About this program
This bench program is by Pavel Chernishev and was translated by Pavel Tsatsouline in his book Power to the People Professional.
Pavel Chernishev, a Russian powerlifting coach, wrote this program with women and lightweight lifters in mind. The program itself is a bit of a bear to decode, so I created a spreadsheet for anyone who would like to try it. It contains all four complexes of the program for a total of forty workouts.
Download the Chernishev Bench Program (Google Sheet)
How to use the charts
- After downloading the Google Sheet, make a copy for yourself.
- Find the yellow box at the top of each page and enter your max.
- Do not touch any other section of the chart; the numbers will be generated for you.
About your max…
- This should be a clean ‘any day max’ that you can hit even on your worst day.
- This is NOT a competition max.
- Feel free to bump up the final single and adjust your max as you get stronger.
How to read the chart
- Stay with the same weight for one wave, then increase the weight for the next wave.
- For each wave, the amount of the weight increase is specified (10, 15 or 20lbs).
- Each session concludes with a legal paused single with your daily max.
Example 1 : A workout with multiple waves
Stick with the same weight for one wave, then up the weight for the next wave.
- 110lbs x 3, 5, 3 (3 second pause)
- 130lbs x 3, 5, 3 (3 second pause)
- 150lbs x 3, 5, 3 (3 second pause)
- 170lbs x 1 (legal pause)
Example 2 : A workout with a single wave
The weight increases from set to set
- 140lbs x 2 (5 second pause)
- 150lbs x 3 (5 second pause)
- 160lbs x 2 (5 second pause)
- 170lbs x 1 (legal pause)
Frequency
The frequency is up to you and what you can handle. Once per week probably isn’t going to be enough. If you are currently benching only once per week, then start on the lower end with frequency and pick up the pace a bit as you acclimate.
Generally, women can tolerate benching more often than men.
This is an older study which showed differences in recovery time for men and women following a bench press session. The men took 48 hours to recover, while the women had recovered in as little as 4 hours.
Studies are not the be-all-end-all, there are always exceptions, and this is certainly not to say that you need to bench every four hours if you are a woman. Just something to keep in mind when determining your optimal frequency.
What’s So Great About this Program
There is no single perfect protocol for everyone, but this is a favorite of mine because it has just the right combination of variables that can set bench hardgainers up for success. It also addresses a few things that many women seem to have in common.
I am usually not a fan of having all of my weights prescribed via a spreadsheet these days, but programs like this are different. The standard Russian style of moderate weight and lower repetitions allows for perfect, frequent practice.
Though it is a percentage-based program, there is some autoregulation with control over the final single and the option to increase your training loads as your top lift gets stronger. The daily max single is also a great way to build confidence and train everything to fire hard. It is performed after the work sets when the lifter is somewhat fatigued.
The loading scheme is a bit different from a traditional waveloading protocol. Instead of waving the weight up and down, the weight stays static for each wave but the reps vary. This allows for a more complete recovery between some sets and helps to keep the focus on the quality of reps, while still sneaking in some volume.
Who Is This For?
If you are already a big bencher, this program will not be a great fit for you – at least not with the prescribed weight increase increments. If you bench 200+ and want to run this, you will probably want to go with a conservative training max (unless you are keen on doing triples with over 95%).
For men, see the notes above on frequency and on using a conservative training max, if applicable.
This program really shines for women who are struggling around a bodyweight bench or feeling apprehensive under heavy weight.
In Power to the People Professional, this program was noted for bringing 60kg young women’s bench presses from 60kg to 90kg in six months. That is a pretty impressive claim, and having run this program myself, I can see how it would have such a dramatic effect on some. It can also give women great insight on how we might want to continue to train our bench once the program concludes.
Last Words on this Program
When it comes to Russian programs, other plug-and-play options seem to get all the love; you rarely see Chernishev mentioned. My guess at that oversight might be that his system doesn’t fit neatly into a quick online calculator – and that women-specific bench programs might not be in high demand.
For the record – men and women can absolutely follow the same programming strategies. But where we are disadvantaged on upper body strength, it makes sense to use heavy singles and higher frequencies to our advantage.
After experiencing several blunders on this program myself due to hasty decoding errors, I created the spreadsheet. Full credit for the program itself goes to the creator, Pavel Chernishev and to Pavel Tsatsouline for translating.
If this type of training appeals to you, it’s only the tip of the iceberg as to the types of things you find mentioned in Power to the People Professional. I’d highly recommend grabbing a copy if you don’t have one already.
So there you have it – several months of bench workouts. Drop me a line if you try it out; I’d love to know how it went.