Crazier Than A Bag Of Fucking Angel Dust

Some months ago I realized that my bench press should be, though did not seem to be, the easiest of my lifts to improve in a hurry.  For the life of me, I could not figure out why I sucked at the bench- just that I did.  Part of my problem, it seemed, was the fact that I despise benching, and when I do multiple heavy sessions of bench every week the tendinitis in my elbows flares up and anything I do pressing-wise sucks for a while.  Additionally, it seemed that every single failure on bench press occurred in the bottom quarter of the lift, as is the case with most raw lifters.  It’s rare you see a person fail at the lockout of the bench press, unless that person has pointedly neglected training their arms.  If that’s the case, the prescription for fixing their bench should be handing someone nearby a tack hammer and having them beat the shitty bench with it about the face, neck, and head until they cease respiration, because they’re too stupid to deserve to live.

An aside:  There seems to be a never-ending spate of people decrying “vanity” lifts as useless.  THIS JUST IN: Almost any time you lift a weight, it’s useful.  The guys who focus on vanity lifts definitely out bench the pussies talking shit in the corner while “skwatting ATG, bro” with 135 lbs. like they’re some sort of mythical gods of the weight room.  I’m not suggesting you should start squatting on a bosu ball, but for fuck’s sake think before you start preaching bullshit on the internet like you’re a modern day weightlifting Socrates.  I’m looking at you, endless stream of pussies decrying people curling in the squat rack in spite of the fact that half of you would fold up like wet origami under the bar if you tried to squat the weight being curled.

As I’m doing this wildly uncommon bit of introspection, one thing stood out at me- I needed to bench more.  Because I hate benching so much, however, and invariably end up doing naught but singles without a spotter, which simply exacerbates my elbow tendinitis and makes overhead pressing painful, I decided reps were the answer.  “But”, I thought to myself, “I fucking despise doing reps.  Like, more than Hitler hated the Jews.  More than Pol Pot hated people who could read.  More than Stalin hated people without mustaches.  More than the Westboro Baptist church hates logic, dignity, and self-respect.”  That left me in a bit of a pickle- either I was going to have to do something I hated with the passion of Lindsay Lohan’s infested, fiery crotch, or I was going to have to find a different route.

Then, it occurred to me- I should do the dumbest fucking thing of which I could think for the bench.  Something so incomprehensible and inexplicable that I couldn’t help being amused by it.  I started doing neutral grip barbell floor presses with chains.  Those were great, and helped with my explosion from around my sticking point, but I felt like I could get crazier.  I looked over at the bench and thought, what about a fat bar with chains?  I tried that, and enjoyed it- the fat bar kept my bar path perfect, because if you get your bar path wrong with a fat bar, that shit is going to roll out of your hands and either crush your pelvis or smash your face into a bloody pulp.  That got me driving the bar hard up in a straight line, rather than back toward the rack as I usually did.  Chains, however, are a tool for geared lifters with bulletproof bench shirts and less muscle than you’d see on your average twink.  They’re not useful for raw lifters other than a monotony breaker, or in the event they feel like emulating Branch Warren and using them for dips (which I think is about as fucking retarded as the sound of deaf people arguing, but to each their own).

Thus, I looked for something else, and what I came up with was something I didn’t know had been done before, but as it happens, there really is nothing new under the sun.  In an effort to make the bench press as absurd as possible and put the maximum amount of stress of my weak point (which is most raw lifters’ weak point), I hung kettlebells off of the fat bar with resistance bands.  Frankly, I thought it was hilarious enough to continue doing, and then was informed that this idiocy actually has a name- Crazybells.

