Bench press: how to do it and how much you should lift

Muscles the bench press works

The bench press works 3 muscles hardest: the chest (pectoralis major), the triceps and the front of the shoulders (anterior deltoids). A review of 14 muscle activity studies found the chest and triceps about equally active, and both more active than the front of the shoulder.

Those studies measure electrical activity with sensors on the skin (EMG). That shows which muscles fire, not how much each one will grow. So read "this grip works more chest" claims with care: no study has compared chest growth between grip widths.

How to bench press

1. Set the safety arms of the rack just below your chest at the bottom of a rep, so a missed rep lands on them and not on you.
2. Lie down with your eyes just below the bar. The bar then clears the hooks when you lower it and when you rack it.
3. Grip the bar a little wider than your shoulders, thumbs wrapped around it. Set it low in your palm, over your forearm.
4. Pull your shoulder blades back and down, as if into your back pockets. Plant your feet flat on the floor, knees bent at about a right angle.
5. Take a big breath, unrack the bar and hold it over your shoulders with straight arms.
6. Lower the bar under control until it touches your chest, between the middle and the bottom of your breastbone. Keep your forearms close to vertical under it.
7. Press up and slightly back towards the rack, so the bar finishes over your shoulders. Breathe out at the top, or after a few reps on a light set.

Keep your head, shoulders and backside on the bench the whole time. Under IPF powerlifting rules, lifting any of them fails the rep.

Where the advice differs

Most bench press technique is coaching habit, not tested in studies. Where coaches disagree, the right answer depends on your build and your goal.

Common mistakes and how to fix them

Sets, reps and rest for the bench press

There is no single right number. The table is a starting point built on the research, not a rule any one study tested.

What the studies show:

• Heavy weights build more strength. Muscle grows about as well with light or heavy weights, if the sets go close to failure.
• More weekly sets bring more muscle, up to a point. Strength gains level off sooner.
• Benching 2 times a week helps you fit in more sets. With the same weekly sets, training a muscle more often does not add size.
• You do not need to reach failure. On the bench, failure without a spotter or safety arms is a safety problem, not only a tiring one.
• Trained lifters can judge how many reps they have left on the bench to within about one rep. That is what RPE measures. Beginners judge it less well.

For longer answers, read how many sets and reps build muscle and how long to rest between sets.

Warm-up sets before a heavy bench

Warm up with the bar, then climb towards your working weight in a few short sets. Type your working set below, and the calculator gives you the warm-up sets and the plates for each side.

The calculator uses a common ramp: the empty bar for 10, then about 40% for 5, 60% for 3 and 80% for 2. Before sets of 5 or fewer reps, or a working weight of 100 kg (225 lb) or more, it adds 90% for 1. Before sets of 8 or more reps, it keeps only the 40% and 80% sets. It rounds each weight down to what your plates can make, and skips a set that would sit within 5 kg (10 lb) of the one before.

Only one part of that ramp has studies behind it. Two studies found that a warm-up set at about 80% of the working weight helped the bench sets that followed, more than lighter warm-ups did. Another found that the kind of warm-up made no difference. The other steps are habit, and no study shows that warm-up sets prevent injury.

How much should you bench for your weight?

The table shows where each level starts, as a one-rep max (1RM), for ages 18 to 29. 1RM is the most weight you can lift once. These are Trackist's own strength standards, the same ones the strength calculator and the app use.

One thing to know before you read it: Trackist scores the bench press in one group with every pushing lift, so the overhead press, the incline bench and dips meet the same lines. The standards were written from published coaching tables, rounded, and they describe people who train, not everyone.

After 29, the lines drop: by 5% in your 30s, 12% in your 40s, 20% in your 50s and 30% from 60. The strength calculator adjusts for your exact age and scores all 4 main lifts.

Why other tables give different numbers:

• Strength Level builds its table from lifts its users log. Its intermediate man benches 1.25 times body weight. Ours starts intermediate at 1 times.
• A study of 809,986 powerlifting meet entries found that the strongest 10% of men aged 18 to 35 bench 1.95 times body weight, and women 1.35 times. Meet lifters are stronger than people at a typical gym.
• Each table uses a different group of people and different cut-offs, so a level in one does not match a level in another.

Under 18? The table is for adults, and it sets no target for teenagers. For a young lifter, clean reps and slow, steady progress matter more than any number on it.

Find your bench press max

You do not need to test a true one-rep max to know it. Type a set you did, and the calculator estimates your max with 7 formulas. Sets of 10 reps or fewer give the closest estimate. For more detail, open the 1RM calculator.

Benching safely without a spotter

People have died after failing a rep alone, pinned by the bar across the neck or chest. These deaths are rare, and they follow one pattern: no spotter, no safety arms, a missed rep.

• Bench in a rack with safety arms. Set them just below your chest at the bottom of a rep, with your arch.
• Check the height before you load the bar. In one documented death, the safety arms were set too low to catch the bar above the lifter.
• With no rack, leave the collars off, so you can tilt the bar and let the plates slide off. The empty side jumps up fast, so this is a last resort.
• On a lighter weight, you can lower the bar to your chest, roll it down to your hips and sit up. Near your max, it can hurt.
• Stop a rep or 2 short of failure when you train alone.

When the bench press hurts

Pain is a reason to change something, not to push through. Diagnosis and treatment belong to a physiotherapist or a doctor.

• Shoulder: bring your grip in, keep your shoulder blades back and down, and cut your bench sets by a third to a half for a few weeks. A grip much wider than your shoulders loads the shoulder more.
• Elbow or wrist: set the bar low in your palm over your forearm, and check that your forearms stay close to vertical at the bottom.
• A sudden sharp pain in the chest or armpit during a heavy rep needs a doctor soon. Most chest tendon tears in lifters happen on the bench press, near the bottom of a heavy rep, and surgical repair within about 8 weeks gave better results than later repair.

For lasting pain, read what to do when a lift hurts.

Bench press variations and alternatives

In Trackist's exercise library, the bench press sits in one group with 8 other pushing movements: the dumbbell bench press, the machine chest press, the Smith machine bench press, push-ups, incline push-ups, chest dips, ring dips and the decline bench press. The app's bench press page lists them as similar movements. When you swap the bench for one session or for the rest of your plan, the picker puts that group first, then other chest exercises, starting with those your equipment and joints allow.

How Trackist runs your bench press

Trackist is an AI personal trainer for the gym. It writes your plan, and the bench press gets this from the app:

• From your second session of the bench press, Trackist suggests what to try from the last time you logged it. When every set at your top weight reached the top of the rep range, it adds 2.5 kg (5 lb). Inside the range, it keeps the weight and asks for more reps. There is no suggestion in a deload week.
• When you fall short of the reps, it keeps the weight, takes about 5% off or leaves the call to you, depending on how far short you fell and how hard the sets felt.
• From your second session, it logs a personal record when you beat your heaviest weight, your most reps at a weight or your best estimated max.
• The exercise page shows 4 form cues and the muscles worked, and from your second session a chart of your estimated one-rep max.
• When your shoulder or elbow hurts on the bench, you report it, rate it from 1 to 5, and Trackist swaps the bench for an exercise that spares the joint, usually one that trains the same muscle. Your profile remembers it, so later plans leave that kind of movement out.
• Your bench counts towards your Strength Score in the pushing group, with the same standards as the table above, adjusted for your age.