I Heart Boards

New favorite exercise: board press.

For a good time, pile plates onto the bar. Strap a piece of plywood to your chest. Lower the bar to the board, pause, lift back up, and repeat. Add an additional piece of plywood, additional weight, and do it again. Add board #3 and more weight, and repeat.

It's a sight to behold, I tell ya. I'll try to film a demo so you can see for yourself.

Boards help you push through sticking points, which I've addressed before. Usually I work sticking points on a smith machine that holds the bar for you. You can let the bar land at a desired height above your chest before you push it back up again from a dead stop.

It's the dead stop part that's the killer. Momentum is everything. At the smith machine, you wait, then just attack the bar--which is on a fixed path--with everything you've got.

That's fun. But boards are fun in a different way.

With boards, there's still the dead stop and start. But when you stop, you're balancing the bar on the boards. At some point you realize, Hey, there's something really heavy on my chest, and I can't actually rest rest. I have to stop completely, but I can't relax at all or I'll be smooshed.

Another thing that happens is that you forget you're only going down to meet the board and not your chest, so you--okay, I--misjudge and crash into yourself. Which results in some yelling and bruising.

Like I said: good time had by all.

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