I both love and hate the phrase ‘poverty bench’.

Whilst it so succinctly (and amusingly) describes a poor bench, it’s the kind of self-effacing joke a lifter can make about themselves that quickly turns into part of their identity.

aka ‘The Caine Method’

For years I had a terrible bench press. So bad I was actually convinced I’d never be able to reach the fabled ‘three plates’, that this level of achievement, this rite of manhood, would forever be beyond my grasp.

Then Boris Sheiko told me I was ‘built to bench’

 

By constantly telling myself I’d never be a good bencher I was establishing a self-fulfilling prophecy and letting my outlook affect my behaviour. Boris took that away from me, and things changed pretty rapidly.

What is Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

“Self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. 20th-century sociologist Robert K. Merton is credited with coining the expression.”

Convinced I would never be able to have a decent bench, I rarely trained it with intent. I’d just go through the motions and try to get it out the way to finish the session. I spent hours and hours refining my technique on my squat, developing effective mobility and movement patterns, figuring out what kind of intensity and volume I responded well to and essentially putting some bloody effort into it. The same was true for deadlift.

Because of my attitude towards the bench press, I treat it like a red headed step child and let this situation occur. The solution was in my hands all along, but the negative self-talk and incorporating the ‘poverty bench’ into my identity as a lifter effectively stunted my progression.

This applies to any lift, but my main success with improving the bench press comes from the following points;

• Training the bench with intent, instead of just going through the motions.
• Make a serious effort with rehabbing my shoulder issues, instead of just avoiding the symptom triggers, (i.e benching).
• Setting up properly every time, instead of just going through the motions, not respecting light weight etc. This feeds back into the first point.
• Volume. More of it.
• Remove negative self-talk. No more constant self-disparaging jokes about my bench, actually take some pride in progressing it even if it’s a bit slow, and remove the self-fulfilling prophecy of being a ‘poverty bencher’.

I feel like the last point is probably one of the most important.

Please get in touch for my ‘Photoshop Mastery’ course.

 

You can see how once you start letting your negative attitude affect your behaviour, it quickly turns into a negative feedback loop where each step reinforces the next. The solution is to turn things around and use a positive mental attitude to feed positive behaviours and experience positive results!

There’s a very easy way you can immediately implement some positive mental training.

A 2017 study found that over a 12-week training period, simply adding positive self-talk and imagery between sets had a significant impact (see below) on strength gains over just training. The only differences between the groups were the mental training group did a 30 min visualization session and intra-set positive self-talk.

Lovingly borrowed from MASS Issue 5. You should subscribe

 

Now the thing with implementing mental training is that it costs nothing. Nowt but time you’re already wasting on your phone. You don’t need any special equipment, you don’t need to spend anything, and if you do it as you warm and between work sets it doesn’t even take up any of your time. Visualising a perfect rep once you’ve set up under the bar/on the bench/addressing the bar, and turning negatives into positives between sets (i.e turn ‘OMFG my pause on the chest got as loose as a dropped kebab on that last set’ into ‘I will hold my pause tighter on the next set’), will quickly accrue lots and lots of positive mental training over the weeks.

Free gains, pretty much.

If you feel like you’d benefit from having someone help you along your powerlifting journey, including cultivating a better mindset towards training and competition, then get in touch.