How I Bench Press: The Way I Do It

There are so many different ways I’ve seen people bench press over the years. I’ve seen people lower the bar with their elbows practically touching their lats while squeezing their whole body together as tightly as possible. I’ve seen people bench in a way that looks like the entire movement is being driven through their front delts, and I’ve seen people basically drop the bar onto their chest and use the bounce to fire it back up again. I’ve always thought of those people as the body bouncers.

Then you get the lifters who start the press normally, but halfway through the rep their arse comes so far off the bench that the movement basically turns into a decline press. 😳

Which one of those styles produces the strongest bench? I genuinely couldn’t tell you. What I can tell you is how I bench.

I haven’t just magically invented my own version of the bench press. The way I do it has come from years of training, things I’ve learned from different places, watching other lifters, making mistakes and eventually figuring out what feels strongest and most repeatable for my own body.

So just like with my deadlift guide and the way I squat, I’m not saying this is the only way you should bench press. I’m just going to walk you through exactly how I do it.

First, I Centre Myself Under the Bar

The first thing I do is mainly habit at this point. Before I even think about unracking the weight, I make sure I’m centred underneath the bar.

If you look at the middle of the bar, you’ll see the rough knurled section. I use that as a reference against my eyes and make sure I’m positioned evenly underneath it. It’s only a small part of the setup, but once I’ve done that I know I’m starting from the same place every time and that the bar is going to be even on both sides of me.

Then I Set My Grip

For my hand position I use the knurling again. I take my thumb and put it in line with the start of the knurling on each side, then move my hands out into the position that feels natural and comfortable for me.

You’ll see people gripping the bar in all sorts of places. Some people go much narrower, some people grip right out towards the rings and some people have their own little reference point that they’ve probably been using for years. This is simply mine.

The important thing for me is that both hands are even and I know exactly where they’re going every time I get underneath the bar.

Then I Plant My Feet Behind Me

Once my hands are where I want them, I set my feet. I bring both feet backwards underneath me as far as I comfortably can while keeping them firmly planted on the floor.

Doing that naturally puts me into the position I want. My arse stays firmly on the bench, my upper back is pressed into the pad and I get a small arch through my lower back. I’m not trying to turn myself into a human bridge; I just want a strong position that I can comfortably hold while I’m pressing.

Then I Make Myself as Solid as Possible

This is probably one of the biggest parts of the way I bench.

Once my feet are planted I take a large breath and brace, but when I say brace I don’t just mean tense your abs. I squeeze my lats and upper back so I’ve got firm contact with the bench, tighten my stomach and lower torso, then drive my feet firmly into the floor until my whole body feels solid.

The simplest way I can explain how tight I want to be is to imagine my mate walking over while I’m in my bench position and trying to push me sideways off the bench. I want to be so tight and so glued to that pad that it feels like he’s trying to push the entire bench across the floor rather than just moving me.

That’s the extreme I want you to imagine. I don’t want to feel like I’m just lying underneath a bar; I want to feel attached to the bench.

Then I Unrack and Lower the Bar

Once everything is tight, I unrack the bar and bring it into my starting position. For me that puts the bar roughly around the nipple line at the top, and from there I start lowering it.

As the bar comes down my elbows stay fairly close to my body. I don’t deliberately throw them out to the sides. While I’m lowering the weight I can feel my upper back tightening against the bench and I can also feel the stretch building through my chest.

This is where I use mind-muscle connection quite a lot. I’m not saying that simply thinking about your chest magically switches every other muscle off because your shoulders, triceps and upper back are obviously still involved in a bench press. What I mean is that I like concentrating on the muscle I’m actually trying to use.

So while I’m lowering the bar I’m thinking about my chest, controlling the weight, keeping everything tight and feeling that stretch build as the bar comes down.

For me the bar touches slightly below the nipple line, although that exact position obviously isn’t going to look identical on everybody. Chest size, limb lengths and just the way you’re built are going to change where the bar naturally meets your body.

The way I think about it is much simpler: control the weight down, keep the elbows in a strong position, stay tight and feel the chest stretch.

Then I Push the Bench Away

This is probably my favourite way of explaining the actual press. Instead of lying there thinking about pushing the weight up, I imagine I’m trying to push the backrest away from me.

My feet are driving into the floor, my back is tight against the pad, my chest is working and my elbows can naturally start to open out slightly as I press.

When I’m pressing I try to keep the bar path feeling as close to straight as possible, but I don’t mean forcing it into a perfectly vertical line if that starts to feel unnatural. If the bar naturally travels slightly back towards the shoulders as you press, that’s fine. What I don’t want is the bar wandering all over the place.

For me the idea is to keep the movement controlled, efficient and repeatable while allowing the bar to follow the path that feels strongest for my body.

Mentally, though, I’m still trying to force myself through the bench. The bench obviously isn’t going anywhere, so the bar has to.

That cue has always made far more sense to me than simply lying underneath a heavy weight thinking about pushing a bar towards the ceiling. I’m trying to create force through my whole body while keeping myself absolutely planted against the pad.

And my arse stays on the bench. If your arse is halfway towards the ceiling and you’ve somehow transformed the final half of the rep into a decline bench press, we’re doing different exercises at that point.

I Don’t Bench Exactly the Same Way Every Session

I should probably make something clear here because everything I’ve described above is mainly the setup I use when I’m trying to get the most strength out of my bench press, especially when I’m getting towards the upper end of what I can lift.

If you’re more interested in how I built the strength behind this setup, I’ve written separately about how I eventually built a 170 kg bench press.

That doesn’t mean every warm-up set I’ve ever done looks exactly like that.

Sometimes while I’m warming up I’ll move my hands around. I might go wider and concentrate on how my chest feels through the movement, or I might bring my grip much narrower until it starts looking almost like a close-grip bench press.

There are even weeks where I’ll dramatically lower the weight, put my feet up, take most of the arch out and press from a much flatter position.

I’m not doing that because I suddenly forgot how I bench. I’m deliberately changing the movement and giving myself a different variation to work with.

That kind of deliberate variation is something I use elsewhere too, including in the 3-week training split that stuck with me.

The setup I’ve described throughout this article is the one I come back to when strength is the goal and I want the strongest, most stable bench position I can create. Everything else is simply a variation around that.

That’s also why I don’t think there is one bench press that everybody has to copy exactly. Some people’s bench will look almost identical to mine, some will look dramatically different, and occasionally you’ll look across the gym and think, what the hell is he doing?

My personal favourite is the dancing-feet bench presser. You know the one. Every time the bar starts moving, both feet suddenly develop a life of their own underneath the bench. 💃

Whatever style you use, the big thing for me is that there should be some intention behind it. Know where you’re putting your hands, know where you’re putting your feet, get yourself tight, control the weight and build a setup you can repeat.

That’s how I bench.