Strength and weight loss with bench video

[vdizenzo]

When I first started coming down from the 320's I struggled with losing strength. I think a lot of people just give up when they lose weight. They either surrender to the fact they won't be as strong or get pissed and gain the weight back. What I have learned is that there is a strength curve and it can come back.

I was 322 the last time I did raw chain benching. My best was 475 with ten chains. This past Friday I went in at 282 and hit 460. I wanted 475, but after 440 I did not think it would be there. So I took 460 and of course missed it. Anyway, I took it again and got it. The long story short is that I was roughly 3% off at a much lighter weight. You can also guarantee I will meet that number before this training cycle is done.

Here's the vid. There's an error in the 4th lift caption. It says 420x0, but I actually got it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgLPf-Eh1VU

[Murderous]

I believe that it has to do with how well your warm up the CNS. When I would do maxes and I was almost at 220 lbs raw (@ 186 bw, I'm 16) I would warm up as follows:

Bar×10+ reps
95×around 10 reps
135×5-8
185×3
205×1

then I would jump to my new max weight. I noticed that sometimes when I would hit my max weight I would fail it, then let's say I tried to hit 225 for a new PR but failed, then I did 200 for 1 I would feel stronger on the second set, so it led to me to think that somehow my CNS was not warmed up properly. I threw in two more heavy sets, as in one more 185×3 set and a 205×1 sets when warming up and I would then be able to access all my strength there, not to have more strength two sets later. I have tried this a lot and it worked, I am a novice lifter so IDK how well it will work for you.