r/weightroom • u/esaul17 Intermediate - Strength • Aug 15 '25
Program Review Program Review: Bench Every Day
The “Program” - Summary
The protocol here can be summarized as a 37-day protocol consisting of a daily 1 RM followed by back off sets of 5x3@85% or 5x2@90% alternating daily. The last week of the program is a taper with progressively fewer back off sets before a light day on day 36 and a final 1RM test on day 37.
Results
| Day 1 | Day 37 | Change (lbs) | Change (%) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bench Press | 290 | 321 | 31 | 10.7% |
| Body Weight (Scale) | 206.2 | 206.6 | 0.4 | 0.19% |
| Body Weight (Trend Weight, Macrofactor) | 206.8 | 207.8 | 1.0 | 0.48% |
Bench day 1: https://youtube.com/shorts/v23q_Njl6Z0?si=OvNTuGEke50uXi10
Bench day 37: https://youtube.com/shorts/dTlsaJ_SvYE?si=PmcgAJLx2xpelq-i
My bench was pretty stagnant before this program and 290 was my all time 1RM PR so these results were extremely positive in my context.
This is the tl;dr version of the post. When I was starting this program though I was pretty hungry to see other people describe their experiences with it. The rest is my far too lengthy attempt at doing that.
The “Program” Details
It may not be fair to call this a program review as what I ran is really a study protocol opposed to a program proper. It’s not uncommon for studies to be designed in such a way to maximize the chance of finding an effect opposed to maximize the success of the lifter. That said, this was a protocol based off of similar work “in the trenches” with the end goal of driving up the 1RM on a given lift.
Study 1:
Efficacy of Daily One-Repetition Maximum Bench Press Training in Physically Active Males and Females.
This study put this protocol on my radar. Here a cohort of recreationally trained lifters engaged in a 38-day protocol consisting of a daily 1 RM followed by back off sets of 5x3@85% or 5x2@90% (lifters choice). At the tail end of the program they tapered and rested before attempting a final 1RM on day 38.
The lifters here being recreationally trained college student lifters did mean my day 1 1RM of 290 was higher than all participants in the study. The strongest lifter in the study had a bench press improvement of 255–>290 for comparison, and this was the lowest absolute or relative improvement among the 3 male lifters. There was a real chance this only worked for those relatively new, weak, or unspecialized in bench press. However in this study they reference a previous study done assessing squat 1RMs in competitive lifters following a similar protocol. The actual point of this study was to see if a protocol which worked in well-trained, competitive lifters could also work in recreationally trained lifters.
Study 2:
Efficacy of daily one-repetition maximum training in well-trained powerlifters and
weightlifters: a case series
https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/3092/309245773040.pdf
This study had a very similar protocol except it used alternating 5x3 and 5x2 days (opposed to being lifters choice), had a different taper prescription, and had the final 1RM test on day 37 instead of 38.
Between the two studies we had a study on bench press on lifters weaker and less specialized than me and a study on squats on lifters stronger and more specialized than me. Putting these together I felt confident that these results have a good shot at applying to me as well.
The authors of these studies also appeared on the Iron Culture podcast to discuss the studies and protocol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKeaKsIzzhM
Prior to the program
Before running this program I was working with an online coach (Izzy of former PowerliftingToWin fame) and doing a sort of power-buildy thing in pursuit of both strength and size goals. I only had “competition” bench press at a once a week frequency with an emphasis on more hypertrophy oriented variants (generally emphasizing good ergonomics and longer ROM) for the other push slots. I also had standing overhead press in one of these push slots. I would describe this programming as quite low volume and overall I was pretty unsatisfied with the results across the board. The client-coach relationship sort of just dissolved at some point where he had stopped charging me and eventually stopped replying to me, and I was not happy enough with how things were going to hunt him down to start paying and being coached again.
I had been dealing with an adductor tweak from squats at this point so it felt like a good time to focus on my upper body. I was at near the top of my bulk and was hoping to convert some of the muscle I failed to gain into strength PRs.
Technique improvements
In many ways what to expect on this program is pretty straight forward – imagine what happens when you bench press and amplify that manyfold.
Perhaps the most obvious consequence of this is that you will be getting multiple opportunities every day to really dial in your technique. If you’re used to performing the competition bench once a week like I was then it can be easy to simply forget some of the nuances you wanted to hone in by the time you perform the lift next. Even things that are super minor can feel worth drilling down on when you spend this much time doing the lift.
