When Chris Bumstead is hungry, he eats. The five-time Classic Physique Olympia champion has less than two months to perfect his craft and take to the stage at the 2024 Olympia, which runs Oct. 10-13 in Las Vegas, NV.
Bumstead smashed a set of 150-pound incline dumbbell bench presses during a recent workout with his personal coach, Hany Rambod, as the calendar inches toward the biggest night in bodybuilding.
Chris Bumstead 150LB Incline Dumbbell Bench Press
Bumstead posted his top set on Aug. 20, 2024, on social media. Let’s look at the set and see what we can learn from it — once we pick our jaws off the floor.
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We count 11 repetitions with 150 pounds on the incline dumbbell bench press. That’s one spectacular lift for a bodybuilding chest workout, particularly while Bumstead wades deeper into an aggressive calorie deficit. Here’s what you can take away from this set:
Calorie deficits do not impair your ability to lift heavy or increase strength. At least, not until you are extremely deep into a cut like Bumstead will be in the final 4-6 weeks of his Olympia prep. In fact, you should make more of an effort to lift heavy when you’re cutting.
- Studies show that calorie deficits can impact muscle but shouldn’t affect maximal strength nearly as much, if at all (1).
- Lifting heavy can help preserve muscle better than lower-intensity training. (2)
- According to some literature, verbal encouragement can positively influence maximal strength and endurance (3), and if you’re lifting ultra-heavy for a high-rep set as Bumstead did, you’ll need both.
- Rambod cued Bumstead to slow down his eccentric on the final rep. Stacking more time under tension while the muscle stretches is fantastic for hypertrophy. (4)
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Rep ranges do not matter for hypertrophy; proximity to failure does. Eleven is a peculiar number of reps to see in a workout. Bumstead likely didn’t have that number in mind when he started. He may have wanted 10 or 12, but regardless, effort matters much more than an arbitrary number. Your muscles can’t count.
- Contemporary data shows you can build muscle across a wide range of reps, generally between 5 and 30, as long as you work in reasonable proximity to failure. (5)
Big lifts like Bumstead’s 150-pound incline dumbbell bench press are awe-inspiring, but that doesn’t preclude them from being educational. You can learn a lot by watching the pros closely — with less than two months until the “O,” we bet that Bumstead will keep putting on clinics as he approaches his peak.
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References
- Murphy C, Koehler K. Energy deficiency impairs resistance training gains in lean mass but not strength: A meta-analysis and meta-regression. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2022 Jan;32(1):125-137. doi: 10.1111/sms.14075. Epub 2021 Oct 13. PMID: 34623696.
- Wyckelsma VL, Levinger I, McKenna MJ, Formosa LE, Ryan MT, Petersen AC, Anderson MJ, Murphy RM. Preservation of skeletal muscle mitochondrial content in older adults: relationship between mitochondria, fibre type and high-intensity exercise training. J Physiol. 2017 Jun 1;595(11):3345-3359. doi: 10.1113/JP273950. Epub 2017 Apr 23. PMID: 28251664; PMCID: PMC5451733.
- Engel FA, Faude O, Kölling S, Kellmann M, Donath L. Verbal Encouragement and Between-Day Reliability During High-Intensity Functional Strength and Endurance Performance Testing. Front Physiol. 2019 Apr 25;10:460. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2019.00460. PMID: 31073290; PMCID: PMC6497006.
- Pedrosa GF, Lima FV, Schoenfeld BJ, Lacerda LT, Simões MG, Pereira MR, Diniz RCR, Chagas MH. Partial range of motion training elicits favorable improvements in muscular adaptations when carried out at long muscle lengths. Eur J Sport Sci. 2022 Aug;22(8):1250-1260. doi: 10.1080/17461391.2021.1927199. Epub 2021 May 23. PMID: 33977835.
- Schoenfeld BJ, Grgic J, Van Every DW, Plotkin DL. Loading Recommendations for Muscle Strength, Hypertrophy, and Local Endurance: A Re-Examination of the Repetition Continuum. Sports (Basel). 2021 Feb 22;9(2):32. doi: 10.3390/sports9020032. PMID: 33671664; PMCID: PMC7927075.
Featured Image: @cbum / Instagram
