This is Mark Bell’s 5 week Sling Shot bench press program, also known as the “Stronger in 30 Days” program. It’s a relatively straightforward bench-only program that gradually decreases volume while increasing intensity before attempting a new PR on week 5. Pretty classic linear periodization leading into a peak.
What makes this program fairly unique is that it programs for the Sling Shot, a piece of bench press training equipment that allows the lifter to lift more weight than usual. This provides an example of how to program the Sling Shot bench press and incorporate it into your strength training.
Related: Which Sling Shot is Right for You?
5 Week Sling Shot Bench Press Program Spreadsheet
Based on this PDF.
Sling Shot Bench Press Program Overview
As I mentioned earlier, the program follows a pretty standard linear periodization for the raw bench press. Sling Shot work is incorporated as heavy triples or heavy singles after the raw bench press work.
After the main bench press work, three superset clusters are done.
- Superset A
- 4 sets of 10 reps
- Incline Dumbbell Press
- Barbell Bent Over Row
- 4 sets of 10 reps
- Superset B
- 4 sets of 10 reps
- Dumbbell Tricep Extensions
- Lat Pulldowns
- 4 sets of 10 reps
- Superset C
- 4 sets of 25 reps
- Pushups in the Sling Shot
- Face Pulls
- 4 sets of 25 reps
90 seconds of rest should be used after each superset (so 11 rest periods in total). All three supersets are done each week except for week 4, when only Superset A is done to allow for greater recovery prior to attempting a PR in week 5.
I classified this bench press program as advanced because it is so low frequency.
The highest volume week is week 3:
- 6 sets of 4 reps of bench press
- 4 sets of 3 reps of sling shot bench press
- 4 sets of 10 incline dumbbell press
This is 36 barbell reps and 40 dumbbell reps each week or 10 barbell sets and 4 dumbbell sets. I’m not sure how to count the push ups, so we can be generous and add them as 4 sets. This adds up to 18 sets of bench press or bench press adjacent work each week.
Don’t get me wrong: this is a ton of work for a single workout, but I’m a little skeptical if this is enough weekly volume.
Points of comparison:
- Greg Nuckols 3x Intermediate Medium Volume Bench Press Program has 18 sets of pure barbell bench press work during its highest volume points.
- nSuns 4 Day LP has 26 sets of bench press work (including the 8 sets of close grip bench press, which has significantly more bench press carryover than push ups).
I am not implying this is a bad program. I have not tried it. I just suspect that you probably need a pretty high bench press (315+) to need a full week to recover from one (very) high volume bench session.