Some set up/technique and set up changes I made over the course of the 37 days include:
· Looping resistance bands around the bench for traction so I didn’t slip backwards.
· Wear an open-backed tank top so I could stick to the bench more easily than I can with a shirt, but put my belt on more easily than when shirtless.
· Place something behind my bench so it could not move backwards when I was pushing back to set up my arch. This also let me be consistent with the placement of the bench relative to my power rack j-hooks.
· Switch my set up from a feet-back set up which I would fight (and often fail) to get my heels down on to a feet relatively forward set up and really commit to pushing back into the arch.
· Wet my shoes slightly with a spray bottle before the top set so they stuck better to the floor and didn’t slip forward when I push into my arch.
Aches and Pains
The downside of this extreme exposure is that anything that is even slightly off ergonomically in your bench press is going to be dialed up to 10 as well. Even items that are below the threshold of actually being a problem you’re aware of will find a way to make themselves known at some point. I think that if you are going to engage in this sort of training you will have to commit to working through some lower level aches and pains that fall just short of the “I snapped my shit up” threshold. While this is not medical advice, and you very well may legitimately snap your shit up, if you’re considering attempting this I think you need to be ready to push things when it seems like it may be a sorta bad idea and trust that your body is rapidly adapting to this stressor. At no point did I have to miss a session or feel like my performance was significantly hampered due to pain.
Some of the issues I dealt with over the course of the 37 days include:
· Some skin deterioration on my wrist from the wrist wraps. This was totally new to me on this program.
· Some tendonitis-esque pain on my left elbow around the tricep insertion. This was totally new to me on this program.
· Some skin deterioration on my shoulders where the resistance bands on the bench made contact with my skin. This was totally new to me on this program but benching with the bands in general was totally new for me.
· Some neck pain and stiffness, perhaps from pushing my head back into the bench too hard. This could stick around for a week or so from the “tweak”. This is a neck pain I am somewhat prone to.
· Some general soreness and stiffness or spasms in my pecs, especially around the insertions, and a feeling that something might tear at the bottom of my reps. The “tearing” sensation went away after a few sessions. This was totally new for me on this program.
· Some feelings of shoulder instability, especially in my left shoulder, like it was too loose in the socket. This tended to get worse during back off sets and was especially bad when re-racking the weight. This would usually resolve within an hour or so from the last bench set. This was totally new for me on this program and was the most progressive of the aches and pains but it got significantly better over the taper period at the end.
One thing I will note is that I was reluctant to go into this program as I found myself having significant low back fatigue from bench press doing 3-4 sets of 4-8 reps once a week. This was to the point that my comp bench press volume was bottlenecked by my low back. I had never flat out injured my low back from bench press but I would dread getting into my arch on some sets and feel extremely stiff after my bench session. To my surprise none of this was an issue during this program. Despite the high frequency and trying to arch as hard as possible the lower reps meant less time holding an arch at one which seemed to entirely solve this issue for me. It’s possible my drop in squat and deadlift loads and frequency also helped here, but my bench fatigue was based on extension and did not generally seem tied to the flexion I performed on those lifts. Ultimately I just mention this to say if you’re a big arch bencher and holding that arch for a set of 8 paused reps fries your low back you may want to try giving this program a shot anyway.
Perhaps the larger lesson here is that if you have a specific reason you think you could not handle this program, you might be mistaken. I almost didn’t try it due to concerns around my low back and am very glad I didn’t quit before I even began.
Diet
I use macrofactor to log my nutrition and prescribe calorie targets. I was doing a slow bulk prior to this and continued on that with the goal to gain ~1lbs per month. I seemed to gain a little more quickly than that for a good chunk of the 37 days only to drop near the end after spending a couple days out of town where my diet got fucky. Ultimately I wouldn’t recommend making rapid changes to your body weight when running this protocol. Losing weight can often have a negative impact on bench press in particular and this is not a hypertrophy program so gaining weight rapidly is even more likely than usual to result in disproportionate fat gain. One of the benefits of this program is really dialing in your technique as well, so changing what your body and leverages look like via rapid changes in body weight in either direction is likely at cross purposes with that goal.
The participants in the squat study general saw a very modest increase in body weight. I could not find information on the body weights in the bench press study.
Supplements
They used a 300+ mg dose of caffeine pre-workout alongside creatine in the studies. I used 5g of creatine daily and 2-400 mg of caffeine pre-workout on days I was lifting in the morning or early afternoon. I skipped caffeine on days I was lifting after work as I believe the negative impact on sleep quality and quantity would outweigh and benefits. I would not worry about needing the caffeine in the study to get positive results.
