Base Building the Bench for BoB3

[Jay Nera]

On July 1st it will have been a year since I've squatted when I tore my calve muscle. The tear was do to compensations I've had from pushing through pain for many years. A herniated disc in a couple places that has recently been acting up and a torn labrum in my hip which I have been pushing through to keep lifting. Unfortunately this was not the best approach. After taking a lot of time off from squatting, I was hoping that my hip would be better. This is not the case. So at BOB3, although I was looking forward to making a full power comeback, I will be participating in bench only. At the current moment it hurts my back to set up in the bench press so I will be building volume and strength training with my feet up. Hopefully before the last three or four weeks of the peaking cycle I'll be able to practice my competition bench. I am not too worried about this since I've noticed a direct correlation between improvements in my feet up benching and my competition benching. So let's see what we can do!

[naturalguy]

How much ya bench? Looking forward to following your journey

[Universal Rep]

Best of luck at the meet and with your training.

[Pete Rubish]

Sorry to still hear the injury is bothering you. I know it's been going on a long time. Looking back, what would you have done differently? My right hip labrum that I tore over two years ago still gives me some trouble, so I literally don't squat at all in training and just do split squats instead because they are a hip extension movement as opposed to hip flexion. I feel like I would cripple myself to the point of not being able to squat if I were to squat consistently in training. Same with my right rotator cuff. After I strained it 7 months back, I knew I was going to have a very short shelf-life on bench if I didn't start warming it up properly and doing a lot more rear-delt work.