Frugal Finance: Bench Press Monkeys & YouTube Trolls

If you want to find some fantastic and impressive bench press videos, look no further than YouTube. If you want to find some extremely jealous, critical, and pathetic commentators (also known as trolls), you also need not look further than YouTube. I've posted a few bench press videos of myself and my training partner lifting close to our personal bests over the past year or so. We lift pretty heavy weight and use pretty solid form, especially compared with some of the goons that you see on YouTube that use horrendous form or are wrapped up from head to toe (which is not "raw" powerlifting and can add up to 40% more weight to your lifts). While I am proud of the weight we've both lifted, I have never made any claim that I am the biggest and baddest bench press beast in all the land. In fact, I think barbell bench is one of the least beneficial exercises in my workout program these days.

But judging from the comments you can see on my videos, and pretty much any other bench press video out there, people like to tout their bench press achievements (real or fake) as their life's biggest accomplishment. "Whadda ya Bench?" is the big question in and out of the gym even these days. It's not worth giving these n00bs and their comments a second thought, but I do find them pretty humorous and sometimes downright sad. I always ask the critics to show me their videos of their incredible bench press accomplishments that they brag about so openly, but they never manage to materialize! Very strange...