Bench Press

🎯 Chest🏋️ Bench, BarbellCompoundTriceps (2°)

How to do the bench press

  1. Lie on a flat bench with your feet flat on the floor, keep your back flat on the bench.
  2. Grasp the bar a little wider than shoulder width apart.
  3. Raise the barbell above your body and move it over the middle of your chest, this is your starting position.
  4. Lower the bar down so it just touches your chest.
  5. Raise the bar till your arms are fully extended and your elbows are locked.
  6. Return to starting position.

Muscles worked

The prime mover is the pectoralis major, which drives the upper arm forward and across the body.

Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the triceps straighten the elbow to finish the movement.

Every exercise for:ChestTriceps

How this movement works

Several joints move together, so effort spreads across a chain rather than concentrating in one place. Coordination is part of the difficulty: the movement is only as good as its weakest link, and improving it often means fixing a position somewhere other than the muscle you meant to train.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

A bench fixes the torso angle and gives you something to drive against, which is what lets the load go up without your position wandering.

A barbell locks both hands to one bar, so neither side can drift and the load climbs in plate-sized steps. That makes it the simplest way to add weight and the least forgiving thing to bail out of.

Every exercise using:BenchBarbell

These train the chest too, using equipment this one does not:

Related exercises

Illustration: Everkinetic — CC BY-SA 4.0 — license. Modified versions are shared under the same license. Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.