Barbell bench press
Also called bench press, flat bench press, flat barbell bench press.
What is a barbell bench press?
The barbell bench press is a horizontal press: lying on a flat bench, you lower a barbell to the chest and press it back to straight arms. It trains the pectoralis major, the anterior deltoid and the triceps brachii together, and on a flat bench the chest regions and the front delt work at close to the same level. Within the usual range, grip width and elbow angle are preferences: pick positions you can press comfortably, and progress the load.
How do you perform a barbell bench press?
Set up
- Lie on the bench with your eyes roughly under the bar.
- Set your feet flat and take a full grip, thumbs wrapped around the bar, at a width that puts your forearms near vertical at the bottom of the rep.
- Pull your shoulder blades back and down into the bench, and keep them there for the whole set.
- Some arch through the upper back follows from retracting the shoulder blades. Keep your glutes on the bench.
- Unrack to a position over your shoulders rather than over your face.
Execution
- Lower the bar under control until it touches your chest. Touch, do not bounce.
- Let your elbows sit wherever your forearms stay near vertical.
- Press back to straight arms without letting the shoulder blades come unstuck from the bench.
- Use the full range, all the way back to straight arms.
- Keep the bar path consistent rep to rep rather than chasing a particular line.
Common mistakes
Letting the shoulder blades unstick at the top of the press
Retraction is what lowers posterior shear at the shoulder and the rotator cuff work needed to keep the joint together. Losing it at lockout gives that back on the rep where the load is still on the bar.
Bouncing the bar off the chest
It moves the weight without asking your chest and triceps to produce the force at the hardest part of the range, which is the part that decides what the set was worth.
Choosing a grip width to target a particular muscle
Grip width changes what you can lift far more than it changes which part of the chest does the work, and what it does change points the opposite way to the advice. Pick the width you can press well. See what the evidence says ↓
Cutting the range short and pressing from a few inches off the chest
Touching the chest on every rep is what keeps sets comparable, and the short version builds less strength than the full one. Press from the chest. See what the evidence says ↓
Where it fits in a session
First or second in an upper-body session, while you are fresh.
A heavy compound, and people give it the set count to match: 4.31 per session on average in RepCount's data, against about 3.2 for the machine and isolation exercises. It suits being loaded and progressed rather than taken to failure, and the full range is worth protecting as the load climbs — that is the part the training evidence actually supports.
Muscles worked
- pectoralis major (clavicular and sternocostal heads)
- anterior deltoid
- triceps brachii
- biceps brachii
- rotator cuff
Listed as co-actors rather than ranked. Three studies that report figures for both the chest and the front delt on a flat bench put them at close to the same level — about 27% against 26% of a maximal contraction in Rodríguez-Ridao, and within a few points of each other in Saeterbakken and in Mausehund — so the anterior deltoid is a co-actor here rather than a minor helper. The triceps is not ranked because the studies do not agree where it sits: Rodríguez-Ridao put one triceps head at about 15% while the pectoralis regions sat at 27%, and Mausehund put the lateral head of the triceps above every pectoralis portion it measured. The secondary pair are there for reasons the popular lists miss: the rotator cuff works throughout to keep the humeral head seated, and biceps brachii activity climbs steeply as the grip widens — though it climbs from a low base, and the study that measured it most carefully concluded the bench press does not stimulate the biceps at all. Pectoralis major has two heads, clavicular and sternocostal — there is no "inner" or "outer" chest to aim at.
What the evidence says
Ask what a bench press grip does and you will usually be told that a wide grip works the chest and a narrow grip works the triceps, often with an "inner" and "outer" chest attached. It is the standard answer, though not a universal one — some pages already report the null results below. The anatomy half is straightforwardly wrong: pectoralis major has two heads, clavicular and sternocostal, with no medial or lateral division to aim at. The training half is more interesting than a correction, because the one chest effect that replicates runs the other way.
