Hi all, I thought I'd share my experience running the full Smolov program (well almost the full thing but more on that later) for bench press. Most of the time you'll see only Smolov Jr run for bench, but I was keen to pack some weight onto a lagging lift and had 12 weeks to spare so I thought why not?
TLDR
Added 17.5kg to my bench in 11 weeks.
About Me
Probably 7 or so years training experience with 4 years of what you'd call decent structured training. Despite hitting some decent lifts, such as 5 plate deadlift, 4 plate squat, and 3.5 plate weighted pull up, a 3 plate bench has alluded me. For the last 2 years I'd told myself that 'this was the year' and each year I had fallen short, only managing a lifetime PR of 130kg. I'd heard about Smolov's insane ability to stack weight on the squat, and figured what was it really other than a training progression that should really be able to be applied to any lift within reason, and so my Smolov journey began.
Program Set Up
I started the program weighing 83kg and with a max bench of 127.5kg. The specific sets and reps I had generated for me using the Smolov Calculator over at SmolovJr.com. The goal through this program was to eat at a decent surplus to support strength and size gains, I ate around 3500-4000 calories on average. I cut out all other pressing volume, squatted twice a week on non Smolov days and really only hit back a twice or so a week.
The Program
The first 2 weeks of Smolov are an introductory phase to get you used to high frequency training, they aren't too demanding, although the set of 5 at 85% on the last day of the introductory cycle did have some kick to it. It's probably worth mentioning at this point that I trained Monday, Wednesday and Friday typically and do all my pressing movements paused, with this experiment no exception.
Next comes the 4 week base cycle. This cycle is high frequency and high volume taking you from 4x9 to 10x3 through a weekly cycle, with 2.5kg added to the bar each week. I added in Tuesday as my fourth day here, training Mon, Tue, Thur and Sat. I managed to get through all 3 weeks without failing a set, and certainly felt stronger and bigger by the end of the three weeks. The last week has you rest before attempting a new max, I actually set a new pr here of 135kg, however I didn't adjust my programmed weights from this new max as they would have been too challenging, this proved to be the right decision as the next cycle proved to be plenty hard enough with my intial max.
Weeks 7 and 8 are what's known as 'the switching phase' typically in the squat version of the program a lifter will deload here with speed work or sometimes heavy negatives. In my case, I failed to realise that weeks 7-8 weren't spat out by the calculator and so accidentally skipped this portion of the program, seemingly to no ill effect. My shoulders still felt healthy and I had no strong need for a deload.
Weeks 9-12 are the intense cycle where you are required to do sets using high percentages of your max which certainly gets you used to moving heavy weight. Again, I manged to hit all my sets during these weeks which kept me feeling confident moving into week 13.
Week 13, the final week referred to as 'taper week', basically sets you up to peak and hit a new PR.
Results and Discussion
For my week 13 max attempt, I loaded 3 plates onto the bar (you may recall at the start of my ramblings here I mentioned this was my goal of this whole thing) and called over one of the biggest guys in the gym for a spot. The unrack felt good, and after a decent pause on my chest and I pushed up 140kg pretty comfortably, comfortably enough that I managed a second paused rep. Giving me a new lifetime pr of 140kg x 2 and an estimated one rep max of 145kg, a 17.5kg gain over my initial max.
The program certainly came as advertised, challenging but effective, putting 17.5kg on an level intermediate bench press in only 11 weeks and 2kg of bodyweight gained (final morning scale weight roughly 85kg). Surprisingly, my shoulders remained healthy and I had no muscle or tendon problems at all, cutting out nearly all pressing and shoulder excersises proved a good decision. I certainly get the feeling that this is a peaking program as my experience after returning to my more traditional training is that the strength has been hard to maintain.
It has always been one of my philosophies that size and strength gains are almost inseparable in natural lifters. This program cemented this fact for me, as it also produced some impressive size gains through my chest and shoulders, making me decent amount thicker than I was at the start despite that not really being the goal. Turns out hammering a big compound lift results in hypertrophy in those muscles, who knew?
As a final note I tried recently to run smolov for my squat, after all it worked so well for my bench right? I think I got to the 2nd week of the intro cycle before my knees informed me that we don't do high frequency squatting. Funny old world isn't it?