Weight plates are one of the pillars of your gym. It is essential that these plates have characteristics suited to your activity to fully exploit them.
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Commercial gym benches are making you lose muscle. We explain how, and what you can do about it.
The progressive range of motion method means keeping a fixed load, between 100 and 103 % of your max, and lengthening the bar path by one notch every session or every other session, starting from a very short range. After 6 to 10 sessions per lift, the cycle ends with a full squat, bench press or deadlift, using the same load you started with. It is meant for advanced lifters who are stuck even though they have already increased volume and intensity.
For a chest or back exercise to work the target muscle, first set the direction of your elbows, let your wrists rotate freely, and pause where the muscle contracts the hardest. An incline press with poorly placed elbows mostly loads the shoulders or triceps, and a pull led by the hands tires the arms first. The bench angle and the load are chosen only once these settings are found.
A stable bar starts before the first rep: center it using body landmarks (sternum, thumbs, ankle bones), lock in your hands and upper back, then unrack it with your hips directly underneath. On the bench press, set your hips and heels before you touch the bar, unrack it with locked arms by pulling with your lats, and press it back in an arc toward the uprights rather than straight up.
In strength training, bands serve eight purposes: making resistance progressive on barbell exercises, lightening the bottom of the movement with a reverse setup, developing speed and explosiveness, replacing assistance machines, preparing and recovering around the session, getting a joint working again after an injury, correcting the knee, shoulder and hip, and maintaining conditioning. A rack that offers a low anchor and a high anchor is enough to do it all. Here you will find how to set...
The box squat consists of sitting down on a box placed behind you, staying still for one second without losing your brace, then standing back up from the dead stop. Set at parallel, the box imposes the same depth on every rep and forces you to sit your hips back, which works the glutes, hamstrings and lower back more than the quads. It is done in a rack, with the safeties set just below seat height, as a complement to the regular squat and not as a replacement for it.
To prepare for a first powerlifting competition, learn the referees' commands and rehearse them in training, then set a cautious attempt plan, opening with a weight you have recently lifted for three clean reps. Next, sort out the logistics: bag packed the night before, rack heights declared at weigh-in while wearing your competition shoes, food you digest well for a 6 to 8 hour day. On the day itself, the main thing is to leave with a valid total and to understand how a competition runs.
For your arch to hold on the bench press, build it with your legs and hands, not with your back: feet placed to drive toward the head of the bench, open palm set into the bar before you close your hand, then a slide until the back of your neck is pinned. Keep your back loose during this setup and only squeeze your shoulder blades at the start of the descent. Above all, don't let the leg drive go when you unrack the bar from the hooks: that is the moment most arches collapse.
50 mm bore, cast iron, bumper or calibrated, how much total load to plan for: the guide to choosing your Olympic weight plates without getting it wrong.
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