>>29009625
>
Been lifting for some 20 years. Used to teach exercise science.
Squats and bench are perfectly safe if you take safety precautions. It's just like anything else in life. We get used to driving, so we stop being careful and stop paying attention to the road, and an accident happens. People get careless in the gym and stop taking precautions.
Always warm up. Never use a thumbless grip, or "suicide grip" for your benching. Personally I stopped doing bench presses with a barbell long ago. I do dumbbell presses now, which do, in fact, hit the stabilizers better anyway, and if you're in trouble you can bail on the lift pretty easy. Now if I really wanted to do bench presses, I'd set 2 OTHER benches out to the side, and adjust them, so when the bar is at the lowest point, the weights will rest on those benches, and I can crawl out from under. Very simple precaution but no one does it. You can get inventive and find other ways to create a safety catch if dragging two other benches over is too much hassle.
Squats, same story. Always warm up. Do not squat unless you have a safety bar at the bottom so you can bail on the lift if you've reached failure. Just common sense.
One Rep Max attempts should be done rarely. Doing them once a month is about as frequent as I'd go. I don't even do mine more than once every 2 months. If you want strength, spend time with your 5 rep max. You'll want between 25 and 40 lifts per workout. The key is spending time lifting heavy weights, and your body "learns" to lift heavier, and that's where strength comes from.
And don't wear a belt (unless it's a one rep max attempt.) The belt takes away from your stabilizers (the transverse abdominis, it's a real thing despite the other annon's objections.)
Anyway that's some advice.
