I've been doing weightlifting for a few years, and my focus during quarantine has been to try and lift 225 lbs on bench press for five reps. I was making some decent progress, but I'm stalling close to the finish line. I've written out an outline of my routine as it pertains to bench, and I'm curious if anything stands out as off or deficient:
I do a push day about twice a week where I work bench press first, moving over five sets of five reps from an initial weight to a final weight. At the moment, the initial is 185 and the final is 205. Lately I get to the final set, and I fail when my arms are parallel with my body, straight out, at the third or fourth rep.
After bench I do a mixture of tricep, shoulder and chest exercises, normal stuff. I also try to do a couple sets of bench at the end of the push day, going for ten reps at a lower weight. The whole routine probably takes an hour and a half. I've put on a bit of weight, not much, during quarantine, so I don't think the issue is a lack of nutrition (I could probably be a little smarter about what I'm eating, don't know much about that honestly).
I don't know, I'm fine with plateaus, I know how these things go, but I'm just wondering if there's anything obvious that I could be missing in the routine or that I'm doing wrong. And if anyone has found a good routine of their own for making progress on this front, I'd love to hear it.
Yeah I'm doing a PPL routine, I just gave an outline of the push days for this purpose. My exact push routine for much of quarantine has been this:
5x5 Bench, how I described above
3x(8-12) OHP
3x(8-12) Incline Dumbell Press
3x12 Tricep Pushdown, supersetted with 3x20 Shoulder Raises
2x10 Bench Press, supersetted with 2x20 Shoulder Raises
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Huh. I'll start that up next week, see how it goes. Texas method seems very powerlifter-y, do people do accessory work on top of it?
In addition to the great advice u/nilceps is giving you you could also try changing your set/rep scheme to see if you like what's happening. IIRC, Texas Method already has you switching up your sets and reps. Bonus points for switching out accessory lifts. If you're at a plateau and you're already busting your ass, at some point you're going to have to feel out what is working for you and what isn't if you want to get beyond it.
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