Bench shirts and honest bench pressing

Bench shirts are one of those topics in powerlifting that quickly divide people into two camps. To some, they are equipment that protects the shoulders; to others, they are an aid that makes bench press numbers too high and too easy to achieve.

This article takes Ted Arcidi’s hardline view as its starting point: how much of the weight on the bar is lifted by real strength, and how much by the shirt? It is a question that honestly still feels fresh, even if the original text dates from a time when records were discussed in a very different tone.

Why were bench shirts developed in the first place?

Bench shirts were not originally intended to inflate records artificially. The idea was simpler: to keep the shoulder warm and help athletes train even when they had shoulder pain or an old shoulder injury was playing up.

Arcidi recalls that the first prototype, which appeared in the mid-eighties, was 50% polyester and 50% cotton. It was single-ply. More like a light sweater than today’s laminated armor with its 4 or 5 layers, which sometimes takes several people to help you put on.

He wore one of these polyester-blend shirts at Budweiser’s “World Record Breaker” in Honolulu when he officially benched 320 kg. The date was March 3, 1985. By his own account, the shirt’s only purpose was to keep his shoulders warm. There was no bruising, no bleeding, and no forcing his arms into the shirt.

And here is the sore point. Arcidi says outright that he regrets wearing that shirt, because he believes his 320 kg lift could have stood as the world record for a bench press without a shirt for a very long time. It went up easily.

Bench shirts and the gray area of records

In Arcidi’s description, today’s equipped bench presser looks stiff and locked in place: shoulders forward, arms pushed out in front, movement restricted. This is no longer just a warm piece of clothing. It is an aid that helps get the bar off the chest and allows lifters to use weights they could not move without the shirt.

The translator gave a simple example in the article at the time: the bench press record without a shirt was listed as 325 kg, held by Scott Mendelson, while videos circulating online showed him attempting to bench 450 kg and 460 kg in a shirt. The shirted bench press record was given as 470 kg. The gap is too large to say, “the shirt adds nothing.”

So what actually happens? A shirt does not make a weak person strong, but it changes the nature of the lift. It helps particularly at the bottom, when the bar starts moving off the chest. That is exactly where many bench pressers struggle most.

For Arcidi, another problem was that a very big shirted bench press did not always line up with the lifter’s performance on assistance exercises. He mentions Graig Tokarski: a lifter who benched 700 pounds (318 kg) but used only 102 kg for seated behind-the-neck presses and the “nosebreaker” triceps exercise. Arcidi says he was already using those weights in college, when he weighed 100 kg and could not even dream of benching 700 pounds.

How do you assess real strength?

Arcidi compares his bench press without a shirt with his assistance lifts. By 1985, the 700-pound (318 kg) barrier had already been broken. He was doing seated behind-the-neck presses with 180 kg for 3 reps and “nosebreakers” with 170 kg for 5 or 6 reps.

Later, after one bench press program, he benched 272 kg without a shirt. At the same time, he was doing strict triples with 155 kg on the seated behind-the-neck press. In his view, these numbers give a better picture of actual upper-body strength than a single attempt in a shirt.

One of his own high points came in November 1983 in Maryland, where he benched 295 kg at a body weight of 125 kg. He did it without any bench shirt. At the time, John Buckley used the Schwartz formula to rank the best bench pressers across 11 weight classes, a total of 114 men. Arcidi’s coefficient was 398.8, placing him very high in the pound-for-pound rankings.

For comparison, he mentions Ken Lain, who benched 300 kg on his third attempt in 1988, but with a shirt. Arcidi thinks Ken Lain would barely have managed 280 kg without it. That is his assessment, of course, rather than a laboratory measurement, but the point is clear.

In 1992, while recovering from elbow surgery, Arcidi watched the sport from the sidelines. It was then that he began to feel increasingly strongly that many bench press records were no longer solely a reflection of an athlete’s strength. He even floated the idea that bench shirts might one day come with miniature hydraulics. A pointed joke, but not entirely without foundation.

Bench shirts in training: what should you keep in mind?

The simple truth is that equipped and unequipped bench pressing develop your body slightly differently. Without a shirt, you have to handle the bottom portion of the lift yourself. That demands stronger chest muscles, shoulders, triceps and tendons, along with better control.

Arcidi claims that lifters who bench without a shirt have muscles and tendons that differ in quality, density and thickness. To him, that meant greater natural strength. A shirt can do some of the work, particularly at the point where technique and the body otherwise need to work together most precisely.

That does not mean every shirted bench presser is a “cheat.” Equipped lifting is a skill in its own right in powerlifting. Using a shirt also takes technique, timing and courage. But when shirted and unshirted numbers are judged by the same yardstick, the picture becomes muddled.

The translator’s example of squatting with knee wraps is a good one. If he can do 6 squats with 210 kg using knee wraps but cannot do the same without them, it cannot count as the same unassisted record. The same logic applies to bench pressing with a bench shirt.

If your goal is a stronger upper body, your training should include bench pressing without a bench shirt, controlled repetitions and assistance exercises. According to Arcidi, the bench press is the best upper-body exercise of all. It loses its purpose when the bar is no longer being lifted by a person relying on their own strength, but by a person plus a suit of armor.

The source of the original article was Bench shirts Ted Arcidi.

FAQ: bench shirts and bench pressing

Do bench shirts automatically make a lifter stronger?

Not automatically, but they help during a particular phase of the movement. A good bench presser needs to know how to use the shirt, but a weight lifted with a bench shirt is not the same as a weight lifted without one.

Is bench pressing without a bench shirt a fairer comparison?

If the goal is to compare pure upper-body strength, then yes. Bench pressing without a bench shirt gives a better picture of what your chest, shoulders, triceps, tendons and technique can do without mechanical assistance.

Can a bench shirt be used to prevent injury?

The original idea was indeed to support the shoulder and keep it warm. The problem arises when protective equipment becomes the main means of setting bigger records.

Translated by: Janar Rückenberg

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