Take first the part people mean when they say chest — the sternocostal portion, or the lower pectoralis where a study divided the muscle only in two. Four studies have measured it across grip widths on a flat bench and none found a difference: Mausehund and colleagues (2022, 35 strength-trained adults — 19 men, 16 women, 13 of them powerlifters — at 6-8RM), Saeterbakken and colleagues (2021, 28 men: 15 resistance-trained with about five years of experience, 13 novices, at 6RM), Larsen and colleagues (2021, 14 recreationally trained men with at least three years of bench pressing, at true 1RM) and Arseneault, Roy and Sercia (2021, 13 trained men at 12RM). Larsen instrumented the upper and lower pectoralis separately, so its "no significant differences between grip widths for the other prime movers' pectoralis major and anterior deltoid" is a measured null rather than an omission.
The only meta-analysis to pool the comparison, López-Vivancos and colleagues (2023, 23 studies, mostly small samples of trained men and university students), reached the same place from three older ones: sternocostal SMD 0.49, 95% CI -0.15 to 1.14, p = 0.101, with low heterogeneity. That points the popular way and does not get there. Its own discussion says the clavicular activity "is similar in normal width and narrow grip". Then its practical recommendations open with the opposite: "Narrower grips result in significantly lower activation of the sternal portion of the pectoralis major." That sentence describes the primary studies the review collected, not the pooled estimate it computed. It is the same failure this site documented on the hammer curl — a conclusion running ahead of its own data — except here both halves sit inside one paper.
Now the part that does move. All four of those studies also measured the clavicular head, at the top of the chest. Two found it higher with the narrow grip, two found no difference, and none found it higher with a wide one. Mausehund ran two narrow conditions, elbows tucked and elbows out, and put the clavicular head at 59.6% and 56.3% of a maximal contraction against 56.0% at a medium grip and 52.4% at a wide one: the tucked narrow grip beat medium, and both narrow conditions beat wide. Arseneault concluded that "the width of the grip significantly affects the activity of the clavicular head of the pectoralis major in the horizontal bench press, which means that a closer grip leads to a better recruitment", while "using a wide or close grip does not result a significant difference in the recruitment of the sternocostal and abdominal heads". Barnett's 1995 data is reported the same way by both the meta and Larsen, though we have not read that paper directly and do not cite it. So the honest summary is not that grip width does nothing to the chest. It is that the only chest effect anyone has replicated is in the upper chest, it is small, and it points the opposite way to the advice.
One finding does run the popular way, and it is the strongest thing the standard claim has. Mausehund found the abdominal head of the pectoralis — the bottom of the muscle — higher with the medium and wide grips than with either narrow one. Arseneault measured the same head and found nothing. One study for, one against, on the part of the chest nobody was arguing about.
Triceps activity is lower with a wide grip, reliably but slightly, and not in every head. Saeterbakken found effect sizes of 0.27 against a medium grip and 0.32 against a narrow one; Mausehund found the lateral head lower with a wide grip and the long head unchanged; Larsen found it only in the medial head; Arseneault, which measured the long head alone, concluded that "the activation of the triceps brachii does not vary according to the width of the grip". Tanimoto and colleagues (2023, 14 men: seven trained, seven untrained) tested the trade-off as lifters actually state it, a chest-to-triceps ratio at 81 cm against 40 cm, and found no significant difference in any condition but one — the fatigued eccentric phase in the untrained half of the sample — concluding that the difference "is small". A close grip is a triceps exercise because of what it does to the load and the elbow, not because of a large activation swing.
What grip width changes most reliably is the weight. A narrow grip cost 7.0% and 7.1% off 6RM against medium and wide grips in Saeterbakken, with medium and wide identical at p = 1.000. Larsen found the same at 1RM, and Mausehund the same again at 6RM: 84.8 kg wide and 84.0 kg medium, both above 76.9 and 75.8 kg narrow, with wide and medium not separable. Three samples, three loading protocols, one answer.