When I came to that realization, it occurred to me that this method of training was pure fucking genius.  Physiologically, bands adjust the force curve to make the lift much harder than it would normally be, plus they stress the dogshit out of your ligaments, tendons, and the entire cast of supporting muscles.  Basically, it’d be as if Mike Tyson had decided to take up Crossfit at the peak of his career and had his entire entourage take up MMA, forced overeating, steroids, and powerlifting, all in an effort to roll up a whole nation’s army in a street fight.   The ability to handle much greater loads with far greater stability when you’re using crazybells occurs because the load is increased to Oprah-in-winter-bulking-phase levels in the bottom position (where you leverages are the poorest), and decreased where you leverages are the best because of the rebound of the bands and bells from your drive skyward, even though the instability of the lift is vastly increased at the top so you end up looking like someone with Parkinson’s trying to balance a clay pot on your hands in the middle of a hurricane.  In the end, your muscular activation is greatly increased throughout the lift (Kohler), but the potential for injury is reduced because the load is most unstable at your strongest point.

Adding to all of that massive goodness is my inclusion of the fat bar, which adds a lot of muscular tension in addition to training you to use the most efficient bar path.  The muscular tension addition occurs because of something Pavel Tsatsouline refers to as “irradiation”:

“It seems preposterous to a bodybuilder that clenching your cheeks and bracing your abs will strengthen your grip, but that’s the way your body works. What I teach is just the opposite of isolation. Isolation is impossible anyway. There is something called irradiation.

Whenever you intelligently contract other muscles — your glutes, your abs, your diaphragm, and if you’re working the upper body, your grip — you automatically increase the intensity of the contraction of the target muscles” (Shugart)

The Exercise Itself
This isn’t fucking brain surgery, people.  You loop the band through the kettle bell handle (and you can sub 25 lb plates if you don’t have kettlebells), slide that fucker on the inside of the bar, and then put your plate weights on the outside if you’re not suffering from brain damage or some mental disorder that causes you to spend an inordinate amount of time doing shit that’s not lifting while they’re in the gym.  Loading and unloading the bands every time you want to change plate weight is stupid.  From there, it’s touch and go bench.  Do not pause.  If you pause, you obviate the entire point of the movement because you’re not taking advantage of the extra weight provided by the stretch at the bottom.  Here’s a video showing you Talia’s first attempt at crazybells (which she now loves) and a couple of my heavier sets.  I think I ended up with about 325 in bar and kettlebell weight for three, which is maybe 25 lbs less than I could do at that point with a dead weight bar, to give you an idea of the loading protocols.

The way I structure my benching using these is thusly- I have one ultra-heavy day and one goofy day.


Ultra Heavy Day
Work up to a weight I can double for at least 5 sets, then carry on with singles until I have to dump the weight in the catches.  This means I’m benching for about an hour with 30-90 second rests.

Goofy Day
5-10 sets of 3-5 reps with as much weight as I can handle for 3-5 reps.  I stick with 30-90 second rests and just go until I can’t.  Afterwards, I do a bunch of face pulls and rope pushdowns.

The key, as you can see in the video, is to fucking EXPLODE out of the bottom.  This is going to get rid of that nasty stall nearly everyone has at the bottom of their heavy benches.  Stick with these and they will bear fruit like no assistance work you’ve ever seen, ridiculous-looking  or otherwise.  I would imagine it bears saying, as I know that some of you are going to bemoan your lack of a fat bar, that you can get Fat Gripz.  You won’t have the benefit of using a non-rotating dead bar, but you will get the irradiation effect.  Thus, they’re worth the $35.

Now, quit your’ bitching about your shitty bench and start benching like a goofball to get that shit poppin’.

Source:
Kohler JM, Flanagan SP, Whiting WC.  Muscle activation patterns while lifting stable and unstable loads on stable and unstable surfaces.  J Strength Cond Res. 2010 Feb;24(2):313-21.

Shugart, Chris.  The Evil Russian Speaks: Part 1.  An Interview with Pavel Tsatsouline.  T-Nation.  5 Apr 2001.  Web.  22 Oct 2013.  http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance_interviews/the_evil_russian_speaks_part_1