I am taking some time away from geared lifting and lifting raw. My bench press is my lift that needs a lot of help. My best raw competition bench press with a pause is 385. 20 years ago my best was 425. I am looking for some advice to improve my bench press.

I am competing this weekend at USAPL Raw Nationals, so I am trying to get some ideas. I typically take a week off follow a meet and my next meet will be NASA Unequipped Nationals on October 18.

For those of you that don't know me, I compete at 242 and I have long arms. The long arms are great for deadlifting, but not so great for benching.

Where is your weakness or sticking point?

well i'm assuming your top end strength should be fine from shirt training, so i'd focus on more full range exercises as opposed to board presses and things of that nature.

max effort bench sessions with bands/or chains will help dramatically as well as weighted dips and of course lots of rows. i'd also recommend throwing in some militaries and other shoulder movements.

just work on explosion off the bottom since you won't have the shirt to give you that initial spring off your chest.

Thanks for the replies.

My lockout is fine for raw benching. It is always a weakness when I bench in a shirt. I started this same thread on a couple other forums and I have been getting some good advice. As mentioned here, the other forums brought up the same thing. I definitely need to add shoulder presses to my workouts. My raw bench was a lot better 20 years ago. The key differences was more volume, full range benching, and more shoulder work. I have focused too much on improving weaknesses and let my strengths decline.

Thanks for the information, this has got me thinking. I compete at USAPL Raw Nationals Sunday and I will take a week off for recovery, so I need to have my training figured out by the time I return to the gym.

hey bro...welcome back btw...

what i did was did a lot of speed work...with long arms u have no choice about it. gotta have that speed to move the weight fast. i also did a lot of board work with bands too as well as doin 90% of my benchin close-grip for a while before moving it back out to normal or competition. if i can think of more ideas, i will bro...
TB

Thanks, Curt and thanks for the advice.

I figured I would give an update on my progress. I have been on Wendler's 5/3/1 program for seven months now. I benched 402 in a meet at the end of January. The first two waves didn't work as well since I did not do any overhead pressing. I am only training three days a week and it was hard to fit in, so I did dumbbell incline bench presses at a 45° angle. I get good carry over to my bench with these. After three waves with the addition of dumbbell inclines my bench starting moving faster.