 What's up y'all, Salah Mike. If you are having issues with your bench press and you wanna hit a bench press PR, today's video is gonna give you our three top tips in programming and how to build a big bench. Tip number one, man, it has to do with frequency and programming. Obviously following a program and having a coach will help all of this, but if you're on your own, the truth is you're probably not benching enough. You can hit the flat bench press with intensity, volume, and variations of the lift itself anywhere from like three to even six times a week and still have tons of room to recover and have success. We're using smaller muscles and overall using less weight, so the systemic and localized fatigue of your chest, shoulders can recover a little bit faster than something like a deadlift. Although if programmed correctly, you can still deadlift every day, but benching in particular, you can adapt well over time with your nutrition and sleep being locked in. So benching more often, practicing the lift is gonna be your number one tip. Tip number two is how to utilize and use variations. Now you can kind of utilize them by like weak points. If your arm's a little bit smaller, you wanna get a larger range of motion, a closed script bench, moving your feet up, doing a flat back, tempos, extra long pauses, tons of different tools we can use, but the beauty of the bench again is in that recoverability and so we have so much frequency in the week we can bench three, four, five times a week, still recover great. We can sprinkle in those variations and the real goal there is that we can manage the load by the variation itself. In your competition bench press, let's say your bench press 315 pounds, that's three plates, that's a goal for a lot of us, with your one right max competition style. Now, if you do that every single day or loads of volume at 275 competition style, you may get extra fatigue, but we can do closed script, flat back, extra tempo where the overall load will be minimized just by self-regulating. You can't use maximum amount of weights with these variations, so we can still get practice in. We can still build muscle, which building muscle helps in all the lifts, but in particular the bench press, the more jacking in your shoulders, triceps and chest, the more bench you'll be able to bench over time and we get that 335, 365, 405 bench with these variations, vary the reps. We can do anything from singles all the way up to 10s and 12s and we can also mix in multiple variations within a block as long as one of those days tends to be the competition style because we really want that practice. Number three taps into kind of the end of number two and that's building muscle, your accessories. So, we've talked about in other videos the difference. The variation I typically explain as a lift itself that most specifically replicates the competition lift, right? We have a close grip bench and a regular bench are very close together, where a dumbbell bench or a shoulder press is more an accessory, things that will help in the long term. And that's what we dive into for number three is simply building more muscle. Especially with the upper body there's so many joints involved and there's so much different body parts that we can grow. Building overall mass, which is a long term goal, is gonna be key. So, planning your accessories after those main lifts, getting one to two per muscle group per week will be very good. Anywhere from one to three sets. The biggest thing again is multiple rep ranges, training anywhere from five to 12 reps with your triceps, your shoulders, even your grip, your back. So important and also proximity to failure. The intensity we use, you wanna really push yourself in these accessories for the long goal of six months, year, two years, a decade down the road, the more muscle you have, the more weight you're gonna be able to push in the squat bench and dead. Let's say we're about a 315 pound bench, so three plates. On Monday, maybe I hit a one by one, at maybe 295 to 308, 310, 315. A nice, heavy single. Then maybe I'm doing back downs competition style, five by three, three by three, heavier loads. Wednesday, we're moving into more of our volume and kind of our strength building, so I'm gonna do sets of maybe five to 10 and I'll choose a variation like close grip and really build my triceps, the longer range of motion, force is gonna be gonna use less weight. I might be able to handle 225, maybe 205, really get some work, some reps in. Then Friday, our last session, maybe we'll do something like feed up, wide grip or feed up tempo bench. Again, using less weight and we'll handle more reps anywhere from the six to 10 range again. Really counting three seconds on the way down, pausing one, three seconds on the way up. After each of those, I might split up my accessories. So let's say Monday, I'm gonna hit triceps and back. Tuesday, maybe I hit shoulders and a little extra chest and then Friday, maybe we hit a little dose of all three, a light tricep, a back and maybe a chest and shoulder itself. So we're spreading out the volume on our accessories so we can push them high levels to intensity, close to failure. We're spreading out the volume in the main lifts with variations so we can handle heavy loads and still get better, but we're still benching three times a week so we get that repetition of our setup, gripping the bar and the bar path itself to practice the skill of benching. Once we get closer to a meet or you're closer to one rep max, we can start to make those variation days more specific so they can both be bench days with no close grip and no tempo, maybe they're both pauses and we'll keep that rep range similar. So we're handling singles maybe multiple times a week at different intensities and we're also gonna just do our back downs, maybe sets a three, sets a five, sets a 10. It could be super basic like that. It could also be sets a three heavy, sets a five moderate and sets a three light and fast to give you almost like a recovery workout. But again, it's just about greasing that groove on the bench, building strength over the long term. You wanna build some muscle, you wanna build your bench up. There's just some tips that have helped me over the long term. Having a program, working it out, obviously handling your nutrition, your sleep, being a slight calorie surplus helps a ton. Just getting more body weight, more body mass, more muscle over time. Again, it's a big picture, accessories, build muscle practice, short term, adding frequency. If a lot of you guys are plateaued right now, try benching, adding a light day one more time a week and just greasing that groove that can have automatic return on your gains, automatic return on building muscle and strength itself. Sala Mike, new videos every single week, man. Be sure to subscribe, like this thing, appreciate y'all. 3sb.co for all your clothing needs, good company, apparel, discord, goodcompanydiscord.com. Catch you guys there, Sala Mike, I'm out.