Review: Blast Your Bench by Lee Hayward

Fitness Review:

Blast Your Bench

I came across the Blast Your Bench program after doing some research for my next fitness routine. I had just completed the p90x program and looking for something that would help me work towards one of my life goals of bench pressing 315 lbs.

One Caveat: I am going to be very vague in this review to protect the content that Lee Hayward has put into this. He spent a lot of time creating this routine and it would be unfair for me to share the details that you would receive when purchasing his downloadable PDF.

The Goal: Blast Your Bench is designed to help you increase your one rep maximum for the bench press exercise. In other words, the maximum amount of weight you can lift for a single repetition of the bench press.

What you get: The program is a downloadable PDF file and costs $40. You can try the 14 day trial, but you won’t be able to actually complete the program before the trial is up. Lee also includes a ton of other similar fitness PDFs which add to the value. I haven’t had time to read through all of those. Lee does a great job of going into great detail about how and why the program works. It’s well worth reading the 139 page report.

My Review: The program lasted for a total of five weeks. The first two are a general warm up program in which you don’t do any flat bench. The following three weeks are the actual program. At the very beginning Lee shares some advice on how to determine your current one-rep max for the bench press. I was able to bench press 265lbs. I’m in pretty good shape, especially coming off of the p90x workout and I think it was fair of me to start Lee’s program here. I didn’t come into this with no weight lifting experience. This amount was pretty much the maximum weight I had ever lifted, so I knew if I could improve on that, it would certainly be due to Lee’s program.

The three weeks of the actual Blast Your Bench program were certainly different that any other routines I had done in the past. While I can’t give any details, each workout I found both very challenging and very fun. I really enjoyed how the progressions worked and the way it is designed really worked well for motivating me. The first week really kicked my butt, or should I say my chest. It proved quite a challenge. The second week I found myself eating it up and making great progress. The third week I continued to make progress, but I did find that my arms and shoulders starting to feel slightly stressed. I’m not sure what it was due to, but my guess is that it was partly due to being a very challenging program and the stress it places on your body, as well as the third week really focusing on heavy weight, more so than the first two weeks. Lee does caution that the Blast Your Bench program is not something you would do no a continual basis.

I cheated: I always like to share when I didn’t follow the program exactly because that may impact my results. There were two major suggestions that Lee gave in his pdf packet that I did not follow. I did not follow his advice to increase my caloric intake. I won’t give the numbers he recommends, but it would have been a significant increase. It’s not that I disagreed at all. I definitely see the value in taking in more calories for this program. I did end up eating a little more, but I chose not to simply because I didn’t want to increase my weight that much, or spend the extra time and money eating additional meals. I also did not take any supplements including Creatine. I’ve heard very impressive results when using Creatine, but I chose not to for two reasons. First, I wanted to see what I could personally bench press without relying on the help of supplements. Second, my wife is a nurse and simply doesn’t want me to use supplements such as Creatine. She actually had a patient who was overusing Creatine and ended up on her floor. So to respect my wife’s wishes, I don’t use any supplements. Although she has nothing against protein shakes or protein bars.

The results: I was very pleased to find that my final test for my one rep max I was able to do 295lbs. That’s a gain of 30lbs in just three weeks. Not bad for someone who weighs 165lbs.

My recommendation: I found the Blast Your Bench program fun, challenging, and I was happy with the results. I feel as if this is not a one-time value for me. I plan on implementing many of the routines he provides into my future workouts. I also plan on coming back to the full program any time I hit a plateau. My only negatives about the routine where how my shoulders and upper arms felt stressed towards the end of the third week, however I can’t say for sure if that is the fault of the program. Especially since I didn’t follow it exactly. Also, simply from a marketing and design perspective, I’d love to see Lee update the PDF report with a better design and layout. The content is terrific, it could just use a slightly more professional look.

I give the Blast Your Bench an 8 out of 10 and believe it is well worth the $40 investment.

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