Bench Press

The Bench Press is one of the weight lifting exercises that I've been trying to master.  I have already gotten to the point where I can bench press my body weight, but I have a long term goal of being able to bench press 135 lbs with confidence (i.e. a few solid paused reps).

The problem is I've hit a plateau. I can do 120 lbs comfortably with a pause, but beyond that I get stuck. I believe it is not only a physical failure but also a mental failure. I do have a horrible tendency of psyching myself out when I bench. This is also very evident with my benching...especially the descent. It will be so horribly slow, that I'll end up wasting a lot of energy. For some reason that only seems to effect my first rep and last rep. Usually the other reps, the descent is nice, smooth and with a good speed.  Given that, I know I'm dealing with a mental block that is keeping me from progressing.

As for the physical side, if I can get past the mental block...I'll gain a bit more energy which may help to increase my bench, but I do also want to work on my physical weakness at the same time.  Last week while benching, I took a video to see where my sticking point was.  Turns out I have the strength to get the bar off of my chest, but after about 4 inches of movement, I'm stuck.  I can't seem to press it beyond that point when I'm a little over my max.


Plan of Attack:

So rather than continuing to bench and making very little progress...I want to try to attack both of my weaknesses head on.  I plan to utilize Pin Presses to try to work on my physical weakness at my sticking point.  For my mental weakness, I plan on doing several sets of singles at 120 lbs.  I'll start those sets with the goal of doing a pause...but the goal is really to work on speeding up the descent.  So I'm not going to be too critical of whether they are paused or TNG reps.  I'm going to give this a try for a month and re-evaluate to determine if I'm noticing progress and maybe even see if it has improved my regular bench.