I dropped it for a good 6 months and I felt that my upper body power decreased. During that time I was doing split jerks and rows. They didn’t seem to make-up for it. You need the upper body CNS stimulation of benching so that you don’t lose upper body power IMO.
Blinky, split jerks really aren’t really an upper-body exercise, and rows are difficult to go real heavy on *while maintaining arch). If you would have done push presses, weighted dips and pull-ups you would have maintained your strength better. There’s nothing magical about the bench press.
They start the arm swing that is my point.
I’ve done all those exercises and still say that there is not substitute for the bench except weighted pushups or the hammer jammer but in the case of weighted pushups you can only put so much wt on and it is harder to go up in increments of wts. 
For development of horizontal pushing strength, yes. But how do you know it can stimulate the cns better than the exercises I listed?
Super heavy dips are an even bigger shoulder fucker than the bench press.
I know this to be true bc I’ve injured my shoulder in the past doing military presses behind the neck on a smith machine and also dips a couple of months ago. The dips especially put your front shoulder muscles in a vicarious position and are really hard on the shoulder joint in general. A similar bad exercise is doing dumbell bench press or fly’s if you allow the arms go past
75-80 degrees or lowering the dumballs further then you would when doing a barbell bench press. :eek:
I would say dips are ok as long as you don’t allow your arms to go below 90 degrees but that’s pretty hard when your doing weighted dips.
Forget about CNS stim and worry about the muscle balance issue and the others that I pointed out in the previous posts. If you must know Bentover rows and lat pulldowns/pullups come close but are produce 10% less MU involvement as is displayed in the CF Vancouver Seminar Videos.
Where’s Jman when you need him? I had a huge debate with him a few months back about shoulder injuries and pressing movements. He stated that pressing movements are safe when you go down as far as possible. I said that shoulder injuries occur when you go down past 90 degrees. Here’s the injury proof, Jman. Any rebutle?
If I must know. Get over yourself. You’re just a well of endless (mis)information aren’t you? The problem with dips is most people do lousy/sloppy reps even when unweighted. Most gym goers also have weak lats/rear delts and strong ant.delts and chest. (BTW you think bench improves muscle imbalances 
, then why do I see tons of guys with hunched over shoulders from benching (also caused by sitting at a computer all day at work- benching just worsens the problem)? You’re right I see far to many people working their lats and rear delts, that just forget to balance it out with some benching 
. The bench is by far the most underperfomed exercise, LMFAO.
Does the bench involve more MU than RA dips/pullups, pushups/ bodyweight rows? Definitely not. You won’t find videos of these on DB’s website so they must not exist.
He didn’t even say that was what caused his injury (read: dips/btn military). It’s perfectly fine to go past 90 on most exercises, excluding btn presses.
I just give you the info, what you do with it is up to you. Now as for your rambling on about the average gym person doing bench most of the time and almost zero back work I agree with you in fact I never stated otherwise. My points were directed at elite athletes who do all the lifts as recommended by CF, myself and others. In you logical post you stated that you could do away with bench press and focus on CNS stress by doing other exercises and in that case go ahead; however, if you never work your chest muscles then you will be the exact opposite of those gym people with huge lats and no chest like a girl trying to touch her elbows together (note to self must ask girls at bar to do that LOL).