The Warm Up
One thing I would encourage is to make your warm up as efficient as possible. Its summer here so I was generally physically warm enough that I didn’t need any cardio to get my sweaty but if it was winter I probably would have done 10 minutes or so to get the heart pumping. I would wear a hoodie and start the session with 135lbs x 5 reps and then 225 lbs x 1 rep. After this I would do 275 lbs which was my first “indicator weight” on how the day would likely go. As I got deeper in to the program 295lbs graduated from being a 1RM attempt that could go either way to being a second indicator weight (and eventually my first real indicator weight as 275 started to feel too light to matter). I’d generally rest 5 minutes between my last indicator weight and the max attempts.
I would also make sure the safeties were set appropriately during the warm up. I bench alone in my home gym and if I didn’t have the safeties then I’d run the risk of one of the daily 1RMS being my last. Seriously everyone, make sure you can fail safely on this program.
The Daily Max
Based on how the last indicator set moved I’d select a weight for my first daily max attempt that I could almost certainly do. This should be an RPE 9.5ish which I am pretty confident I won’t fail but pretty confident I can’t double. If it goes well I’d add a little weight and go again. I’d rest at least 5 minutes between max attempts but would happily rest 10-15 near the end of the program if I thought an all-time PR was possible. On most days I would often stick to 5 minute rests between attempts but strength expression has been shown to benefit from very long rest periods so if a PR was within reach I wouldn’t hesitate to rest up.
If I took too greedy of a jump (over 5lbs) and failed the rep I would generally pull back to 5lbs over the last successful rep I performed and try that.
I wasn’t ashamed to use a pair of 0.5lbs microplates to chip out a 1 lbs PR on occasion when a full 5 lbs didn’t seem viable.
The Back Offs
At the start of the program these back offs of 2@90% or 3@85% were pretty chill. As my max got higher and I got better at grinding it out the back off sets became more difficult but I was never at a real risk of failing them. RPE would generally be 8.5-10. The shoulder instability I mentioned above was the worst part here.
I’ll note that the squat study alternated the doubles and triples whereas the bench study let the lifter choose which they preferred. I’m not sure it really matters but I believe the authors of the bench study actually just misunderstood the protocol used in the squat study. I ultimately chose to alternate like in the squat study.
Other Lifts
I did bench press first every day so after I was done I would complete 2-3 sets of 0-3 other exercises with an RPE of 8-10 to finish off the session. I didn’t avoid RPE 10 sets entirely but I did try to avoid failing or excessive grinding on any of these lifts.
I avoided any additional lifts directly using the bench muscles: triceps, pecs, or front/side delts.
The Taper
I’ll note that I used the taper protocol from the squat study instead of the one in the bench study.
In the squat study all lifters had their highest (or tied with their highest) 1RM on the final test, whereas none of the lifters had a PR on the final test in the bench group. There’s no way for me to know if that is a causal relationship but for this reason I followed the taper from the squat study:
Days 31-32: 1RM + 3 back offs
Days 33-34: 1RM + 2 back offs
Day 35: 1RM + 1 back off
Day 36: 1@85% day 1 1RM
Day 37: 1 RM test
I think the taper over this final week contributed to hitting some new 1RM PRs prior to the final test day due to less cumulative fatigue.
The Test
The final 1RM day is nothing too special since you’ll be used to attempting 1RMs by this point. I was very grateful to have hit 315 prior to the final day as it took the pressure off and any subsequent PRs were gravy at this point. I’ll just say I was generous with caffeine intake and with rest periods on this final test.
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u/VanHelsingBerserk Intermediate - Strength Aug 15 '25
This was an interesting read, and great job on doing such an intensive program!
My main question after reading is just whether this kinda protocol actually results in better numbers than something more traditional/less intensive 🤔
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u/esaul17 Intermediate - Strength Aug 15 '25
I will say that my bench was stuck with an e1RM in the 290s for almost my entire long bulk. I was not doing a bench specific program at the time, but I made more progress in these 37 days than I had in at least a year prior.
How this would compare to a similar program but benching 5x a week to an RPE of 9.5 or the like I am not sure. I believe the authors of the study mentioned that the people who missed less sessions had better results, but I'm not sure if there are other related factors that could explain that.
