Metal Militia Montreal Training Plan
Training
Two days a week, Tuesday light raw bench higher reps and pause bench, Friday heavy shirt bench.
Tuesday – all raw work
Warm-up
4 sets of 6 reps
2 sets of pause bench (5 reps each, counting down from 5,4,3,2,1,press, to 4,3,2,1,press, down to 1,press)
You could stop here or add,Two or three accessory exercises for triceps and chest.
Friday – heavy shirt and upper end work
We change usually every two weeks, one week is max bench day when we go for a pr, and the second week is heavy work day when we do four heavy work sets of triples in the shirt. These kill but they develop strength the quickest.
Raw warm-up
We normally start with raw warm-ups almost to a single raw max, with a slightly closer grip.
Alternate days, we start with
Close grip board presses up to a 3 rep max. This does two things: it instills the motion of throwing the weight back instead of pushing up and gets you used to the feeling and second it saves some strength for maxing out in your shirt.
Shirt work
start about 50 lbs more than the last board press or 90 lbs more than the last raw press.
1st set usually three reps, must touch by the third rep
2nd set usually two reps
3rd, 4th and 5th set, singles up to your max or to a pr.
If you miss a lift, you can try it one more time, if you still miss it, then go back down to a weight you can do three reps with and find your form and work your way back up again to your max.
Accessory work
After shirt work, we alternate with some days band presses, most days with rack lock outs and occasionally floor presses. By now, your triceps should be finished, if not go do some tricep presses and finish them off.
Band presses
Try two different exercises with bands. One day do sets of 5 adding a band to each set until you can’t do anymore. On another day, have a least three people in a group and set the bands up so that the weakest person can barely do three reps. Then test the other lifters by adding weight plates so that they find the weight they need for a hard three rep set. Once everything is set up, do ten sets of 3 reps very quickly, moving from one person to the next as quickly as possible. As soon as one person finishes his lift, get off the bench and the next one jumps down, someone sets up the weights and the hand-off person hands off right away. This gets everyone used to setting up quicker.