Most everyone in the gym likes to bench press. The first question you're often asked when someone finds out you're a weightlifter is "how much do you bench?". The bench press has attained a certain status, but is it deserved? For instance, a poster at Dragon Door wonders whether the bench press builds functional strength. The answers are somewhat mixed but come down on the side that there are many other lifts which produce far better functional strength gains:

Depends on what function you need. plan on pushing something heavy off of your chest? True it is the classic chest exercise and I'm sure there is a reason for its dominance in about 90% of peoples training plans but I just never got it. To answer your question I personally dont feel it is a very functional exercise.

A poster at Ryan Kennelley's forum is experiencing some forearm pain. He writes:

Been hitting the weight pretty hard the past couple of months, and I seem to have done something to my forearms. The underside specifically. No problems during benching, but when I curl, do lat pull downs and bent over rows it feels like they are going to tear. Don't realy work my grip to speak of cant figure out what the hell is going on. Been icing and heating back and forth to no avail. Did a deload week last week and really didn't touch that much weight since it was time to give the CNS a breather. I usually work up pretty heavy on the trap bar shrugs, but 315 made the forearms feel pretty ragged. This happen to anyone else? What did you do to get this cleared up? The pain is not in the elbow, more like 4-5 inches from the elbow, in the middle of the forearm (palm side down). Feels more of a muscular-ligament problem but in the middle of the forearm. Did speed bench today with no trouble, but it seemed to be a little sore. After that I did some triceps with moderate weight, and it felt like some of my fingers were going numb. I also felt a little ligament popping in my hands when I squeezed them. I know about tennis elbow all too well, or some variation of it since I have played baseball and softball my whole life. I am no professional but I would say that I am 95% sure that this is not tennis elbow. A little confused.....

A poster at Dr. Squat is having some problems getting out of the hole when squatting. He says:

I am pretty darn weak and slow coming out of the hole when i try to squat deep. I was wondering what would be some good supplemental exercieses and such. I try to squat i guess its like an olympic squat or atheltic stance.

Iron Game added some more videos this weekend. There's some International, US and strongman stuff.

The reigning master of shirted benching is Gene Rychlak. A poster Gene Rychlak's forum looks for a little insight into Rychlak's shirt mastery. He asks Rychlak:

Have you been using the same shirt for a long time? like when you did 875 till the time you did 1005 were you using the same shirt, at least with respect to design, or do you constantly modify and change it?

A poster at Fortified Iron is a bit confused with a part of his bench setup. He asks:

when you retract your shoulder blades, should you retract them upwards towards your upper traps? i think i did this yesterday and it made a huge difference. then after one of my teammates told me how good my arch looked, i totally lost it on the next couple sets. its only now that i think on that good set i might have been retracting upwards (towards the bench) instead of downwards (which what i thought was away from the bench.

Here's the video of John Zemmin's 800 pound bench from Saturday's APF Michigan Bench for Cash.

John Zemmin became the newest 800 pound bencher on Saturday at the APF Michigan Bench for Cash. The successful run at 800 was on his second attempt. On the third, he missed 830. Zemmin weighed in at 282. On a side note, Zemmin lifts out of Detroit Barbell which has another 800 pound bencher in Clay Brandenburg.