Gillingham 2 day 12wk Bench Program

[Frog]

@Wilhelm - have you considered perhaps swapping dip day and light day instead? Residual fatigue should no longer be an issue by the time heavy day rolls around, and the fatigue from heavy day will force you to keep the dip volume reasonable.

[Wilhelm]

@ Wilhelm - have you considered perhaps swapping dip day and light day instead? Residual fatigue should no longer be an issue by the time heavy day rolls around, and the fatigue from heavy day will force you to keep the dip volume reasonable.

That's a damned good idea, Frog.
Doing heavy day with 3 full days of no benching is a bit of a "cold start" too.
Just warmups and bam, top single.

Switching it as you suggest will give me just 2 days between, and i might just be a bit more primed for H day.
Thanks.

*Ha! i was picturing switching light and heavy days.
Have to mull a minute to see if those two are similar enough to go with.
Staying on schedule w/ dips today would be nice.

*Mulls* Yeah, i think those are effectively the same thing.

Ugh, i did want to run this exactly as written the first time through.
Maybe it's not such a big change i need to be concerned.

Could go heavy day today, dips Monday (or Tuesday) and light day Thursday.
That keeps everything intact schedule/program wise, and does away with the 3 day gap before the heavy session.

[Wilhelm]

Switch works great.
Besides absolutely butchering the bar path on 235, i felt quite strong for it.
Most i've pressed since surgery, and matches my 3rd from June 9th 2019 meet.
Feeling good for that 1lb paused PR in week 12 (241)
Had to do the last 3 worksets T&G.
212.5 is as heavy as they get in these 12 weeks, so hopefully i can get them all paused in weeks 11 and 12.

Thanks for the suggestion @Frog

[Frog]

Awesome, glad to hear I could help!

[Wilhelm]

... and the fatigue from heavy day will force you to keep the dip volume reasonable.

Benched Saturday, dips Monday.
Triples with +55 lbs.
The third reps were not quite as challenging as the 4s when i did those with 4 full days after heavy bench, but they were nicely close, and definitely closer to failure than the 3rd reps from the well rested sets of 4.
I wouldn't have been able to say before i started that was the case.
I did do 7 sets though, so one rep more than the 4s the week before with the same weight.

I like going pretty close to failure with these.
I have a feeling that big slow down and having to fight for it lends itself well to getting through the sticking point on a heavy bench single.

[Wilhelm]

I'm starting to get the feeling this is working.
I'm basing that off how the 3 sets of 5 (after the single) days feel.
Pausing everything, except i did T&G for 2nd and 3rd set last week w/ 212.5

Week one was 3X5 with 188 and wasn't particularly hard.
Week five was 194 (rounded up to 195) and that was challenging paused.
Week nine had the 195 again, and it was not nearly as hard as week five.

Hopefully that pattern will play out with the top singles the final three weeks with 230/235/ and a 1lb paused PR of 241 on the last week.

Maybe three days a week was wearing me out, and i guess Gillingham had a good idea.
I enjoy the switch to twice a week, and so far i'm planning on running it again with a modest increase.

[Skander]

I'm doing this program too cause I actually felt like I'd been doing too much light high rep work lately and wanted a heavier block. Feels too slow honestly- would prefer a 6 week block maybe, but it's fast and that's what I need these days, and I like the heavy single and having heavier reps. Still pretty sure there are better programs out there, the be 2x8 light day feels lame. I'll stick with it for now cause I'm lazy...

[Wilhelm]

I'm doing this program too cause I actually felt like I'd been doing too much light high rep work lately and wanted a heavier block. Feels too slow honestly- would prefer a 6 week block maybe, but it's fast and that's what I need these days, and I like the heavy single and having heavier reps. Still pretty sure there are better programs out there, the be 2x8 light day feels lame. I'll stick with it for now cause I'm lazy...

Yeah, on the face of it it's like "wut?"
And maybe it just sucks lol.
I have a sneaky good feeling about it still though.

There was a suggestion of making it 3X week, by going H/L/H then L/H/L
But the 2 day part is what i like best.
I'm sick of 3 days, and how i have things spread out now for all three lifts is great.

It is slow, but i'm fine w/ that since it's taken me basically two years of 3 and 4X week benching already to not go anywhere as far as 1RM is concerned.

If it works at all, then that's a positive for me, and it leaves more energy to work on squat and DL where i have a chance to actually improve my total more significantly.

There was speculation that the light days were somehow more for (active?) recovery.
I have no idea, but i do think they have an affect.

With no meets on the horizon, it feels like a luxury to run this possibly several times.
Also my weighted dip experiment continues, and that 3rd slot allows for keeping that going long term while keeping very well rested for heavy days.

[Wilhelm]

Well, week 12 single with 240 didn't move fast, and was too vertical off the chest, but then again, it is the most i've benched since i was hitting nice , paused 242.5s two years ago.

[Wilhelm]

Finished today with the final light day.

I actually think the first run went well, and am running this again.
5lb bump.
The light day is still a mystery to me, but i just dtfp.
Heavy day makes sense to me, and i could see and feel improvement with the weights as they came around a second time in the later weeks.

Misgrooved the 240, but i'm done worrying about that.
I paused it, and it came back up without stopping.
I like that this is 2 days, because my DL is the biggest number based goal for the coming year.
If i can move my bench 5 to 15 lbs with a few more cycles of this, that's better than the zero 1RM progress i've made doing 3 and even 4 times a week since this time 2 years ago.
I like doing this program. I'm not going to discount the value in that.

Edit- i also remain curious how more time for this to pair with progressing weighted dips works out.

I'm not going to test before starting a new cycle.
Squat and bench programs are set, and i'm just going to plug away at them.
My main goal with a number attached for 2021 is DL, and 2x week squat and bench has worked well to keep my workload spread out over the week.

