Push Pull Competitions

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Have you participated in a push pull powerlifting competition? It’s shorter than a regular meet and focuses on just two things: deadlift and bench press. This week we’re focusing on those categories.

This Week’s Resources

• How to Increase Bench by 50 Pounds

• 18 Exercises to Increase Deadlift

• The Best Deadlift Angle For Your Size and Build

• 74-Year Old Breaks Powerlifting Record (Men’s Journal)

• 5 Reasons Powerlifters Throw Up (And How to Avoid It)

• The Most Popular Strength Training Bars (Amazon)

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Is It Realistic to Increase Bench by 50 Pounds?

Yes, it’s realistic to increase your bench press by 50lbs. However, it will be a lot easier for novices and intermediate lifters than it is for more advanced athletes.

Increasing your bench press by 50lbs may require you to make changes to your technique. You’ll also need to follow a training program that is appropriate for your experience level and provides ample recovery time to allow performance gains to occur.

Novice and intermediate lifters may find that improving bench press technique may contribute more to their progress when compared to more advanced lifters whose technique has already been dialed in. 

If you’re wondering how to ​​improve bench press strength, it comes down to good technique.

That includes not only the quality of your setup and execution but also the choice of bench press grip width on the barbell. Generally, most people will benefit from using as wide of a grip as possible.

The wider the grip, the less the range of motion there is, which means that you have to do less work to press the weight up. The less work each repetition is, the less stress you may have to recover from.

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The Best Exercises to Increase Deadlift

One of the main ways to increase your deadlift strength is to identify the exercises that will help improve areas of muscular weakness within the range of motion.

This is called ‘exercise selection’.  

The basic idea is that if you’re failing within a certain range of motion of the deadlift it’s because there is a specific muscle group that is responsible for lifting the weight through that range. If you can identify that weakness and train the muscle to get stronger, you should be able to lift more weight.

Now, before continuing, you should understand that exercise selection is only one part of your training program that will help increase your numbers.

It’s an important part, but it’s not the only part.

Other training variables you may need to consider are:

• How often should you train the deadlift?

• How should you structure your training split?

And, what is the best volume and intensity for your experience level?

Another factor is your overall deadlift technique.

This is your ability to understand what optimal technique looks like and then training to that standard in every workout.

These are things like knowing your optimal back angle or using the proper deadlift cues.

Additional Reading