A YouTube video transcript of competitive powerlifter Aliza Tessler demonstrating a bench press workout focused on increasing maximal bench press performance rather than hypertrophy. Tessler covers warm-up strategy, pre-workout timing (caffeine/energy drinks), full-body activation, equipment setup (combo rack), and legal wide-grip placement for her federation, with practical tips for minimizing wasted energy during unracking and bench setup.
Chapters
What's up, y'? All? My name is Aliza Tesler. I'm a competitive powerlifter, bench press national champion and world's competitor and first form athlete.
We're out here at Madhouse Gains Asylum in Los Angeles, California and today I'm going to take you through a bench press workout geared towards powerlifters. We'll go through tips and tricks. What's worked for me, maybe something you can implement into your own workout. So thanks for tuning in. Now let's get into it.
So I'm going to start off with a pretty generalized warm up and of course I'm going to sit my first form energy while I'm doing that. You do want to be drinking your energy drinks or pre workout about, I'd say 30 to 45 minutes before your workout, before you're like top tier lifts. Just because it takes a little while for the caffeine to get absorbed and start hitting. Something you'll notice when I'm warming up is that I'm not just warming up my upper body, I'm warming up my full body. And again, that's because we're trying to utilize as much muscle in our body when we're benching because we want to push as much weight as possible. Our workouts aren't necessarily geared for hypertrophy. Like I'm not benching today to get my chest as big as possible. I'm trying to get my bench press, the number as high as possible. So I'm going to use whatever I'm able to to get that number bigger within the confines of the Federation I compete at which we'll talk about a little bit.
Okay, I think we're ready to begin.
Today I'm going to be using a combo rack. To adjust it, you would kind of use this lever, put it under and then it'll go up or down. And there's normally a second pin to put it wherever you need it. But we don't have that second pin here today. The grip that I use when I bench is going to be a wide grip. So the widest legal grip that you can have in the federation I compete in is, is that your pointer finger has to be on this ring. I'm going to go ahead and test out this rack tight. You don't really want this too low because right now it's going to take a lot of energy for me to unrack the bar because there's so much space above it.
So right now when I push up, I'm able to easily get the barbell off of the arms, but it doesn't take too much energy to get it up because all I really need to do is apply a little bit of pressure. Let's talk about our first warm up. Set number one. I'm going to take my sweatshirt off. I'm actually probably going to take my shirt off because I don't want to slide off the bench. You got some lipstick on your shirt. No. Yeah. Really?
Look, we're twins.
So when I'm competing, I'm going to be wearing a singlet. You've got a competition T shirt underneath the singlet. I tried to have as much skin touching the bench so that I slide a little bit less.