The other universal instruction is to tuck the elbows to about 45 degrees because flaring will impinge the shoulder. Noteboom and colleagues (2024) is the only study to have modelled it — ten experienced strength athletes, 21 simulated technique combinations in a musculoskeletal model driven by motion capture and an instrumented barbell. Its introduction states that "there is currently a lack of biomechanical evidence to substantiate these theories" and attributes the 45-degree rule to what "clinical experts argue". Its results ran against the rule: "a small shoulder abduction angle of 45° increased the glenohumeral superior shear force component compared to 70° shoulder abduction", while larger angles raised total shoulder compression and acromioclavicular loads instead. For lifters with pain above the shoulder joint the paper advises avoiding 45 degrees and narrow grips, which inverts the usual advice. But the whole protocol used a 16 kg barbell, it is a simulation, and the authors say plainly the design "does not allow for the identification of actual injury risks". Abduction angle mattered less than grip width and scapula position, the differences appeared only during short parts of the rep, and the cue as it is usually given is a range of roughly 45 to 75 degrees, which already contains the 70 that came out better here. The defensible conclusion is narrow: the mechanism offered for the cue is not evidence-based, and the one model of it did not support the number.
The same paper is more useful on the parts nobody argues about. Retracting the shoulder blades lowered posterior shear at the shoulder, glenohumeral compression and rotator cuff activity, though it raised superior shear at the very start and end of the rep, so even this is a trade rather than a free win. Grips under 1.5 biacromial widths lowered acromioclavicular compression, which is the real argument against a very wide grip: joint load, not chest activation. That is neither of the reasons usually given.
Two more corrections, on bench angle. Rodríguez-Ridao and colleagues (2020, 30 trained adults at 60% of 1RM) tested five bench angles and concluded that "the horizontal bench press produces homogeneous electromyographic activity in the three portions of the pectoralis major and the anterior deltoid" — the flat bench does not neglect the upper chest, and the anterior deltoid sits at roughly the same level as the pectoralis regions, around 26% against 27% of a maximal contraction. Their own paper needs the same scepticism this page applies to everyone else's: its conclusion says a 30-degree incline produces greater upper-pectoralis activation, but its own pairwise table puts flat against 30 degrees at p = 0.688 and flat against 45 degrees at p = 1.000. Only 60 degrees differed, and it was lower. Arseneault reached the same conclusion independently: a 30-degree incline "does not recruit the clavicular head of pectoralis major more than the horizontal and declined using the same grip". And the meta agrees at the pooled level: flat beat incline for the sternocostal portion (SMD 1.80, 95% CI 0.40 to 3.19, p = 0.017) and showed no significant difference for the clavicular portion (SMD 0.36, p = 0.81). Incline pressing is a reasonable thing to do; needing it for the upper chest is not what the evidence shows. Nor does decline earn its reputation: the pooled horizontal-versus-declined comparison is non-significant in both portions, and Arseneault found the decline bench "does not recruit the abdominal head of the pectoralis major more than the horizontal bench press".
And dumbbells. Saeterbakken, van den Tillaar and Fimland (2011, 12 trained men) compared barbell, dumbbell and Smith machine pressing at 1RM: "electrical activity in the pectoralis major and anterior deltoid did not differ during the lifts", while biceps activity rose with the stability demand and triceps activity fell with dumbbells. The dumbbell load was 17% below the barbell. Read only as the published abstract — the full text is paywalled — so treat the detail as thinner than the studies above.
One thing the consensus gets right, and it is worth saying so: full range beats partial. Martínez-Cava and colleagues randomised 50 recreationally to highly trained men into four groups — full, two-thirds or one-third range bench pressing for ten weeks, or no training at all — so roughly a dozen men per arm. The full-range group produced the best results across all three variations tested, with gains shrinking as the trained range shrank. This one was also read as the published abstract only, and it measured strength and bar velocity rather than muscle size.
