughts if you want to do exactly what you said in your post about scaling up all the time might be worth looking at HST.

That fits the bill to what you are after, but I would still recommend starting strength and CF
posted by moochoo at 10:32 AM on June 2, 2009

Response by poster: I will definitely do a whole body workout when I can get the thing up and running. Right now I'd like to ease into something simple that tells me what to do 3/4 days a week. Thanks for the suggestions so far.
posted by Slothrop at 11:38 AM on June 2, 2009

Just a note: Any strength program you do should address diet as well. To build muscle and strength, you have to EAT to build muscle and strength. You don't mention it, but it's very possible that you plateau easily because your diet isn't up to par.
posted by coolguymichael at 11:59 AM on June 2, 2009

If you're going to weight train you need to consume a lot of protein. Stronglifts.com has a lot of information about diet.

This is doubly true if you're 5'9" and weigh 135 pounds.
posted by dfriedman at 1:58 PM on June 2, 2009

I had two previous attempts at weightlifting that faded away in part because I seem to plateau easily.

No offense intended at all, but I really don't believe you. Unless you are completely starving yourself, or you've got some serious physiological issues going on, it's inconceivable to me that you're not making progress past a few weeks with multijoint lifts.

How are you measuring progress? By looking at yourself in the mirror? The weight that you're lifting needs to be your only progress guide. Results follow performance, I promise.

You didn't specify actual training goals in your question (so it's really hard to describe an appropriate program for you), but complex programs like Westside and Crossfit are almost certainly inappropriate for you. You really need to be doing linear progression, for several months, at a minimum. Years, really. You're not done growing at 6-12 weeks -- you've barely even started.

So, here, do this:

3 times per week:
Squat 5 sets of 3 reps at 1.05 times your 3-rep max from last week.
Press 5 sets of 3 reps at 1.05 times your 3-rep max from last week.
Do more pullups than you did last week.

1 time per week add in:
Deadlift 5 sets of 3 reps at 1.05 times your 3-rep max from last week.

Eat at minimum 1g protein per lb body weight (so at least 135g per protein), daily. Eat a lot of monounsaturated fat daily, too.

I know you said you weren't interested in leg work. Here's why you should do it anyway:
Muscle hypertrophy is associated with two factors: hormonal response and available protein. Squats and deadlifts are excellent at eliciting this hormone response. Bench pressing, not so much.

And yes, Starting Strength is an excellent book. If you can afford it, go buy it.
posted by oostevo at 2:05 PM on June 2, 2009 [4 favorites]

Oops. I just realized I made a mistake:

That should be polyunsaturated fat (i.e. fish, some nuts and seeds), not monounsaturated fat. Westerners get plenty of monounsaturated fat without trying to.
posted by oostevo at 2:53 PM on June 2, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks for all the input so far. I just need somewhere simple to start - I will be able to make a more complete program once I get the ball rolling. When I said I "plateau" easily, I meant that I don't progress well with weight lifting. I tended to get stuck on the same weight. If I incorrectly referred to some technical term, my apologies. I think the reason I haven't progressed well in the past is because I have just tried to lift with my own plan. It would be much better to follow an existing plan.

As for my diet - I was a vegetarian for over ten years and have recently switched to a meat-eating diet with mostly lean meats (buffalo and chicken primarily). My wife and I focus on eating "whole" foods, so I don't get much processed fat. I don't eat any sugar. I think I will have to look at specific portions that I eat.

As for my goals - I don't want to be a bodybuilder. I exercise a lot right now playing basketball (I put a lot of effort into my play). I would like to have a bit more strength for basketball and other activities (my job is somewhat physical). I think if I could bench somewhere close to my weight I would be happy as a start. Again, right now, I know if this is to be sustained it needs to start simple.

Thanks again to everyone. What has been said so far has given me some good places to start (I would be glad to hear further input too if anyone has it).
posted by Slothrop at 6:52 PM on June 2, 2009

Well now I'm really curious.

The problem has got to be somewhere between nutrition and not forcing your body to progress properly by not following a set program.

The quality of what you're eating sounds very good, but getting a better idea of quantity would be a good idea. I'm a fan of fitday.com. You're doing an awful lot of work during the week, and almost certainly not feeding yourself enough to recover fully, hence the lack of progress in the weight room.

It's important to eat several times every day (4-5 times, if possible), and take in as much protein as possible. Also, you might consider finding some betaine-hcl, as a digestive aid. Rippetoe, the guy who wrote that Starting Strength book everyone references, puts his beginning athletes on a regimen of a gallon of whole milk a day, plus whatever they'd normally eat. You might consider that if you're not lactose-intolerant. (Whole milk has an interesting human growth hormone response, apparently, aside from having lots of calories, protein, and fat). At some point, even if you don't have celiac, you might consider going gluten-free, as this can also seriously aid in digestion.