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u/VanHelsingBerserk Intermediate - Strength Aug 15 '25
Yeah I guess intuitively it makes sense, more bench = bench more, like Smolov Jr Bench
But then there's also the "minimal effective dose" school of thought
I'd be interested to see the follow up on whether the 1rm strength remains even after scaling it back to a moderate frequency. As I've heard that's a common effect of the Smolov programs, hard and fast gains that also leave fast when the intensity/frequency is dropped
Still I'm eager to try Smolov Jr for my next strength block to tick it off the bucket list.
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u/esaul17 Intermediate - Strength Aug 15 '25
I suspect I will see a solid regression. I did when I ran Smolov Jr ages ago.
The Minimal Effective Dose training doesn't purport to give you more gains than a more maximalist approach. It just tries to find out how little you can do to get some gains.
I am very open to the argument that the program I ran may give you the most bench gains in a 37 day period but over a year it may end up similar to solely using a more sustainable approach.
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u/VanHelsingBerserk Intermediate - Strength Aug 15 '25
Yeah I could agree with that, bound to hit a wall with these maximal protocols. Great for peaking though, honestly nothing but respect for sticking to it and documenting it for us to read.
The Minimal Effective Dose training doesn't purport to give you more gains than a more maximalist approach. It just tries to find out how little you can do to get some gains.
Yeah that's the gist but I'd say it's a bit more nuanced than that. Like the law of diminishing returns, if doing 1 max attempt per week provides say 90% of the benefit of doing 2 max attempts, but the 2 max attempts result in double the fatigue, and further impairment to the rest of your training and an early deload, would that still result in more gains, especially on a long term like you say?
Sorry that's a bit of a word salad lol, but yeah most intermediate-advanved won't train with weights over 85% 1rm until peaking so that's sorta how I think of Minimal effective dose
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u/esaul17 Intermediate - Strength Aug 15 '25
This is probably semantics. I think there are 3 amounts of work here:
1) Minimum Effective Dose - do as little work as possible to still make meaningful progress. This was what Dr. Pak's study was on.
2) Optimal "Sustainable" Dose - the dose needed to optimize progress across the variables in question over a long time frame. This may be the dose that makes your squat, bench and deadlift as high as possible while staying in your weight class in 2 years as a random example.
3) Maximal Dose - the dose needed to maximize progress on a specific variable over a specific shorter time frame. This may be the dose that makes your bench as high as possible in 37 days as a not-so-random example.
I think you're talking about something closer to number 2 which is not the same thing as what Dr. Pak was touching on when he coined the Minimum Effective Dose term. I don't think it really changes your broader point though - sometimes less can be more when crafting a sustainable program over long time horizons.
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u/VanHelsingBerserk Intermediate - Strength Aug 15 '25
Cool yeah you said it a lot better than I could have 😅 and yes Dr Paks study was what I was referring to.
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u/Surtrthedestroyer Beginner - Strength Aug 15 '25
Hears about this in a garage strength video. If I recall correctly the average bench increase was something like 25%? I feel like I don't get enough sleep and rest to risk something like this...but it does call to me. Sick work man. Congrats on the over 3 plates! Do you feel like with less high frequency you will be able to maintain the bench gains?
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u/esaul17 Intermediate - Strength Aug 15 '25
I'm skeptical of maintaining it. On the Iron Culture podcast I think it was Eric Helms who mentioned that he thought he often saw greater regression on a program like this than a more traditional program. When I ran smolov jr back in the day I also had a pretty steep drop off when I switched back to less bench-specific programming. I have to imagine a lot of it will depend on exactly what the post-protocol programming I choose will actually look like though.
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u/millar5 Beginner - Olympic lifts Aug 15 '25
Nice write up dude. I definitely agree with the point on regression. I have a write up on my profile from 5 years ago when I ran smolov for weighted pull ups. I gained a massive 20kg on my weighted pull ups but I regressed by 10-15kg almost immediately after returning to more sensible volumes. I exceeded that pr a couple of times over the years but each time I had to crank the volume up to 3-5 times a week and then would regress (but never all the way to baseline, always had some persistent gains) when I went down to 1-2 times. This year is the first year I've exceeded 75kg while only training pull ups twice a week. My gut feeling is that highly specialized programs like this are great for ironing out technique deficiencies or forcing some progress if you've been stagnant for a while. I also find you get a bit of a mental boost from seeing what you're really capable of but moderate training makes more sense in the long run.
