If you have ever been near a health club, fitness center, home gym or anyplace

else where barbells and dumb bells live then you know something about the bench press.

Aside from being the standard which all young men, from 14 to 40 years of age, apply in

assessing their worth to society, it is probably the most used and abused exercise in the history of strength training.

 

 

The Bench Press's Rise in the world of weightlifting culture has come about only in the last 50 years or so. For the 1st half of the 20th century, weightlifters were judge on how much weight they could lift over their heads. Weightlifters then laughed at guys working away on the bench to expand their "pecs"

 

As bodybuilding became more socially acceptable after World War II, the squat, deadlift and the Bench Press became the new standard for Strength and Power!!

 For years, the bench press world record crept up slowly and steadily. In the 1950s, Canadian Doug Hepburn became the first man to bench 400, 450, and 500 pounds. In 1957, Hepburn told Muscle Power magazine that a 600-pound bench press was possible, but it wasn't until 1967 that Pat Casey cracked that barrier. Ted Arcidi broke 700 in 1985, and it took another 17 years until Ryan Kennelly benched 800 pounds in 2002. Now, just two years later, 10 men have benched 800, and a couple are closing in on 1,000.

So, why have records that stood up to the strongest men in the world for 50 years crumbled in the last two? 

A super-shirt or "Bench Shirt" , mostly. In 1983, a college student and powerlifter named John Inzer started making shirts that supported benchers' shoulders and deltoids. Word spread that the bench shirt not only prevented injuries but actually helped bounce the weight off your chest.

 Allowing Lifters to hoist much heavier weight than possible waering only a regular T Shirt or "RAW" as we call it.

I believe lifters today are focusing too much on the Bench Shirts and not Enough on the RAW form of training.