If you are strictly focused on strength gains you can do a powerlifting split. Progressive overload is the main idea with that.

Press has the perfect answer and I agree with him 100% but have u tried dumbbells they fell better and u can get really strong with them and my shoulders don’t hurt compared to the bench, sooner or later benching heavy u will get hurt. It is a unnatural movement for the joints and shoulders just my opinion, good luck and stay injury free make sure to listen to your body.

I will be honest with ya here, all the injuries that I have sustained from Bench have been whilst I have been using gear. When you are natural then you don't end up pushing weights that your body was never designed to lift. Although Steroids are great at repairing and gaining muscle on, they aren't as good at strengthening tendons as quickly or as well. Its the tendons that tend to go when you see injuries, like when guys tear the pec its always where the tendon joins it to the bone etc. Rotator cuffs also sustain a lot of stress due to much increased weight that you can handle on gear, at unnatural angles of stress, triceps again where they attach to the elbow can go. The main rule to follow I find is not to bench more than twice per week - 1 heavy session and the other medium weight and you can't really get too sore, where micro tears begin to form that eventually progress to large ruptures. All this bollocks online about training bench 5 times per week by Influencers who can lift fuck all needs sending to the recycle bin.

Like Irongame has mentioned, always warm up thoroughly when on and off gear. I start by doing general shoulder stretching, rotations, bent over pendulum swings etc. Then when you get on the bench begin with 8 reps with just the bar, then go a plate per side and then go up 1 plate or half a plate depending on how you need to structure it. Begin with 6 reps with 135 then progressively taper it down to 2 or 1 before your final max. Never do any of this stuff where you see guys doing a single rep with each weight increase because that is just asking for trouble - all of those guys who thought they were clever doing that shit ended up getting injured in a big way in the end.

In terms of likelihood of injury when using steroids, from what I have seen its really just luck of the draw pal as to whether you are going to tear a pec or not - it can be on a light weight doing reps of 10 or it can be on heavy singles and doubles, seen it happen on all levels. Rules I now live by after having a grade 1.5 left pec tear and a number of RTC minor tweaks but never any surgeries are NEVER go into a bench session when you are still sore in your chest, shoulders or shoulder joints, always make sure you are well hydrated by the time you come to train which generally means no lifting for at least the first 6 hours after you get up - the more fluid you get into you through the day the more hydrated the muscle and tendons become - tendon tears and ruptures always seem to happen when the lifter hasn't consumed enough fluid beforehand.

I like to make sure my piss looks good being a light yellow colour before I lift - never start lifting when it is still darkish or if you have only been to the toilet once so far. Try to stay away from having painkillers in you before you lift weights as this will numb any pain or niggles which may have normally stopped you attempting a big weight otherwise, as this can make tiny existing injuries much worse or possibly create tears. In numbing the area they also allow you to lift at full muscle force which is a bad idea, because normally the nervous system will cut in and limit you to stop you injuring yourself.

I understand that you don't want to look bloated and like a puffer fish, but in doing so and wanting to stay leaner then you are putting yourself MUCH more at risk of injury. When you use wet compounds like NPP and DBol that water log muscle and tendons, they effectively make heavy lifting and Maxes much more safer as they keep muscle and tendons more elastic and supple - keeping things drier means they are more brittle and not willing to stretch as much - which is when they can snap. In turn, when something has more intracellular water volume it can contract more tightly in turn generating more strength and better leverages, making you stronger. Sure you can run strength based cycles that will keep you leaner like Test, Masteron and Anavar but the risk is greater in my opinion to getting inured than say Test, NPP and DBol. Trenbolone is a great strength building steroid but the problem is that it constantly dehydrates you through out the night and day, so being hydrated whilst using it when lifting can be tricky and difficult to gauge, given it also darkens your urine naturally too.

If you are wanting to get up to a 365 bench, the simply increase your Test to 600mg per week (this is the minimum effective dose proven in various studies to gain good muscle mass and strength), add 400 NPP and 30mg of DBol per day and you should have no issues at all. You can run less if you like but it will take longer to build the muscle required to do it. EAA's are brilliant also to add to your protein shake regime and also add extra leucine to your shakes and EAA's to increase the protein synthesis levels greatly. Leucine is the most anabolic amino acid there is mate.

I could write a 100 more pages like this going on about bench press and increasing it, boring everyone to death in the process but those are the main points I can think of right now. Getting on Gear and seeing my bench fly up 12 years ago now was genuinely one of the happiest periods of my life, it felt unreal at the time and I finally understood how you see these guys lifting unreal weights that baffle natural lifters LOL

Just so you know that you aren't wasting your time reading what I've written above, my Max bench when I was natty was 325lbs at 145 bodyweight being 5'8 tall. Using gear after 4 years I got to 470lbs at 185 Bodyweight at about 37 years old - I was lighter back then as I used a lot of trenbolone which kinda killed my appetite but what I did manage to eat was converted at such a high rate into muscle that I got great strength off it.

That’s a strong bench at 170. Is Strength is your goal? I’m the last person you want advice from. I lifted heavy at your age and now all my joints are pretty fucked. Was on a rollercoaster of making progress than getting injured and going backwards and have to built back up etc. Only thing I can tell you is to do a thorough warm up of your shoulders/rotator cuffs before starting to press, don’t just start with lighter weight. Lookup good warm ups on YouTube.

If strength isn’t a priority and you’re in this to look good then drop the weight and up the reps. If strength is your goal then @press1 is your guy.