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Why should I bench press?

This is an excerpt from Foundational Strength by John Flagg.

For most, the bench press is their first introduction to strength training, and it is by far the most accessible piece of equipment you can find. You may go on vacation and really struggle to find a good squat rack, but every gym in the country has at least one bench press. Because of this, most people think that the bench press is an easy upper-body movement to master. This isn’t completely accurate. It could be argued that of all the lifts, the bench press has the smallest margin for error at higher loads. It’s the lift with the most abrupt ceiling: You feel like you are on fire in the middle of the set, then you add five pounds (2 kg) and suddenly everything just stops. You try to press the bar up from your chest, and nothing happens.

Another misconception about the bench is that it is only about the upper body. It’s true that the primary movers of the lift are the arms and the chest, but this is not an upper-body-only movement. With the squat, you need to create tension in the upper body to keep the bar stable and to be successful. With the bench, the lower body needs to be tight and stable to allow those big prime movers of the arms and the chest to do the most work. If you want a big bench, you have to be able to use your legs.

I don’t want to scare you away from this lift; I just want to make it clear that this is the lift that most people overlook, and this is the chapter that many might skip over because they think already know what they’re doing. As a coach, I have to do the most correction of bad habits with lifters on the bench press. Take this lift seriously right from the start, and if you’ve already been benching for a while, jump into this chapter ready to learn and refine. It will pay off with immediate improvement and greater long-term progress.

Reasons Why You Should Bench Press

An old strength coach once told me that the bench press is like the squat but for your upper body. That might sound far-fetched, but it’s not completely off base. The bench press is the cornerstone of most upper-body development programs and sports-performance programs, and it is a competition lift in powerlifting. It’s also the main lift in the Paralympic Games for weightlifting, and if you have never watched that, it is a truly amazing sight to behold. The fact is, there isn’t a pressing movement for the upper body that can progress to the extreme levels of weight that the bench can. It stimulates a massive amount of muscle, it can be built to high loads, and with the right precautions, it can be very safe. There is a reason it is held in such high regard.

What’s more, nearly all sports have some level of contact. Football, soccer, MMA, baseball and softball, and volleyball are all sports in which athletes can benefit from improved pressing power. The first three are obvious: blocking in football, contesting and pushing around for the ball in soccer, and throwing a punch in MMA. But the benefits of bench pressing can be seen in the intangibles as well. For my volleyball fans out there, this scenario is for you: Imagine a fast-paced, back-and-forth game of volleyball. Many high-level teams have a defensive specialist called a libero, and their job is to dig the ball out when it gets deep in their zone. They’re the one who is diving all over the place, getting under the ball just before it hits the ground, and then popping back up just to dive again and dig that ball out. Do you think that athlete can benefit from more pressing power to help them to get off the ground faster? How about more upper-body strength and endurance to be able do it repeatedly over multiple games and then be ready to play again the following week? Or maybe you aren’t in this for sports. Well, is being able to get up off the ground important? Is being able to push furniture around the house helpful? There are countless other examples of how building general upper-body strength through the bench press can benefit you in your everyday life.

The bench also offers a unique opportunity for improving body composition by building muscle. You won’t become a bodybuilder overnight; it takes decades of hard training to get that big and that jacked, and you have to train specifically for it. What I’m talking about here is gaining enough muscle to change your physique. Every single elite bench presser in the world has jacked shoulders, triceps, and forearms. Muscle takes up space and spreads out all the other tissues around it. The skin and fat tissue gets spread tighter, and your arms end up looking better.

And a final reason why you should bench press is that there is something about being able to bench well that creates a swell of confidence. The bench press is the common measuring stick in every gym in the United States. Whether you are new to it or not, you’ve probably heard the question “How much you bench?” The bench is the most common piece of equipment, and this is the question that’s most commonly asked. I don’t think everyone needs external validation to feel good, but when you progress in the bench, everyone sees it. Whereas the squat and the deadlift may not be performed by every gym-goer, most have a frame of reference for the bench, and they understand the work you are putting in to make it better. On top of that, there is something about having that bar in your hands and just punching it off your chest that makes you feel like a rocket ship.

Elements of the Bench Press

In this section we are going to cover the key elements of the bench press, including the phases of the bench press, what the positions are and how to get into them, and how to perform the barbell bench press. These concepts build on one another, just like with squat, and you can build an exceptional bench press once you understand and master them.

As with the squat, there is no perfect bench press. But there are some universal guidelines, which we will cover here. It bears repeating, though, that just like with the squat, your bench is going to look like your bench. We need to nail the basics, but there will always be things unique to you in there. On top of that, benches come in a wide array of quality. Some are rock solid, and some are as slick as a Slip ’N Slide. The fundamentals will still apply, but there may be limitations to some of them based on what you are training on. That’s okay. There are ways around some issues, and there are others you’ll have to live with. But none of them are deal-breakers for performance.

Bar-Lifter Unit

The first concept we need to cover is the bar-lifter unit. For the bench, this will be created once the bar is in your hands and out of the rack, and you are in the start position. Unlike the squat, the bar will be doing most of the movement during the bench press, and because you’re lying down on the bench, the center of gravity doesn’t involve your whole body. The bar-lifter unit becomes the combined mass of the bar and the weights as well as your hands, wrists, and arms down to your shoulders. This puts the center of gravity directly under the bar and over your shoulders in the start position. This will change based on the individual anatomy of the elbow and the technique of the press, which is where bar path comes into play.

Bar Path

Bar path is a hotly debated topic in the powerlifting world. What is the ideal bar path in the bench press? Is it a straight line up and down? Or does it present more like an angle as the bar comes down to the chest and then back up toward the face? At this point, I have seen enough evidence from both sides of the argument to say that it depends and that neither side is wrong. Whether the bar has some horizontal movement or not, the goal is to move it in a straight line from point A to point B. But it should never be pushed down toward the feet. As soon as that happens you lose leverage and are in a position that is difficult to press from. From my perspective, there are two acceptable bar paths: completely vertical (see figure 4.1) or vertical and slightly back (see figure 4.2).

Bar Positioning

The bar will be doing most of the movement during the bench press, and the center of gravity doesn’t involve the whole body, but that doesn’t mean that the bar position through the lift doesn’t matter. To create the vertical or vertical-but-slightly-back bar path, the bar, the wrists, and the elbows all have to stay in alignment. What we are looking for here is for the barbell to stay directly over the wrists and elbows through the entire bench-press movement (see figure 4.3).

When looking at this for yourself, you’ll see there are three possible positions: the bar stacked over the elbows, the bar in front of the elbows, and the bar behind the elbows. Imagine dropping a line straight down from the barbell. If that line drops down directly to over the elbows, you are in a great spot. If that line drops down to between the elbows and the shoulders, then the elbows are in front of the barbell (see figure 4.4a). If the line drops down to where the elbows are between it and your shoulders, then the elbows are behind the barbell (see figure 4.4b). To be clear, it is possible to press in both of these positions, but it is not the optimal position, and it will eventually limit progress toward achieving your bench-press goals. Keep that in mind as you start learning this movement, and try to keep the development of bad habits to a minimum.

More Excerpts From Foundational Strength

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