BOL Round Table

I remember that. Bet he wishes he could take that decision back!

If James Carpenter chose another school besides Bama, he would probably have been picked up in the 2nd or 3rd round just like Bobbie. Just being on Bama's team seems to elevate a draftee's status among some teams (e.g. Kareem Jackson, Carpenter, etc.).

I disagree. The vert is prob the best indicator of power. If you look at the law of repetitive motion then you will see that benching 225 for reps is a horrible idea. To be honest of you are going to rep out then I would rather you rep out on feet elevated push ups. You minimize injury risk by using a close chain movement.

A lot of people say lifting lighter weight for reps is safer but it isn't. If you have any flaw in your technique then it is only multiplied by the number of reps you do. My master's thesis was actually looking at upper body injuries in nfl football players following their last game of college and through their rookie year and their chance of having an upper body related injury is significantly higher than 5 year veteran.
Another thing I don't understand is that these guys have lifted for power and strength their entire careers and then you test them on muscle endurance. Just blows my mind. If I had my ideal exercise to test for upper body strength in nfl players it would be the feet elevated push ups with 125 lbs of chains on a persons back. Here is my reasoning. It's a close chain movement and minimizes injury risk, so safer to rep out. Secondly, it is more of a whole body workout than the bpress. Thirdly, ft elevated pushups is worth approximately 76% of the weight being lifted. Let's say you have at 315lb ol and you put a 125 lbs worth of chain on his back. He would be pushing about 335 lbs a number he is more likely dealing with during a game.

Pretty sad that a guy his size only put up 22. There's high schoolers stronger than that

I did read correctly I just disagreed with every thing you said. 225 for reps is muscle endurance exercise not a strength or power exercise. 225 is so far away from a lot of these these player's maxes that it probably has very little correlation with their actual max. There is no doubt that a guy who throws up 225 40+ times is strong, but guys who train for this will lose some of their max strength. I never said anything about cleans.
Benching for reps is not safer. If that was the case then long distance runners would have healthier legs than sprinters. Its the same reason people who work assembly lines doing a lot bending to one side end up usually having back pain. If you get injured lifting heavy then it means you aren't doing it correctly and you need to reassess your form.

The only thing that is remotely questionable about what I said was that repping below your max is safer than doing a one rep max. We both agree that BP isn't the best measure of explosive football power. I suggested that cleans were one of the best methods to gauge that.

I am not a S&C expert, but I know more than the average joe and likely less than you (notice I am deferring to you as a whole). You are however very mistaken if you think that you cannot get a good gauge of an NFL player's 1RM in BP based on their reps at 225. The article that I attached (well the citation of it). I had to order it via my library to get a full copy, but I am assuming you can do the same if you want the full text. But they looked at several model to predict a player's 1RM from the NFL 225 test. The best models before this study had an R-square of 0.87 (87% of variability in the response explained by the model) and by adding arm length and upper arm circumference, they upped their model to an R-square of 0.90. For real world data (not a book problem with cookie cutter data), that is an insanely high value and very much indicative of a STRONG relationship of the 225 reps and a players 1RM. Now the the remaining 10% that cannot be explained by the model (reps and arm measurements were the only predictor variables in the model) is likely due to the variation of fast/slow twitch fibers in the individuals who had the same number of reps (then again, this is caught somewhat by the measurements).

Also, your analogy about the marathon (reps) to the sprinter (max) is poor logic. The marathon runner runs long distances all the time (reps out every day or near it) and that is not like a single test. Repping out high reps to failure every day would be detrimental to any athlete, but for a single test, I think they are fine.

Either way, I'd venture that the NFL people that decide on how to test the players have more knowledge than you, me and probably everyone else on this board combined. The NFL is a Billion dollar industry and I'd bet a ton of money that they have S&C and stats weenies all over the subject trying to find the best blend of testing and safety. It actually turns into a stochastic optimization problem to get the optimal test (which is not necessarily the best test for estimating functional football power). As far as optimization/regression go, I'd venture that I know far more than the average joe.

I need BBD conformation! J/k BBD. Thanks for your input to the board

These guys have supposedly had great sc coaches and shouldn't get injured on bp. Yeah, I think 1 out of 300 players is high. I have 300+ athletes lift past year for a full year and no upper body injuries during or as a result of bench.
Maybe amateur power lifters, but professional powerlifters probably don't push past what they cant do and minimize risk of injury.
If I had my ideal conditions I would prob take 3 rep max on bench or dumbbell bench as best indicator.

Fair enough, wonder what the NFL's criterion is/was for getting the tests that they do use.

Props to both 8:16a.m. and menichols74. Varying opinions but both backed with sound, objective data/research or solid plausible subjective perspective. Very Good Stuff.

I do like the elevated, weighted push ups that 8:16a.m describes. This is actually more in line with my chest training nowadays as I haven't done a heavy barbell chest workout in almost 10 years. Of course I'm lifting more for health than athletic performance but I do think the push-up as described by 8:16a.m. is a much better test of overall upper body strength with the added element of testing core strength which I think is the true source of power for athletes. I'd probably throw in a deadlift test as well as this, in my opinion, is the single best lift to test overall body strength. Seen guys that could bench 450-500 but couldn't deadlift 500. Weak back/core.

Too late on a Saturday night for me to get technical but I enjoyed the thread.