How Do You Bench Press 200 kg? New Mailbag!

The Strength Log

We have a great episode for you today, powered by awesome listener questions! How about planning the road from a 100 kg bench press to a 200 kg bench press?

Or what about active recovery, is it really a thing to sweat about?

Ten questions, all in all. See the timestamps below.

Timestamps:

• 05:10 – Question 1: How would you plan the road from a 100 kg to a 200 kg PR in the bench press? Roughly!
• 15:50 – Question 2: What is active recovery, and does it work?
• 20:10 – Question 3: My feed is overflowing with videos about how important it is for us stiff-necked office gnomes to train the hip flexors, but I can't remember even hearing the word hip flexors from you guys … Is this something you need to worry about, and if so how?
• 24:10 – Question 4: Alternating dumbbell curls or both arms simultaneously? Which is more disco, and how much sweating the details is it to care about the difference?
• 29:00 – Question 5: If you can't or don't want to strength train more than 90 minutes a week spread over 2-3 sessions, and don't have higher ambitions than to bench your body weight, deadlift twice that, and squat somewhere in between, is there any reason to go beyond a beginner's program?
• 35:00 – Question 6: Do you have a training program that you return to again and again?
• 37:50 – Question 7: I have a question about the set point theory, meaning if you lose weight, the body wants to try to restore it, restoring what you once weighed. But if you lose weight and then put on muscle mass until you reach the original weight, is the body "satisfied" then? Or is it more connected with the amount of body fat, so if the body finds its way back to the "status quo" + the new muscle mass, it results in a higher new total weight?
• 43:00 – Question 8: I want to get brutally strong in dips. I currently train 1-2 times a week, practicing handstands and freestanding handstand push-ups. I see some OK results, but I feel that I could improve more if I were properly structured. I’ve been using the app since 2019, and before I started training calisthenics, I pushed my bench press PR around +20kg with Benchpress Boogie, and similar in squats and deadlifts. I know that your programs work well for me, and I miss the structure they gave me. Do you have any tips?
• 47:00 – Question 9: What sets do you count as warm-up? I use your app, and, for instance, if my program says 5x5 for the first exercise I usually do like 5-6 sets with 6-12 reps building up to that weight, but the two final sets are fairly tough. Should I log those sets as warm-up or working sets? Ps. The total weight for the workout is not unimportant for my satisfaction
• 51:00 – Question 10: What is the biceps circumference at which you don't have to quote studies anymore, and can just drop truth bombs instead?

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