How to train for the 225 bench test combine?

More of a fun question for the BBM team but I’m curious - how would you prescribe training (generally speaking) for someone training for the bench combine?

On the surface I would think just train in a way to increase your 1rm max, but obviously endurance, conditioning, etc will likely come into play

Any guidance?

It really depends how strong the person is before this “prep”. If the person can barely bench 275, then prioritizing max strength with a dash of strength endurance work would be the rx. If it’s me personally, I’m doing zero max strength work and only strength endurance work.

My best set of 225 is 28 reps IIRC.

So does that mean doing like 1amrap set per week, per block, etc. I’m guessing always leaving a bit in the tank and never going to complete failure

I don’t think I would program an AMRAP in there outside of testing purposes. Too much fatigue for little gain. Unfortunately, I’m not able to program for you specifically as I don’t really know much about you. For me, I’d do something like this for bench training:

Day 1:
Bench x 12 @ 8 x 2-4 sets

Day 2:
Bench 65% x 8 reps every 30s until @ 9

Day 3:
Bench x 15 @ 8 x 2-4 sets

Day 4:
Bench 70% x 5 reps every 60s until @ 9

What about the person who benches <275? Would you recommend one of the strength templates, with some modification perhaps?

I probably wouldn’t advise testing because the result is going to be predictably poor. To improve strength across the rep range, I would use one of our templates that focuses on maximal strength, strength stamina, and more. Probably the gen s/c template or similar.