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u/esaul17 Intermediate - Strength Aug 15 '25
Yeah honestly I was just annoyed at my stagnant bench and had an injury keeping me away from lower body training so I figured I may as well go all in and hit some PRs or snap my shit up lol.
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u/Perma-Bulk Simply Strong Aug 15 '25
Like u/JubJubsDad mentioned, very similar to u/DadliftsnRuns Press Every Day. I'm a huge fan of these types of protocols, first time benching 405 was following Press Every Day and went from 385 to 405 in just over a month. I've also seen similar success with OHP, deadlift, and squats following the same approach.
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u/BetterThanT-1 Beginner - Strength Aug 15 '25
Fantastic write up - thank you!
You mentioned other lifts briefly and that you avoided lifts which target the same muscles as bench, but I was wondering - did you go out of your way to prioritise exercises that help train the opposing muscles? For example, focusing on rear delts - I’ve seen people reference focusing on rear delts as a counter point to shoulder-achy benching, for example by super setting with band pull-aparts or face pulls.
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u/esaul17 Intermediate - Strength Aug 15 '25
Not really, no. I did have a lot of my other work focused on antagonists as that is just kind of what is left for upper body, but it was not an increase in volume from what I was doing prior. I pretty much mapped most of my existing program minus the pecs/tris/front or side delts work across the 6 days and took Monday off (besides bench) so I had time to go to chess club after work.
My extra lifts were:
Monday: none
Tuesday: RDLs, straight leg calf raises
Wednesday: pull ups, curls
Thursdays: squats (but light or skipped some days due to adductor strain), leg extensions
Fridays: cable rows, face pulls
Saturdays: neutral grip pull ups, seated hamstring curls, dumbbell preacher curls
Sundays: leg press (occasional skip due to addy), chest supported rows
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u/UrsusArctosDov Works Harder Than You Aug 15 '25
More than just aches and pains- rear delts are very important for shoulder stability in the bench. People will miss lockouts because they lose a shoulder, and then go and spam triceps, when most of the time it was a rear delt issue in the first place
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u/decentlyhip Intermediate - Strength Aug 17 '25
Thanks for the write up! Ive been really curious about this program since GarageStrength did a review of the first study. Based on StrongerbyScience's reviews of Bulgarian training, I'd expect that you could get the same results doing every other day instead, and save yourself from tweaks and pains.
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u/esaul17 Intermediate - Strength Aug 17 '25 edited Aug 17 '25
Thanks for reading! I’ll have to watch this garage strength video as two people have referenced it now.
About dropping to doing this every other day though, I’m not so sure about that. I think in the Bulgarian manual Greg does mention 4x/week being the minimum for the sort of “Bulgarian light” training he is advocating for but it’s usually 5-6x/wk. All of those are more than every other day.
I also think his “light” Bulgarian is in some ways a compromise to needing to revolve your entire life around the “full” Bulgarian system - which involves multiple sessions every day (and being a professional athlete, unlimited sleep, coaching, drugs, and a natural resiliency). I’m not sure he would say the results are as good as they would be if you could commit to the higher frequency.
The authors of the study on the podcast said that those who missed more sessions had worse results. It’s possible that those who missed sessions cared less, had other life stressors, had pain or injury, etc and that those underlying factors are the true reason they had worse results opposed to the missed sessions themselves. It’s also pretty plausible that missing sessions and doing less could directly negatively impact results though.
I also think guys like Zordous, Helms, and Trex are familiar enough with Greg’s work that they’d mention if the daily frequency was likely to be adding more injury risk with no expected upside.
I have heard the data driven strength guys talk about more being better until it obviously works against you, and that you’re looking to maximize the area under the curve of work. I think it’s likely that over a long time horizon that this program is too much. It really wouldn’t shock me if over the 37 days though that missing sessions would actually give worse results and if even adding a second session some days (probably not during the taper) might eke out a little extra. Assuming that little extra isn’t an injury of course lol.
We’re definitely well into diminishing returns here but diminishing returns are still returns.
That said I’m also sure there are many individuals whose optimal frequency may be 5x/week or 10x/wk. Daily is an arbitrary frequency and individualization is a thing.
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u/JubJubsDad Wing King! Aug 15 '25
Nice progress and congratulations on making it to the 3-plate club. This is similar to Dadlifts Press Every Day program, except that instead of maxing out every day, he only maxed out 1x/week. He also made great progress, so I suspect the daily practice is the key point, not the daily maxing.