Benching...bumping...and forearms

[goexplodex4]

Ok, long story short...Im a 6ft tall male, went from about 273 to 255 when i was 17, then when I turned about 20 I lost the rest and went to 167. No big deal.

In the past 2 years I lift all the time (usually 4 days a week cardio here and there), however I only went up to about 173-5. I got stronger, but, not much at all, and Im in college so...yeah well drinking is in there so im sure theres a little fat. I go up and down all the time cause gaining makes me nervous (You try bein fat for 20 years and have someone tell you to grab a steak haha)

The one thing that did get better was my curling but my benching just seemed to stop for a whole year, Im sure its cause im not eating enough (though I do eat a lot!) and starting fall when I go back to school and I dont have this sedentary job and have people to spot me, I think I can do it.

But yeah, benching, I can lift a lot more if I dont bump it off my chest. If I go to about 5 inches above I can do 30lbs more. Is that important?

You see from losing all that weight my wrists and forearms have become exceedingly small and someone told me thats holding my bench back. Is this true? No matter what I do I cant put weight on these things.

 

[Proteinboy]

do you have a solid full body routine; or have a routine with compound movements in it?

stronger bench= stronger overall body, proper form, good diet, periodization, rest

 

[yassinator]

Forget curling IMO. I used to do curls but don't anymore, and I haven't noticed any loss in size.
I won't get into detail but you probably need to shake up your bench press routine. Do some heavy weights low reps, then next week go light and high reps. Normally before doing NRoL, I would select a weight and make it my minimue ie. 225 then I would make sure I would do 10 reps per set even if that meant I was doing a bunch of 1-3 rep sets to finish off that one set. But I have no science to back that up.

Because touching the chest can be relative ie. someone with a big chest might not have go as deep I usually shoot for lower than 90 degrees on my initial sets, then only 90 on my heavier sets. But I am in the process of making sure I go deep in all sets, in all lifts now.