Offered as reasoning rather than as a finding in any of these papers: the reason grip width feels so consequential and measures so small is probably that it changes leverage more than it changes which muscle does the job. Moving your hands changes the moment arms at the shoulder and elbow, which changes what you can lift — and the grip studies measured exactly that, clearly and repeatedly, while the activation differences stayed small or absent. A cue that changes your numbers is easy to mistake for a cue that changes your anatomy.
Practical upshot: within the range where the evidence favours neither option, grip width and elbow angle are a preference, not a technique standard. The illustration on this page shows one grip and one elbow angle because a drawing can only show one. It is not a recommendation.
What lifters actually do
The bench press turns up in about one workout in eight tracked in RepCount, and 68.8% of regular users have logged it at some point. It also gets the set count of a main lift rather than an accessory — 4.31 per session on average, against about 3.2 for the machine and isolation exercises — which is the signature of a movement lifters treat as the point of the session. It sits in workouts of about six exercises, and what surrounds it is a push day: incline dumbbell press, lateral raises, pushdowns, shoulder presses and triceps extensions. Notably, the incline pressing beside it is usually the dumbbell version rather than the barbell one, and dips show up far less often than the incline dumbbell press.
Most often trained alongside
Share of barbell bench press sessions that also include each exercise.
- Incline dumbbell press27.2%
- Dumbbell lateral raises22.3%
- Pushdowns20.2%
- Shoulder dumbbell press16.1%
- Triceps extensions15%
- Incline bench press14.5%
- Dips12.4%
Figures come from workouts tracked in RepCount.
Variations
- Close-grip bench press — Grip inside shoulder width. Costs you about 7% of your load compared with a medium or wide grip, and raises activity slightly in the lateral and medial heads of the triceps but not in the long head.
- Wide-grip bench press — Lets you lift the same as a medium grip rather than more. Grips beyond about 1.5 biacromial widths raise compression at the acromioclavicular joint, and the upper chest measures lower with a wide grip, not higher.
- Incline barbell bench press — Bench raised, usually 30 to 45 degrees. Worth doing if you like it, but the flat version already trains the upper chest evenly and the pooled evidence does not put incline ahead of it for either part of the chest.
- Decline barbell bench press — Bench angled down. The pooled EMG does not separate it from a flat bench for either pectoralis portion, and the one study to measure the bottom of the chest across bench angles found no advantage either.
- Paused bench press — Bar held still on the chest, removing any stretch rebound. The competition standard in powerlifting.
- Reverse-grip bench press — Hands supinated. The pooled evidence for it rests on one study, and the one other paper to test supinated grips found their upper-chest advantage only on an incline, not on a flat bench. Treat claims about it as thin.
- Dumbbell bench press — Chest and front-delt activity matched the barbell in the one study that compared them; the load is lower and the biceps work harder.
- Smith machine bench press — Fixed bar path. Load sits near the barbell's, and chest activity did not differ.
- Floor press — Pressed lying on the floor, which stops the elbows at a partial range.
Frequently asked questions
What muscles does the bench press work?
Pectoralis major, anterior deltoid and triceps brachii, working together. Pectoralis major has two heads — clavicular and sternocostal — and flexes, adducts and internally rotates the arm at the shoulder. The anterior deltoid works with it to flex the arm, and on a flat bench it is active at roughly the same level, so it is a co-actor rather than a minor helper. The triceps extends the elbow, and its long head crosses the shoulder as well, so it is loaded through the press rather than only at lockout. Biceps brachii and the rotator cuff work too: the biceps more as the grip widens, the cuff throughout to keep the shoulder seated. The biceps effect is a large change on a small number, though: it never gets far off idle, and the study that measured it most closely concluded a bench press does not stimulate the biceps at all. There is no "inner" or "outer" chest — the anatomy references describe no such division.
Does a wide grip work the chest more?
