Does Pin press give any indication of actual max

[puckett26]

To make a long story short about 4 months back i was doing pin presses to help with my lockout on the bench. Best I could do was 405x1. I kind of gravitated away from the over the last 4 months but my training partner wanted to do something the other day instead of our normal flat bench day. So we did heavy pin presses, I ended up working up to 500x3 and 505x1 on the last set. I definately see improvement but is this an real indication that my bench has gone up? Or that maybe my max is anywhere near say with in 100lbs of that total?

 

[porky little keg]

It depends on your weaknesses. I lift equipped so I work the shit out of my triceps and do way less direct chest work. Because of that my raw bench is low-mid 500's, but I pin press ( to around a 3-board height) over 600 ( and have benched mid-7's in contest, low 8's in the gym geared)

If you lift raw I doubt that you are as unbalanced, but you might be.... In the end there's no formula or indicator lift to judge your development exactly ( unless you are Louis Simmons and you can tell your athletes progress by this). The only way to find out your 1rm is to actually lift as heavy a weight as you can.

 

[hawkeye]

I agree with PLK, I use pin presses but often set it on it's lowest bar(almost touching my chest and usually lie on the ground inside the squat rack). So essentially it's like a floor press...or modified version of one. If you went higher, it would definitely be more geared towards your lockout. As for gauging your max, honestly the only way I personally like to gauge my max is by actually getting under the bar and doing it. Even doing reps, to me, isn't always the best way to gauge it.