042 : 012 Quest For The Hyper Trophy S6E2

We’ve reached a point where our novel movements have lost their novelty. Michael brought in the single-arm barbell bench press and it’s been a fan favorite so far at the Space amongst clients and coaches, alike. With it being an unordinary movement, progressing it seems challenging. Something I noticed amongst clients, and even myself, when doing this movement, is how easy it is for the opposite sides of our body to lose tension when performing this movement. There’s been a few techniques done here, some hold the bench above their heads or near their ribs, or they clench their opposite fists. This week, I decided to add something that would uniformly force full-body activation for this movement. That something is a piston hold with a dumbbell in the non-working arm. Part of me had safety concerns but at the space, we’ve been good about having 1-2 people helping whoever is benching, which is not only a great practice for preventative safety but also building trust amongst each other. If you don’t have a training partner just be aware this will be difficult to setup safely.

PreFatigue 

5-10-15-20-25 

Calories, SkiERG or Row, preferably 

+

10-20-30-40-50 

Bear Crawl Meters 

-10 Total single arm KB clean and press between 

3x5 Shoulder CARs 

Partner PAIL/RAIL, internal rotation shoulder 

Work: 

Find an appropriate weight for 13 reps of single-arm barbell bench press 

Into 

4x 13 Single Arm Barbell Bench Press with DB Piston Hold in the opposite hand 

Finisher 

100s Cascade (100 of each without dropping DBs) 

Front Raises 

Lateral Raises 

Tricep Extensions 

Flow: 

The player will start the session off with a double ladder, one of the calories on an upper body dominant machine, and bear crawl meters. In between each round, the player will do 10 total single-arm KB clean and press. This will look like: 5 cals+ 10 meters bear crawl + 10 Clean and press; 10 cals+20 meters+10 clean and press… 25 cals+50 meter bear crawl.

The player will move right into the mobility portion completing 15 shoulder CARs on each side. And if they can, perform partner PAIL/RAILs for internal rotation of the shoulder. We will make a video going over how to do this properly, but for now, safely experiment if you have a willing and trusting partner. @Strangegrayson on YouTube/Instagram is great for FRC info and videos. 

Then the player will move into the work portion starting by warming up the single arm barbell bench press to find an appropriate weight to do 13 reps with the last 3-5 being rather difficult to complete. For the 4 working sets, the player will complete 13 reps on one side and while doing so they will have a DB in the other hand locked out above them. Players at the space were using roughly 50-75% of the weight that was on the bar for the DB. For example, Sam and I used a 50lb DB while single-arm bench pressing an 85 lb barbell. The player should rest at least a minute between sides and then at least 2-3 minutes between full sets. Having teams of 2-3 do this keeps you honest about the time. One player goes while the other helps spot, then alternate roles once complete with a side. 

Once complete, the player will move on to the finisher. This is 100 rep cascade of front raises, lateral raises, and tricep extensions. The goal is to get 100 reps of each movement without dropping the weights. The caveat is when the player feels as though they can’t get any more reps of a movement they will move onto the next movement and repeat. For example, this could look like, the player starts with 40 reps of front raises and can’t go any further so they move onto lateral raises of which they complete 30 reps and then they move onto tricep extensions and can complete 25. After that 25th rep they move back to front raises to keep chipping away at the 100 rep goal.