No, and the measurements lean the other way. Four studies have looked at the sternocostal portion — the bulk of the chest — across grip widths on a flat bench, and none found a difference; the only meta-analysis to pool the question did not reach significance either. All four also measured the upper chest: two found it higher with a narrow grip, two found no difference, and none found it higher with a wide one. The single point for the wide grip is the very bottom of the chest, measured in one study and not confirmed in the other that looked. What is settled is that a wide grip lets you lift the same as a medium grip rather than more, and that grips much beyond one and a half times the bony width across your shoulders — measured point to point, not around the outside of the muscle — raise load on the joint at the end of the collarbone.
Does a close grip work the triceps more?
Slightly, and not everywhere in the muscle. It is the one part of the popular split that survives: a wide grip produced lower triceps activity than medium and narrow grips, with effect sizes of 0.27 and 0.32 — real but minor. Two studies each found it in a single head — the lateral head in one, the medial head in the other — and the one that measured the long head alone found no grip-width effect at all. A narrow grip also costs you about 7% of what you can lift. That trade is why a close-grip press is a triceps exercise in its own right rather than a way of tweaking a normal bench.
What grip width should I use?
Within the usual range this is a preference, and the evidence does not pick for you. A grip that puts your forearms roughly vertical at the bottom is a reasonable default because it is comfortable and repeatable, not because a study endorses it. Two things are worth knowing at the edges: a grip inside shoulder width will cost you around 7% of your load, and a grip much wider than one and a half times the bony width across your shoulders raises compression at the joint at the end of the collarbone. Between those, pick what you press well. The illustration here shows one grip because a drawing can only show one.
Should I tuck my elbows to 45 degrees?
The reason usually given for that number is not evidence-based, and the only paper to model it says so in its own introduction before finding that 45 degrees increased shear at the shoulder joint compared with 70 degrees. But that is a simulation of ten lifters using a 16 kg barbell, it found trade-offs in both directions rather than one safe angle, and its recommendation was aimed at lifters who already have pain above the shoulder. So this is not an argument for flaring your elbows. It is an argument that the cue is a preference stated as a mechanism. There is no weight in it either: the one study to press the same grip with the elbows in and with the elbows away from the body got the same 6RM both ways, and the elbows-out version put more load through the elbow and the shoulder for it. Let your forearms stay near vertical and the angle will follow from your build.
Do I need incline bench press to build the upper chest?
The evidence does not show that. A study of 30 trained lifters across five bench angles concluded that a flat bench produces even activity across all three pectoralis regions, and found no significant difference in the upper portion between flat and 30 or 45 degrees. A second study, of 13 trained men, found a 30-degree incline did not recruit the upper chest more than a flat or declined bench at the same grip. At the pooled level, flat beat incline for the lower chest and showed no significant difference for the upper. Incline pressing is worth doing if you like it, but the flat bench is not skipping your upper chest.
Is dumbbell bench press better than barbell for the chest?
Not for muscle activity. In the one study that compared barbell, dumbbell and Smith machine pressing directly, chest and front-delt activity did not differ between them. What changed was everything else: the dumbbell load was 17% lower, biceps activity was higher and triceps activity lower. That study was read as its published abstract only. Use dumbbells because you prefer them or because you are training one side at a time, not because they work the chest harder.
Should the bar touch my chest?
Yes, under control rather than bounced. The only multi-week training study to compare ranges split 50 trained men four ways — ten weeks of full, two-thirds or one-third range bench pressing, or no training at all — and full range produced the best strength results, with the gains shrinking as the range did. Roughly a dozen men per group, read as the published abstract only, and it measured strength rather than muscle size.
Should I squeeze my shoulder blades together?
Yes, and this is one of the few technique points with biomechanics behind it rather than tradition. In a musculoskeletal model of ten strength athletes, retracted scapulae lowered posterior shear at the shoulder, lowered compression in the joint and reduced the rotator cuff activity needed to keep the humeral head centred. The same model found retraction raised shear the other way at the very start and end of the rep, so it is a trade rather than a free win — but the trade is a good one, and it holds for the whole set, lockout included.
