In the upcoming Military Bench for Reps meet, is the weight we lift our Bodyweight or some other weight? 

thanks,
Jay

Jay, a very good question. This is obviously something that will also need to be added to the rules if this is made a permanent affair; the upcoming military bench meet on August 14-16th is our first go at this.

The weight will be your own bodyweight at the time of the weigh-in rounded up to the nearest 2.5 kilograms or 5 pounds. For women, it is two-thirds of their bodyweight with the same rounding (divide the weigh-in weight by three and multiplied by two + round).

For example, if you weigh in at 211 pounds, your bar weight would be 215 pounds.

It should be noted that this rounding method gives a minor advantage to those using pound plates as 2.5 kilograms is 5.5 pounds. This should not be a biggie and is in any case not something we can do anything about unless we start demanding the use of non-standard plate weights.

On a related account, this is one event which does not work well with relative strength scoring. As relative strength is not linear, the heavier you get the more difficult it will be to get an impressive rep count. The relative strength formulas we use take this into account for max lifts in a fair way, but with fixed weights it does not work (unless we start to count factors of the total rep count or something similar). So to judge this fairly, the only way to go is by weight class.

Also, unlike our other bench press events, including the max military bench, you do not need to pause the bar on the chest or at lockout. However, any reps that are clearly bounced off the chest or not fully locked out will not be counted.

Did this answer your question?

Clear.  thank you for the reply.

Seems fair enough. Time to get pressing.

J