Quote:
Originally Posted by CRisCO  It's awesome your really lean.
But what do you bench?
How strong are you?
Everyone has different goals I suppose. |
Hey Crisco, not trying to bust balls here or anything like that, but I've been around gyms way too long to not bite on this.
I completely 100% agree that everybody has different goals, without a doubt, and if somebody wants to work on a heavy bench press then good for them, really. HOWEVER, the bench press is an extremely poor indicator of overall strenght and even more so overall fitness and/or health.
Also, and I don't have a link I'm sorry, but research has shown that pound for pound, lighter athletes are actually proportionately stronger than their heavier peers. I remember a study where an Olympic male power lifter was compared to a female. Of course the male could lift more weight, he was about 3 time her size, but pound for pound the female was actually the stronger of the two.
But like you said, different goals for different folks. Perhaps sheer strenght is a goal for somebody, but how much weight you can move is not generally a good indicator of how fit or healthy you are. There was a time when I could bench press 315lbs, but back then I couldn't have planked for more than a minute I bet. I used to warm up with 60lb dumbells for hammer curls and max on 90's, but couldn't have ran more than 10 minutes without feeling like I had a heart attack.
Plus, DanC was talking about competeing at a lighter weight in terms of jujitsu (I think it was jujitsu), so I would assume flexibility, cardio, and core strenght would be more applicable to his situation than a bench press, and thus Kid's advice, IMO and experience, is good advice.