Charlie, I know that in other threads you have mentioned that one of the reasons you built up the bench was to use it as a means of potentiation a couple days out from a meet, but do you feel that the bench acted as a general potentiation technique during training too in that the non-muscle specific stimulous aided in sprinting without causing the peripheral fatigue that a routine based only on the muscle groups most specific to sprinting(legs) would have?
Also, is the amount of time that an athlete can maintain the PAP due to how good the athlete is specifically at bench pressing or is it more related to the general ability of the athlete? What I mean by this is would a good sprinter who does not have a good bench press get a similar benefit out of using the bench press for this purpose as Ben did?
I think yes to both points. the lower bench number athlete would not get as great a stimulus, so for the stimulus to be adequate, it would have to be closer to the race or combined with some other upper body stimulus perhaps, preferably also a push, like military.