Relationship between press and bench

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

I want to start by saying I have been running the press template and all my numbers are shooting up very quickly, except the press. Trying to keep the story short, I injured my shoulder and had trouble with benching and pressing for a long time. Pressing stopped aggravating my shoulder much sooner than benching did. Even though I could press I was still having trouble adding weight to the bar. Switching to the press template did help me add a few lbs, but my press is still pretty weak and not progressing every session. I started to think could the reason why I am struggling adding much weight on my press be related to my bench press being way behind due to the injury. I am looking for some advice on what to do, stay the course, run a different template, are my expectations too high for my press, etc?

Here is what my progress has looked like for the first 5 weeks so far if that helps:

Squat 245 - 275 x 1@rpe8
Dead Lift 240 - 280 x 1@rpe8
Bench 180 - 200 x 1@rpe8
Press 135 - 140 x 1 @rpe8

And body stats:

5’11"
200lbs
37 years old.

Thanks for the programs and all the help you provide here!

Tim

2

Hey Tim,

Thanks for the post and the business.

I think there are multiple variables in play here including a potentially injured shoulder, previous detraining of the shoulder girdle, form, inappropriate programming or progression, etc.

Off the cuff, I’m not sure what you’ve been trying to do weekly from a progression standpoint, but our default is to add a small amount of weight weekly unless the warm ups indicate this is a no go. If you’re adding 1lb per week, that seems to be a little on the slow side, but it might be appropriate for your responsiveness to training.

What’s more interesting is that on the press template that your bench has gone up quite a bit and your press hasn’t. I’d be curious about the weight selection for the lifts here and again, how you’re progression is going for the press and its variants.

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