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Average Bench Press
Average Bench Press by Age and Weight
When looking at the average bench press that adults can do and the average amount a weight they can lift the best way to work that out is by establishing what their 1RM is. The 1RM is the maximum amount of weight that an adult can lift when doing bench press correctly.
It is important to note here that correct form and technique is vitally important in order to know that all the muscles required to perform this exercise are used and one is not cheating. The correct technique for doing a bench press is simple and easy to find out.
One can get all the specific details on how to perform a bench press correctly at your local gym or online juts type in bench press and you will get all the specifics. There are also many other forms of bench press that one can do which are variations in order to stress related muscles.
The American College of Sports Medicine has produced and index which has become widely recognized as the best way of finding the "average" upper body strength of American citizens. All of these figures are based on the 1RM which is something that you can work out yourself.
They have separated the categories into average, above average and well above average. The average is obviously age specific and would be for a woman in her 30's to be 57% of her bodyweight. With men in their 30's it will be 93% of their bodyweight.
Obviously these figures change as the age category changes and an adult in their 20's would be comparatively stronger than an adult in their 50's. It is important to consider that there will always be many different aspects that can and will affect the 1RM that you can do on any given day.
This means that the best way to get the average of your own personal 1RM is to try it on different days. You will see for yourself that this might vary and the reason could be as simple as the way you slept the night before to complicated reasons like what you eat or illnesses etc.
If you are training in order to increase your strength and or gain muscle then using your own personal 1RM will be a great advantage when planning your workouts correctly. The way to establish your own 1RM is by first warming up correctly using 50% of what you think your 1RM might be.
You should then increase the weighy and it is strongly advised that you get someone who knows what they are doing to watch you. It is vitally important to have a spotter when finding out your own 1RM max as you could land up being severely injured if the weight falls on your chest.
When you have established what your 1RM is then you will be able to plan your workouts correctly by using 80% of your 1RM to train sets of less than 8 reps if your objective is to gain strength and/or muscle. Doing anything more than 12 reps will be training your endurance and not strength.
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