I no longer use 20 lb. dumbbells for my main body workouts.

I now use my 20 lb. dumbbells as weights to enhance my ab workouts.

I have acquired a new everlast workout bench with the only drawback is the barbell rack being kind of narrow, but it is still ok for correct bench pressing as my arms can extend just beyond shoulders width apart when grasping the barbell from underneath.

I also received a 15 lb. 6 foot barbell and 2 dumbbell bars which are 3lbs. each.

I now use my 2 dumbbell bars with 30 lbs. of weight on each and I started my 1st week (which was last week) bench pressing 50 lbs. It was an awesome workout and I felt mighty sore on the days after.

I started my new week (this week) and the 50 lb bench press became extraordinarily light for some reason, so using my decision and with some encouragement from a friend who already has his weight training results I went to a 70 lb bench press. It destroyed me quite well, but I was able to press it correctly and still pull off around 5-6 reps per set, although at the 4th and 5th set it dropped down to 4 reps before I felt sore and weak in the arms, so I stopped.

I proceeded to do various compound workouts with my 30 lb dumbbells like dumbbell rows etc. ending it off with some isolated workouts such as shrugs for the traps, curls for the biceps and hammer curls for the forearms.

The workout lasted around 56-59 minutes.

My friend said going from a meager 20 lb dumbbell in each arm to finally bench pressing 100 lbs. (I never bench pressed in my life until now, and I started doing pushups about 1-2 months ago) in the future using the entirety of my scaleable weights will gain me big results.

The bad part about my physique at the moment, is an undeveloped droopy chest. I thought doing pushups meant bench pressing half your body weight, this is not the case. After bench pressing 50 lbs. it felt like my pushups was around 30 lbs. or so.

Will I see results mainly in the chest with me finally doing bench presses now?

ya results always take a while tho

Please keep in mind, feeling sore for several days, means you over did it. soreness is NOT an indication of a good workout...its an indication of excessive muscle damage caused by too much volume in a given workout.

at the most, you should feel stiff, a little achey, but not painfully sore!

Why did you go from 50 to 70 pounds in one jump? Try 55 for a week or 2, then 60, etc. Making big jumps is a sure fire way to eventually injure connective tissue or joints. Take your time. Remember, the goal is to be strong and healthy for life!

Thanks for the tips.

For some reason I read in some topics here that soreness is a sign of a good workout.

Anyway, it is better to hear that I don't need to feel sore to know I had a good workout. Honestly, when I thought I had to feel sore to have a good workout, it kind of pushed me to do the 50 - 70 lb. jump.

Anyway, should I stick to the 70 or drop back down to 55?

Drop back to 55 until you get used to it. and then add some weight. You can add 2.5-5 pounds is what I do.

well, starting off when you haven't been lifting at all...you're bound to get sore unless you're really careful and only do one set per body part the first week or two, and slowly ramp up to your program's desired sets over a few weeks.

and when you are brand new, you shouldn't necessarily lift the heaviest you can lift right away either. your muscle may be able to do it but your joints and ligaments may not quite be up to the challenge. but a few weeks of lifting will strengthen them up as well.

It's not that I never lifted before, it's just I went from using two 20 lb. dumbbells for a couple months to a full fledged workout routine with much heavier weights. I was really looking forward to finally going beyond 20 lb. dumbbells and I guess I got overconfident.

Advice taken into account, I have dropped back down to a 55lb. bench press, I may stick to 55 for the next week or bump it up to 60.

I will take it slow 1 week at a time.

Thanks again.