Must-Read: Bench Your Body Weight

Remember your first day in a weight room in high school — or, if you were one of those weirdly growth-spurts kind of kids, grade school? Remember the first sight you saw in that weight room, the first impression that some huge dude made on you as he bulked up. Chances are, it was some dude bench pressing like mad. Because that’s what happens in the weight room at a young age. People are bulking up like hell in the one area they know they can show off to the ladies. And that’s the pectorals.

Today, it’s really no different. Guys still want to impress ladies, and pecs still need to be popped. And so today we’re heading to Men’s Health where they have a method that they recommend for, quickly, being able to bench your own body weight. And it all takes place in 10 weeks. Their intro:

INCREASE YOUR MAX
Grab a spotter and figure out the maximum amount you can bench once while maintaining good form?that is, your 1-rep max. Once you know it, compute the weight you need to be lifting each week by multiplying your 1-rep max by the percentages on the following slides.

From there, the program is pretty simply slowly adding a larger and larger percentage of your body weight to the weights per week. Also, it focuses on what you should be doing on a rep level, which is important as you don’t want to destroy your muscles and bones to the point where you won’t even be able to lift your cat’s body weight.

So head on over to the link and check out the chart.