I for one welcome the new piracy arms race, every time someone tries to stop piracy, piracy gets easier and more efficient.

People still post to twitter?!

Matrix shit? Like being forced to be a drone in a monotonous VR world while their bodies are harvested for energy until they fail? Doesn’t really seem like an aspirational situation but I guess there must be a few Cyphers out there …

Sounds fair, I’m sure people have already said it, but in the off chance they haven’t, the Alan thrall and starting strength videos are great for helping get started. An experienced trainer is worth their weight in gold for getting it right though.

Yeah that’s right. I think my first max hang was around 45, so not much more. You should see improvements to your grip pretty quick. If you get to through the last round easy then increase time the next session, if it’s a struggle to get through the last round then maybe use the same time.

I gotta say, it seems strange that grip strength would hold back your bench. One cue I found that might help is thinking about trying to bend the bar throughout the lift. It helps further employ your lats in the lift (assuming you have already engaged your lats to pull your shoulder blades in and down as part of your setup).

You focus should just be gripping so whatever is most comfortable, I tend to use an pronated grip with a straight bar, but I’ll prefer a bar that lets me use a neutral grip if possible. You’ll want to engage your lats to pull your shoulder blades together and down when you hang to take the load off your shoulders, so whatever grip helps you do that the most.

My previous trainer had me do a protocol he called “Billy big boy grip strength”. I have not found it discussed anywhere else but it worked a treat. But definitely keeps wrists fixed.

He had me work out how long I could dead hang for and then at the end of every workout session he would have me dead hang for 1 quarter of my max hang time every minute on the minute for 8 minutes. He said I could do this after every session no stress. I would increase the time regularly. I stopped doing them when my grip strength caught up to my deadlift (the lift I was having grip troubles with).

The timing is probably not feasible if you dead hang for more than say 2 minutes, but I would suggest this is more a beginner protocol than an advanced protocol. If you can dead hang more than 2 minutes then I would be surprised your grip is holding back your bench. Maybe in that case work on your deadlift as one of the other posters suggested.