{"id":273,"date":"2012-12-27T21:41:04","date_gmt":"2012-12-27T21:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bodybuilding.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=273"},"modified":"2015-02-16T17:22:20","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T22:22:20","slug":"critical-bench-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/bodybuilding\/critical-bench-review.html","title":{"rendered":"Review: Mike Westerdal&#8217;s Critical Bench Press Program: Increase Your Bench Press!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-77 alignright\" alt=\"programcover100\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/bodybuilding\/files\/2012\/12\/programcover100.jpg\" width=\"75\" height=\"95\" \/>How much can YOU <b>bench press<\/b>?<\/p>\n<p>No matter what your level of lifting experience, I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ve heard this question a million times. If you&#8217;re a beginner who happens to mention in casual conversation that you&#8217;re beginning a weight training program, well&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>You can pretty much count the seconds before that question &#8212; &#8220;how much can you bench press&#8221; &#8212; comes up. If you&#8217;re an intermediate or pro lifter, you can lift your head a little higher for every 100 lbs. over 200 lbs you can bench press. 300 lbs. is impressive. 400 is god-like. 500 lbs? Forget it, you&#8217;re a freak! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>You and I both know that the bench press is a pretty good measure of power. Unfortunately, not everybody is that good at it. I have a buddy who&#8217;s struggled with the bench press for years (he&#8217;s coming along pretty good now!) but he can kick my butt at dumbbell shoulder presses. Unfortunately 100 lbs. dumbbell shoulder presses won&#8217;t impress your friends nearly as much as a 350 lbs. bench press. That&#8217;s unfortunate, because you and I both know that a 100 lbs shoulder press is pretty impressive.<\/p>\n<p>So what&#8217;s the solution?<\/p>\n<p>Why increase your bench press, of course. As you do so, you&#8217;ll build pecs of steel, powerful shoulders and huge triceps. It&#8217;s <b>all<\/b> good! Best of all, you can brag to your friends&#8230; and back it up in the gym! What a bonus!<\/p>\n<p>In the quest for a greater bench press, enter Mike Westerdal&#8217;s <b>Critical Bench<\/b> program. It&#8217;s a no-holds barred, heavy-duty program dedicated to increasing your bench press by 50 lbs in 10 weeks.<\/p>\n<p>This program contains very little fluff &#8212; Mike figures you want to get training, not reading. It&#8217;s a very concise overview of all the essential elements of a serious body building program. You get&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a brief introduction<\/li>\n<li>a quick overview of the program&#8217;s theory and organization (variety, progressive overload, high intensity training, rest and recovery, and so on)<\/li>\n<li>detailed training technique for the bench press, including flat bench, lower 1\/2 reps, upper 1\/2 reps and burnout sets<\/li>\n<li>supplemental exercises, and detailed warm-up instructions<\/li>\n<li>detailed discussions on rest, rep speed, repetition range and the importance of a training partner<\/li>\n<li>a great discussion on the mental preparation required for the bench press. I&#8217;ve started using Mike positive mantra &#8220;through the roof&#8221; on all my chest lifts now, and it makes a huge difference!<\/li>\n<li>an overview and discussion on supplementation and the most important supplements<\/li>\n<li>a complete 10-week training log, customized for your one rep max.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>OK, personal comments&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t tried this program yet&#8230; I&#8217;m in the midst of a rotator cuff shoulder injury and won&#8217;t be training real heavy for a while. However, I have trained in a similar fashion before and I can testify to this &#8212; shaking things up, training consistently heavy, and doing negatives and so on &#8212; does lead to serious gains in strength. In other words, <strong>I have absolutely no doubt <\/strong>this program will increase your bench press significantly.<\/p>\n<p>Who will benefit the most from this? Intermediate and advanced lifters, definitely. Beginners will probably want to hold off on Mike&#8217;s program for now. Mike may disagree with me, but I would say that this program requires you to work out with a level of intensity that only comes with some experience in the gym.<\/p>\n<p>Keep in mind that to get the most out of this program, you will need a spotter on a regular basis. Depending on the sort of weight you lift, you may need a couple.<\/p>\n<p>Mike program is available as an attractively formatted PDF booklet. It&#8217;s actually fairly short &#8212; 31 pages to be exact. Given this, you might balk at the $37 price tag. Four reasons why you shouldn&#8217;t&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><b>1.<\/b> The program is customized for you. When you order, you do not download your e-book right away. You will need to e-mail Mike with your 1-rep maximum, and he will create a customized version of the program for you. And don&#8217;t worry&#8230; this doesn&#8217;t take long. I ordered Critical Bench on a Sunday afternoon, and Mike was back to me within two hours. Kudos for stellar customer service.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Make sure you have a good idea of your 1-rep bench press max before you order. Don&#8217;t exaggerate or make one up&#8230; you won&#8217;t get anything out of the program if you do!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><b>2.<\/b> Mike provides you with a personal e-mail address with which you can contact him with any questions you might have. This one-on-one consultation is VERY valuable considering Mike&#8217;s considerable knowledge and experience.<\/p>\n<p><b>3.<\/b> The bonus materials are pretty cool, and they round out the value of this product very nicely (some great stuff here on the heavy duty training secrets of Mike Mentzer!).<\/p>\n<p>And most importantly&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><b>4. This program will increase your bench press!<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Bottom line?<\/p>\n<p>You won&#8217;t go wrong with Mike&#8217;s bench press program. If building a massive chest is important to you, or you want bragging rights to a killer bench press, you&#8217;ll want to check out the Critical Bench program right away! Buy it and get to work&#8230; you&#8217;ll be amazed at the progress you&#8217;ll make with a solid program behind you!<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner-recommends.com\/critical_bench\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">You can learn more about Mike Westerdal&#8217;s Critical Bench Press Program here!<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How much can YOU bench press? No matter what your level of lifting experience, I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ve heard this question a million times. If you&#8217;re a beginner who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,11],"tags":[51,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/bodybuilding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/bodybuilding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/bodybuilding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/bodybuilding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/bodybuilding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/bodybuilding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2572,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/bodybuilding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions\/2572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/bodybuilding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/bodybuilding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/bodybuilding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}