As far as lifting: your body doesn't 'know' you want to get strong when you go into the gym and lift the same thing as you did last week. All it knows is (granted, I'm anthropomorphizing your endocrine system) "huh ... I already adapted to this load already. Guess I don't need to build any more muscle."

So it's important to keep increasing the weight, even if by little increments. In fact, upping the weight by too much each time is a great way to plateau. The muscles of the shoulder girdle really are kinda dinky, so somewhere between 2-5 pounds each week is appropriate for the press. Something like 10-15 is appropriate for the deadlift and squat. 2 pounds a week for a year is still over a hundred pound increase in the bench press, which is pretty damned significant.

Keep a workout journal with you every time you go into the gym.

Seriously, if you can afford it, go buy Starting Strength. The author is much better at this than I am.

So, to summarize, eat everything that isn't nailed down (including a gallon of whole milk a day, if you can tolerate it), and work on three lifts: the squat, the deadlift, and the press (in that order). Increase the weight by 2-10 pounds a week. I hope that's simple enough.

Oh, by the way, some time later, you might want to add in some explosive training, like olympic weightlifting (or, yes, crossfit). It can give you a ridiculous vertical jump.
posted by oostevo at 8:24 PM on June 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

I would like to initially focus on upper body strength as the basketball and running have given me pretty solid legs.

You're probably going to find pretty quickly that this is not the case.

What you want is Starting Strength. Read the wiki, buy the book, buy the DVD.

oostevo is on the right track, except for some reason he is ignoring the bench press and telling you to do sets of 3. As a beginner you'll be better served by sets of 5.

A few different flavors of the Starting Strength program are described here. The beginner program described in the book looks like this:

Workout A
3x5 Squat
3x5 Press
1x5 Deadlift / 5x3 Power Cleans (Alternating)

Workout B
3x5 Squat
3x5 Bench Press
3x10 or 5x10 Back Extensions (unweighted if progressing to GHR, weighted if not)
Chin-Ups: 3 sets to failure or add weight if completing more than 15 reps

Workouts A and B alternate on 3 non-consecutive days per week.

You add weight every time you repeat the same exercise. You'll probably be able to add 10 or 15 pounds each workout to the squat and the deadlift for awhile. You may be able to go up in 10 pound increments on the bench. You'll want to use 5 pound increments on the press. If you don't complete all your reps, you try three times and if you still fail you reset, i.e. lower the weight and build back up again. You want to stay on this program and keep increasing the weight for as long as you can manage. This is described in detail in the wiki.

Many people have become strong this way. Good luck.

On a pedantic note, the word "weightlifting" refers to the Olympic sport, which consists of the clean and jerk and the snatch. What we're talking about is strength training.
posted by ludwig_van at 8:37 PM on June 2, 2009

Ahem ...
Press 5 sets of 3 reps .

I called it 'press' instead of 'bench press' because I wanted to leave open the possibility of doing some other kind of pressing exercise besides the bench press (I tend to believe the bench press is rather bad for shoulders, but others may disagree).

I saw a study (somewhere ... now I'll have to go see if I can track it down) that used force plates to demonstrate that beginners lost coordination by rep ~4, and hence the 3-rep sets. But that's neither here nor there, because for a novice, there's not much difference between a 3-rep max and a 5-rep max. Then again, Rippetoe does this stuff for a living, and I don't.

So, in summary: Slothrop, there is a remarkable amount of information in the answers to this question and that wiki, all because people are interested in seeing you progress. You have no excuses not to.

Aside: dude, I think the 'weightlifting' v 'weight lifting' cause has long been lost. Every time I tell someone I'm a weightlifter, it takes me at least five minutes to get them to realize I don't go to the gym to do curls and bench presses.
posted by oostevo at 7:38 AM on June 3, 2009

I called it 'press' instead of 'bench press' because I wanted to leave open the possibility of doing some other kind of pressing exercise besides the bench press

Well, press means press, aka overhead press or standing press. Bench press aka lying press or supine press is an exercise done on a bench. The bench press can be harmful to the shoulders, but if done properly by someone in good health who is also doing the press it's usually fine.

for a novice, there's not much difference between a 3-rep max and a 5-rep max.

What do you mean by that? If a novice can lift x amount of weight for 5 reps but not 6, there will be a higher weight that they can lift for 3 reps but not 4. Part of the reason for beginners doing 5s is safety -- 1 RMs and 3 RMs will involve higher weights than 5 RMs and will be more potentially dangerous if form breaks down.

And different rep ranges have different effects. Check out this table from Rippetoe's Practical Programming. 5s are recommended for beginners because they provide a good middleground for hypertrophy and neural adaptation.
posted by ludwig_van at 8:18 AM on June 3, 2009