153 is amazing. Topside of 180 for your mate is brutal. Is he clean?
Yeah he's natural but weighs in at 130kg so an absolute monster. He's carrying a fair amount of fat but he also packs in a lot of muscle.
He's got a 240kg squat PR as well which is insane.
It's going to be interesting when we get back to the gym. The set up I have is nowhere near as good for lifting heavy so it should translate to a fair bit more once we're on the better bench.
As a rough guide I'd got to benching 127.5kg for an unspotted, confident 3 sets of 5 at the gym before the latest lockdown at the end of December. In my home gym I can just about scrape 3 sets of 4 at 128kg 3 months later weighing more and having trained like a mad man during that time.
Feels to me like 160kg would be possible at the gym which would be beyond belief although to be honest my goal is actually to be able to get 5 reps at 3 plates.
To be fair everything we've done since lockdown has been targeting bench so it's not surprising that we've progressed. We get lots of volume in and also we do tricep press every day which is helping a lot.
We're training 4 times per week and every session I'm getting 128kg on the bar for at least a couple of sets with Saturday being a bit more.
We move straight on to narrow bench afterwards and I'm up to 10 reps at 108kg which is definitely helping bench. I used to max out at 80kg for the same rep range when I was doing them once per week so the difference is huge.
Biggest difference I've noticed is how solid the bar feels now when I un-rack. My forearms, wrists and elbows feel absolutely locked solid like pillars under the bar whereas before there would be movement at anything above 130kg. The confidence that gives mentally is worth 10kg in my opinion. I've un-racked 140kg in the past and felt defeated as soon as I've felt the weight. Now it just sits there solid waiting for me to decide when to descend.
I'm putting that down to the volume and arm work. I feel like I've always had the chest strength but now all the other little muscles that play an important role have caught up so can do their bit when it comes to a max. There's doesn't seem to be a weak link in the chain right now
Next target is 1.5x bodyweight..... I'm 106kg at the moment so it's either hit 159kg or drop my bodyweight and try to maintain the 153kg press...