I'll be honest, i dont know what is optimal for that, but personally I would go till lock out. You might as well be working through whatever range of motion is available to you.

I would go to lockout myself to get the benefit of as much range of motion as possible. :)

^^ we seem to be on the same wavelength alot widdoes ... great minds think alike :banana:

well i might as well be doing normal bench then because pin press for what id be using it for is only 1/2 inch less range of motion then then a normal bench press, right?

Not really, think of it this way, if your benching, your starting from the up position, so your first concentrating on not dropping the bar on your chest, then there is the reversal of strength from deceleration of the bar into the push.

When you do Pin Presses, your only focus is pushing from the bottom. there is no deceleration, no reversal, its just straight push. This allows you to focus on that specific part of the bench, and gradually get better at it, until you have the functional strength to put it all together on the flat bench.

^^^Exactly. During a regular bench press you store up what you could call elastic energy on the way down. Take that out and it focuses more on building up stength at that portion of the lift. Part of the problem is the shorter your arms are the less elastic energy you get so sticking at the bottom is a problem with that...this is a way of compensating.

I don't necessarily know that you have short arms but if you do then this will tend to be the weak portion for you.

And I agree also you may as well carry it through the full range of motion. Another good thing to do is to have a spotter to help lower the bar back down to the pins after each rep. This way you're not giving up any energy to the negative portion and can concentrate all your work in getting it off the chest.

ill get on it tommorow if my triceps are up to it after that 12x5 i did yesterday on bench idk what kind of shape they'll be in..

It just occured to me from your journal that your lat work needs improvement too. You need to do more pullups instead of lat pulldowns and you need to use heavier rows. During the first few inches of the bench press the most active muscles are the delts and lats.

When you get on the Rippetoe, if that is still your plan, you'll probably see improvement on the bench without any special work.

can do, all the more reason to start that rippetoes program over whatever coach wants us to do.

That was exactly my thinking.