This is the heavy day portion.
Day one is this Sat. 12/5/20

[Hardartery]

I am curious as to why anyone would bench 3-4x a week? Is this a thing people are doing?

[Wilhelm]

I am curious as to why anyone would bench 3-4x a week? Is this a thing people are doing?

"Bench more to bench more" is the maxim.

It worked for me, for a while.
I think i just stayed on the frequency train far, far too long.

[JohnHelton]

I am curious as to why anyone would bench 3-4x a week? Is this a thing people are doing?

It works for me.

[Hardartery]

I am curious as to why anyone would bench 3-4x a week? Is this a thing people are doing?

"Bench more to bench more" is the maxim.

It worked for me, for a while.
I think i just stayed on the frequency train far, far too long.

I'm now an "Old guy". I am not a Bench specialist by any means - my best was 385 for sets of 5, did not try a 1RM during that time. That may sound like a lot to some, I was 265-275lbs, so not 2x BW. I lifted at a gym with multiple 600+ benchers, and an 800+ bencher. There were several guys with a 500+ raw bench. I never saw any of them bench that many times a week. Ever. They did plenty of volume on Bench day, but that was actually 1x- maybe 2x a week. One actual bench day, one accessory day. And these guys were not natty, so their recovery time was certainly significantly better than anybody likely to read this post. There is a line between not enough and too much.

[AllM1ght]

I am curious as to why anyone would bench 3-4x a week? Is this a thing people are doing?

why not? it works for a lot of people and isn't particularly fatiguing or time consuming

[Hardartery]

I am curious as to why anyone would bench 3-4x a week? Is this a thing people are doing?

why not? it works for a lot of people and isn't particularly fatiguing or time consuming

If benching4x a week isn't fatiguing, you're doing it wrong - to be blunt. If you can go more than twice a week, I'd question the intensity of the workout. I guess this is a difference between Working out and Training. If I hit a third session of any lift in the same week there's zero chance I would have anything left to do anything serious. I couldn't possibly have recovered that fast and my CNS should be geting pounded by the other workouts that I did. And I'm saying that as a guy on TRT to have normal levels of test all of the time.

[Wilhelm]

...not 2x BW.

At this point, I'd be thrilled to get to 1.5X bodyweight bench.
Not sure about the enhanced lifters response, but at those weights, i'm guessing there still has to be a limit to effective frequency.

I'm not going to say frequency is the reason i haven't really progressed in so long.
Shit programming is a definite possibility.
**

I tried the high volume low fatigue thing for a second, not long enough to judge actual effectiveness, but long enough to know i didn't like doing it, and would not (am not ready) to comply with the program, even though guys were PRing right and left with it.
That's one skill i do have, knowing if i will stick with a particular thing.

But at this point, i really like the 2X week schedule, and i actually think it's working better for me.
I have to keep in mind that i didn't lift at all for 3.5 months pre and post surgery, and lost 20lbs during that time.
That almost certainly affected my bench more than the lower body lifts, so to be back to close to my best is acceptable imo.

Didn't do this program until 3 months ago, but the quality of the heavier singles improved.
Some of that is likely from being more recovered, but i do like how the heavy day workload feels over time.
And again, i view this hand in hand with progressing weighted dips.
That needs more time to evaluate.

Really, any bench improvement this coming year is fine with me.
I will use the extra training budget left over from the drop in frequency to continue to improve my DL.

[Stoop]

I am curious as to why anyone would bench 3-4x a week? Is this a thing people are doing?

why not? it works for a lot of people and isn't particularly fatiguing or time consuming

If benching4x a week isn't fatiguing, you're doing it wrong - to be blunt. If you can go more than twice a week, I'd question the intensity of the workout. I guess this is a difference between Working out and Training. If I hit a third session of any lift in the same week there's zero chance I would have anything left to do anything serious. I couldn't possibly have recovered that fast and my CNS should be geting pounded by the other workouts that I did. And I'm saying that as a guy on TRT to have normal levels of test all of the time.

A lot of high level lifters bench 4+ times a week. You should definitely let them know they're just working out and not training.

I experienced much quicker progress benching 4x a week than 2x a week, with much lower intensities. I like doing other things though so I keep it to 2x a week and am fine with slower progress. If I was doing a meet, absolutely I'd be benching 4x a week.

[JohnHelton]

@Hardartery, don’t you think that your recovery time is somewhat dependent on the absolute weight that you can lift? I only deadlift once per week, and squat twice per week. I’m the least strong when it comes to bench. I guess this is a chick or the egg question. If someone’s 1RM on bench is only 225, I would think such associated training wouldn’t be tremendously CNS disturbing. However, if your 1RM is 500+, then any stimulative workout would probably be very CNS tacking. IDK.

[AllM1ght]

I am curious as to why anyone would bench 3-4x a week? Is this a thing people are doing?

why not? it works for a lot of people and isn't particularly fatiguing or time consuming

If benching4x a week isn't fatiguing, you're doing it wrong - to be blunt. If you can go more than twice a week, I'd question the intensity of the workout. I guess this is a difference between Working out and Training. If I hit a third session of any lift in the same week there's zero chance I would have anything left to do anything serious. I couldn't possibly have recovered that fast and my CNS should be geting pounded by the other workouts that I did. And I'm saying that as a guy on TRT to have normal levels of test all of the time.

CNS fatigue isn't caused by heavy weightlifting, it's far more related to heavy endurance stuff like marathon running.
And that's an odd claim that I've honestly seen no evidence for, I'm not quite sure how 4x can be doing it wrong when it works for a wide variety of people very well, and seems to work well for both late novice/early intermediate scrubs like myself, and elite competitive lifters.