The bench press, star of chest day, has long stood as the de facto measure for a lifter’s strength. There are, of course, more holistic ways to measure physical strength—and if your goal is simply to build muscle, you might not need chest presses at all. But if years of Hollywood montages have taught us anything, it’s that benching heavy counts for something.
To paraphrase Kenny Powers, not everybody’s trying to be the best at exercising. You need not worry if you don’t know, or care, how much weight you can put up on the bench. That said, if you know and very much care, we’ve got some intel that should have you stacking thicker plates on the bar in no time.
To find out what it takes to maximize the bench press, we spoke with top trainers, coaches, and practitioners who have studied the movement and understand the latest research. If you’ve recently hit a strength plateau, or even if you’re just interested in improving your form and efficiency on the lift, here are the experts’ top tips for taking your bench press to the next level.
If you, like most men with lives outside of the gym, train your chest about once a week, you’re going to need to up that. “If you want to get better at bench pressing, you have to practice the skill of bench pressing,” says Luke Carlson, founder and CEO of Discover Strength. Just like training to run faster, that means attacking progression from multiple angles with at least two or three dedicated sessions per week.
To maximize strength gains and progression under the barbell, Mathew Welch, MS, CSCS, ATC, USAW-1, exercise physiologist at HSS, recommends a three-day training split that you can do on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
“The first day would be a maximal strength day, where we're doing 3–5 sets of 1–5 reps, because you can build strength through that 1–5 rep range,” he says. The second day would be for accessory work—to develop the surrounding muscles that play a supporting role in the bench press. These would be exercises like the incline press and chest fly, working up to two sets of 5–8 reps for each. And Friday would be back to the bench for what Welch calls a “dynamic effort” day. Here, you’re doing 8–10 sets of just 1–3 reps, using a load around 55–65 percent of your one-rep max and trying to move the weight as fast as possible. “The dynamic effort method can be very effective for power development,” says Welch. “If you're trying to break through a plateau, adding some power development can be very helpful."
Using proper form isn’t just about deterring injuries; it also makes your body a more efficient bench-pressing machine. “You can improve your form and technique and have your bench press go up, even though your chest didn't get stronger at all,” says Carlson.
“One of the most overlooked pieces of the bench press is really your feet,” says Jesse Shaw, DO, USAW, sports medicine physician and associate professor at the University of Western States. “Your ability to drive and develop force is really coming from your connection with the ground.”
The next time you’re about to lie back on the bench, take a moment to mindfully set your feet flat on the ground. And when you’re ready to pull the bar from the rack, make sure you’re engaging the connection between your upper and lower body.
“Your legs are really an important factor in the bench press, especially as it gets heavier,” says Welch. “You need to drive into the ground with your feet, almost like you're going to drive your hips up off the bench. Just being very stable and aware of the feet is important. It's going to allow you to use more weight, and it's going to help prevent overuse and injury.”
When you find yourself consistently running out of steam once the bar hits a certain point (right before locking out your arms, for example), that’s what we call a sticking point. Essentially, it’s an indicator that one or more of the muscles involved in moving the bar need to get stronger in order to pull (or in this case, push) their weight. “Perhaps the limiter in your bench press used to be your pecs,” says Welch. “Now, six months later, it's your triceps, and you're having trouble with your lockout. Well, you're going to need to implement some special strength exercises to improve your lockout.”
If lockout is the area you’re stuck on, Eddie Baruta, global head of gym floor personal training at Ultimate Performance in Los Angeles, recommends focusing on developing your triceps. His preferred method: bench pressing with chains. While it might seem a little extreme, benching with chains is a simple and effective way to increase the weight of the bar as it rises, allowing you to isolate and overload problem areas. “You're actually increasing the resistance as you push through to the top of the motion, which we know is where the bench press gets more difficult,” says Baruta.
Alternatively, getting stuck with the bar closer to your chest, near the bottom of the rep, could signal a strength imbalance between your chest and back. “When you drop your elbows below parallel with the ground, your lats are going to carry that weight,” says Dr. Shaw. “So if your lats are significantly weaker than your pecs are, as soon as you break that level your lats are going to say, ‘I can't lift this weight anymore.’”
Each rep has two phases: the lifting (“concentric”) phase and the lowering (“eccentric”) phase. While lowering weight may not seem quite as important as lifting it, research has shown that periodically exposing the eccentric phase of the rep to heavier leads can spur strength gains. Training “negatives” basically means lifting in a way that places greater emphasis on the eccentric phase of the rep. “You can carry a lot more weight through the eccentric phase of a muscle’s movement than you can through the concentric phase,” says Dr. Shaw. “Negatives, for me, are probably the biggest thing, especially if you have a weight ceiling to break through.”
To get the most out of negatives, Carlson recommends picking a weight slightly heavier than your one-rep max and, crucially, having a spotter or two on hand to help you re-rack the bar after each rep. Your aim is to lower the bar with control for a count of 10 seconds. Do that for one set of 6–8 reps, Carlson says. “If you did that every other week, that would probably be the single greatest way to improve your one-rep max,” he says.