Mark,

I thought the reason Louie had sets of 3 reps was so that all 3 could be done in the time it takes to do one maximal rep.

Time your 1RM and let me know what the time is.

Don't all the reps have to be done really fast, or is a fast press the point of speed work, and the speed of lowering the bar irrelevant?

The lowering phase is not irrelevant - you will come up faster (sometimes but there is a point of diminishing returns) when you lower faster...BUT this is also a great way to screw up your shoulders, pecs and elbows. The funny thing about the videos is that they are mearly a snapshot of a workout, not what is done every workout. Doing a ballistic bench week after week is going to kill you. Believe me.

In the Westside videos I see a lot of the guys dropping the bar, barely touching, and pressing like hell, but I like your idea of slower lowering and pausing better.

I agree and I think that for most people (99% of our readers) this is probably the case. I still like doing ballistic bench pressing every once in awhile and recognize that it can be good.

--------------------------------------

Important note:

I have seen people (and I have seen many, many people) perform speed work...holy shit! It's like they are shitting all over themselves and having a seizure, all in the name of "speed". I can honestly say that I have seen VERY FEW people that don't look like they are humping a greased watermelon when doing speed bench presses. That is why I tell people to slow that bar down on the eccentric. Because not only will they see the difference in the speed (from slow to fast; this is an important coaching tool and very effective) but now they can actually perform the exercise correctly.

Trust me - if you can get people to understand how to be slow - you can get them to be fast. READ THAT AGAIN!!!

That, my friends, is about as important of a tool that you will ever read and something I've only heard 1 person say in this field.

You can guess who taught me that one,
Jim Wendler