Hi guys
Yesterday at the gym I had a near miss on bench where I miss cued my last rep of my final back off set of 6 reps. It wasn’t super heavy but I was tired at the end of my 6th set so it was a close call. Fortunately someone was nearby to jump in and help me get the weight off (I didn’t have a spotter because covid and the bench at my gym doesn’t have safeties).
It’s the first time that’s happened to me in >2 years of training but it’s freaked me out a bit. I feel like it would be good for me to take a break from barbell bench press until I can either get a spotter or some safeties. I’m not a strength athlete and lift only for health and enjoyment. I’m thinking of replacing barbell benching movements with a mixture of DB bench, weighted dips and push up variations.
My question is whether you have any particular recommendations for implementing these kinds of substitutions in the context of your training templates? For instance, if I replace barbell bench with DB bench or weighted dips, would you say do the same reps & RPE for the selected replacement (e.g. 1@8, 6@9 followed by backoffs in the legacy GPP hypertrophy template). It feels like this might be difficult with some of the exercises (e.g. heavy dumbbells are hard to get set up with), in which case how would you suggest adjusting?
As always thanks so much for your help!
Alistair