A lot of how I train and why I train is still heavily influenced by my friend and old training partner Jeff Adkins at P-Town Barbell. Specifically bench, my bench was super stagnant and showed no signs of improvement until I moved and started training with Jeff. Jeff doesn't believe in relying heavily on boards, he doesn't believe in squatting high in training, he doesn't believe in relying on partial range of motion deathlifts. You hit depth in training, you touch in your shirt in training, you lockout deathlifts from the ground in training. We never wanted to go into a meet and hope, we were prepared to go to depth, to touch, and to lockout at every meet. In terms of gambling yes maybe this was like playing the slots instead of craps, maybe it is the slow road, but that's the road I take more pride in. And ya know what, none of us gave a shit if anyone else agreed with us.

Bench specifically is where Jeff really shined. The best bench I ever saw Jeff do was 675 at a bodyweight of 198. Here is a video of Jeff ramping up towards a meet.

For our bench training we do full range triples when we first get into our shirt training. Full range triples, no boards, and light weight. Jeff made us touch with as light a weight as possible. There is a huge community of people that will rip me to shreds by saying you don't need to rely heavily on boards to build a big bench, you don't. The major argument would be that they can bench way more than me. But where I can counter is, I am maybe half way into my powerlifting journey and I am not that far from most people in my weight class regardless of bench only or full meet lifters. Also most of the people who would argue are a lot older than me and further into their career. A slow and steady consistent ascension has much more appeal to me.

For example, I did 560lbs(70%) for 4 sets of 3. I just did twelve reps in my shirt, not including my warm up sets and my lockout work that followed. Most people don't get 12 reps in a whole training cycle. I am learning my shirt regardless of energy level, weight gain or loss, hot weather, cold weather ext. I will be prepared.

Shirted Bench
Bar(60lbs)x30x3
150x5
200x3
240x1
290x1
330x1
380x1
Metal Catapult
420x1
Add Metal Prototype
510x1
560x3 for 4 sets

4bd Lockout
600x1
650x1
690x1
740x1

Skulls
4 sets of 12
+
4 sets of 12 CG press

Bodyweight face pulls
4 sets of 15

Abs
4 sets of 12