What's up guys? Jake Hutton here from Fitness Culture. Today's topic is how to
bust through your bench plateau, and we're going to be talking specifically
about tools that help your neuromuscular efficiency. So when you think about
neuromuscular efficiency, that's going to be your central nervous system's ability
to recruit muscles to produce force. Today we're going to cover a couple
advanced training techniques that we use in our programming and
specifically that I've used to be able to push my benchpress through plateaus
over the years. The first technique, and probably my favorite technique, helped me
a ton when I started doing it. I never did it growing up, but once I got into
college and little after college when I actually started programming for myself,
would be dynamic effort training. It's basically going to be speed
training on the bench press. And there's a million different ways you can do this.
I'm just going to show you what it looks like for us right now.
So you'll do three reps, block out, that needs to be under three seconds.
You want to move as fast as possible. So you can see gains from
dynamic effort work from as low as 30% of your max. We have guys that are
moving 70% of their max super fast and getting a lot of benefit out of it.
I start with an empty barbell, work your way up. Because it's gonna take a little
bit of practice to get good at it. The next thing that we would do normally is
add bands to this. Bands lead us into our next training technique, which is going
to be accommodating resistance, meaning on the bench press you're gonna be lightest at
the bottom and when you're pressing through it gets harder as you press
there. So you're working the strength curve of this movement. Our
favorite technique to utilize accommodating resistance is going to be
chains. By using the chains I'm able to add about a hundred pounds at the top
and deload that completely at the bottom. So it's not really tearing up a bunch of
muscle tissue, but I'm able to work with heavier loads. And that's what we're
trying to do when we're talking about increasing neuromuscular efficiency.
So when you set up the chains, the way that I like to do it is gonna be so
they almost completely deload at the bottom like we were talking. So sometimes
you'll see these guys in the gym will just clip basically a chain on that's
just hanging straight down, and at the bottom they're deloading like two links
on the chain. That's basically doing nothing but working stability. So they're
gonna be floating a little bit as I unrack the weight, so that's also
gonna work my stability at the top, but as I come down the chains are gonna
completely deload so it's nice and
light off my chest, and then I'm gonna
drive through it and it's gonna get heavier as I drive through the weight.
You're training your central nervous system because, like I was saying
at the top, it's another way for you to get heavy weight in your hands
without affecting your recovery for the next week. All right, so my last favorite
technique to increase neuromuscular efficiency is going to be the board
press. I would usually do this my third bench day of the week to be able to get
a really heavy barbell in my hands again without tearing up very much
muscle tissue. So depending on how long your arms are you're not even moving the
barbell very much, you're not gonna be tearing up a bunch of tissue in your
chest or anything like that. You're basically just getting a heavy bar in
your hand, you're shocking that central nervous system, getting used to that
weight, and then you're just working that lock out which is gonna be good for your
tricep strength as well. So a lot of times I'll go very close to my max
benchpress on these board presses on basically
my third session of the week. So it'll basically just look like this. You'll set
up on a bench, have a partner set the boards, and make sure that the boards are
flat against your chest. So a lot of people will go completely like this. You
don't want to hit the bar and then it comes up, that's super dangerous. And the bar
will float to your face. So make sure it's basically right in line with your
chest. You'll just unrack. Usually on these I'll take more of a close grip
here, and then you're just going to touch the board and then press back through.
So again this is basically just working like how you would any other partial
rep. On partial reps you're able to go heavier, and that's just gonna get you
used to having a heavy barbell in your hand on this one, and increase
that mental connection with your body. You're able to get used to
holding that weight, what it feels like to press through that weight when it's
really heavy, and you're not having to go all the way to your chest. Alright guys,
so that's three of my favorite techniques to help you increase
neuromuscular efficiency and bust through your bench plateau.
So if you want to click a link in our description, we give a full week laid out
for you guys if you want to see how we would map it out for you during the week.
So just click that link, you'll be able to download a full week. And if you like
this information, subscribe, hit the like button, and I appreciate you guys tuning in.