Help me bench 225 in a week

[mmcd]

Maybe hitting yourself with a couple of those epinephrine injection pens (like people who are allergic to bee stings have) right before the lift will help you pull it off.

[econophile]

have a horrible car accident and get bionic replacement arms.

[J.Brown]

I don't think you are in as much trouble as everyone thinks.

Here are the things that you can do.
(some are very important, some will only help a bit)

but i think these things will help you save $200

get physically active, now.
go for a run, do a little lifting, etc. etc.

this will help you feel better

try to eat clean and drink a ton of water.

you want you body to be working effeciently

ok now the good stuff.

find a power lifter and work on technique immediately

i think everyone would be suprised at how much you bench goes up if you use "their" techniques. it is amazing. you can probably find something online or pm me and i can get a good list of the basics that may just increase your bench 20 lbs just by doing things the right way

look into getting a bench shirt. this was mentioned before and could give you the 20 lbs. increase as well. the problem is that i think they are expensive. again find a local power lifter, see if you can borrow one and cut him in on the action.

i think you can do this, just be positive and get moving.

cheers. J.

[zach383z]

lmao in a week, first i find it funny you ask a POKER forum about weight lifting... second, if your max is 205, and you try working out in a week only on chest and tri's you are definately going to overtrain those bodyparts and not be able to do [censored] come the bet. youll be too sore to do anything let alone 225...

good luck though lol

[bellytimber]

I don't know much about "bench shirts," but wearing one might bump you up to what you need. Though the humiliation of showing up in skin-tight spandex overalls is probably worse than just losing the bet.

[IlliniLou]

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can you wear a bench suit? that will add easily the amount of weight you need. Only other thing is that you have no real chance. You are gonna have to be sore the day you do it cuz its easier to put up more weight when your muscles are tight, thats the only chance you got, the day you do it, if you are sore, do not stretch your chest beforehand

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what?? he should definitely warm up first. His muscles will be shocked otherwise and have zero chance.

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yeah a simple warm up set will be fine but he cant really stretch out the muscle to reduce soreness. stretch for 2 counts and then do a warmup set. then stretch for 1 count and then go for your 225. you need every piece of energy and tightness you can get

[Phaedrus]

If your max is really 205 then you're toast. But you don't know that your max is 205. It could very well be 225+ already and you just need to do some of the things already mentioned in order to be in top form on the day in question.

Good luck!

[T.J. Combo]

Did you go to the meets?

Remember the weight lifting meets?

If you can honsetly max 205 right now, when the pressure's on and the money's on the line, you're gonna get that rush big enough to do 2 plates.

[Rduke55]

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Given that your max was 305 a few years back, I think you could put up 225 in a very short amount of time. If you're set on taking the bet, I would do bench presses, and bench presses only every day until the day before the bet. Do 1 or 2 sets to failure each day. I used to have a lot of success increasing my max in a short amount of time doing this. My hunch is that it is basically retraining your neuromuscular connections while minimizing muscle tears, thus minimizing post-workout soreness. I think throwing in extraneous triceps work and other chest work will just lead to overtraining unless you limit yourself to 2 workouts in the week (which I think is far less ideal than multiple pure bench press workouts).

If your true max right now is definitely about 205, I think you could press 215 in a week without trouble (given that you did 305 in HS). 225 is definitely pushing it, but I don't think it's out of the question -- it is ridiculous how quickly your body can retrain if you do it right.

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Doing sets to failure is likely to require recovery time he doesn't have.

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Agreed 100%. OP, do NOT go to failure. As a couple of other people said, you're worrying about educating your nervous system, not putting on muscle. You have enough muscle to bench 225.
For only one week - after warming up, you're going to need to do low reps in the 1-3 range to get your CNS educated. Try a couple of sets 2 or 3x that week. And maybe end with a set of negatives of like 235-240.

[Matt R.]

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Doing sets to failure is likely to require recovery time he doesn't have.

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From my experience, this is not so if you limit yourself to 1 or 2 sets (after a good warmup). However, when I lifted regularly I used to do all sets to failure, so maybe my body was a bit more used to it.

I powerlifted when I was in high school, and I experimented with this technique to try to put on a quick amount to my max bench press. No one ever told me to do this, it was just an experiment because I thought it would work. When I started, I chose a weight that I could do about 8 times until failure. I would do 1 or 2 sets (I believe I started out doing 2) per day. Once I could do >12 reps before failure I would up the weight by 5 pounds, and repeat until I could do that weight >12 reps. I believe at some point I dropped to 1 set per day, then 2 sets every other day, etc. It was unorthodox, but I stayed with it for a decent amount of time b/c the results for my max lift were phenomenal. I could do ~2 extra reps each day with a given weight, and I think I added a solid 10 pounds to my bench in a little over a week. This was weight that I could never bench before -- i.e. I wasn't just "retraining".

As far as overtraining goes, the result of the brief benchpress workout was just a strong tightness in my chest/shoulders post-workout for a few hours (kind of like that good "pump" feeling you get after a good workout). Virtually no soreness by the next day, and I could almost always do a couple more reps.

I haven't worked out regularly for a little over a year now, but I would bet someone that I could add 15 pounds to my current max in one week, and I would attempt it this way. I really think this would be the optimal way to for the OP to go about this, as if you start training for stuff other than benches (pushups, triceps, whatever), you're not maximizing all your workout energy (and recovery time) to one lift. (I'd probably throw in a protein supplement and possibly creatine for good measure... don't know how well other stuff on the market would work though, and I haven't kept up to date on supplementation.)