Is a 100 kg bench press good?
There is no honest way to answer that with a number. Whether a load is good depends on your bodyweight, your training age, your build and your leverages, and any table claiming otherwise is averaging over all of them. The useful question is whether the weight has moved over the last few months and whether you can still touch your chest with your shoulder blades set. This page publishes what lifters do, not what they should lift.
How many sets of bench press should I do?
Lifters using RepCount average 4.31 sets of bench press in a session, more than they give machine and isolation work, which sits nearer 3.2. That is a description of what people do rather than a recommendation, but it matches how a heavy compound is usually programmed: a handful of working sets, placed early in the session, in a workout of about six exercises.
Sources
- López-Vivancos A, González-Gálvez N, Orquín-Castrillón FJ, Vale RGS, Marcos-Pardo PJ. Electromyographic Activity of the Pectoralis Major Muscle during Traditional Bench Press and Other Variants of Pectoral Exercises: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Applied Sciences. 2023. https://repositorio.ucam.edu/bitstream/handle/10952/7565/2023_Electromyographic.pdf
- Saeterbakken AH, et al. The Effect of Grip Width on Muscle Strength and Electromyographic Activity in Bench Press among Novice- and Resistance-Trained Men. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8296276/
- Larsen S, Gomo O, van den Tillaar R. A Biomechanical Analysis of Wide, Medium, and Narrow Grip Width Effects on Kinematics, Horizontal Kinetics, and Muscle Activity on the Sticking Region in Recreationally Trained Males During 1-RM Bench Pressing. Front Sports Act Living. 2021. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sports-and-active-living/articles/10.3389/fspor.2020.637066/full
- Mausehund L, Werkhausen A, Bartsch J, Krosshaug T. Understanding Bench Press Biomechanics — The Necessity of Measuring Lateral Barbell Forces. J Strength Cond Res. 2022. https://www.klokeavskade.no/globalassets/publications/mausehund_2022_understanding-bench-press.pdf
- Arseneault K, Roy X, Sercia P. The Effect of 12 Variations of the Bench Press Exercise on the EMG Activity of Three Heads of the Pectoralis Major. International Journal of Strength and Conditioning. 2021. https://journal.iusca.org/index.php/Journal/article/download/39/124/
- Tanimoto M, Arakawa H, Sato M, Nagano A. Lateral Force and EMG Activity in Wide- and Narrow-Grip Bench Press in Various Conditions. Sports (Basel). 2023. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10458411/
- Noteboom L, et al. Effects of bench press technique variations on musculoskeletal shoulder loads and potential injury risk. Front Physiol. 2024. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11224528/
- Rodríguez-Ridao D, Antequera-Vique JA, Martín-Fuentes I, Muyor JM. Effect of Five Bench Inclinations on the Electromyographic Activity of the Pectoralis Major, Anterior Deltoid, and Triceps Brachii during the Bench Press Exercise. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7579505/
- Saeterbakken AH, van den Tillaar R, Fimland MS. A comparison of muscle activity and 1-RM strength of three chest-press exercises with different stability requirements. J Sports Sci. 2011. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21225489/
- Martínez-Cava A, Hernández-Belmonte A, Courel-Ibáñez J, Morán-Navarro R, González-Badillo JJ, Pallarés JG. Bench Press at Full Range of Motion Produces Greater Neuromuscular Adaptations Than Partial Executions After Prolonged Resistance Training. J Strength Cond Res. 2022. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31567719/
- Solari F, Burns B. Anatomy, Thorax, Pectoralis Major. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK525991/
- Tiwana MS, Sinkler MA, Bordoni B. Anatomy, Shoulder and Upper Limb, Triceps Muscle. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK536996/
- Elzanie A, Varacallo MA. Anatomy, Shoulder and Upper Limb, Deltoid Muscle. StatPearls. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK537056/