Bench Press Form – 5 Common Beginner Mistakes
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By Brock Paterson
I’ve got a confession to make… my bench press form sucks.
I’ve been a certified Personal Trainer for over 20 years. I have a degree in Exercise Prescription and Management and have trained athletes along with not so athletic gym warriors. I consider myself a stickler for correct exercise technique, especially in the weight room.
How did this happen?
If you were to observe my bench press form from afar, you may not even notice the errs of my ways. Maybe I’d deserve the odd infringement notice.
Poor taste in gym attire? ✔
Squeaky bowel? Only on the heavy lifts. ✔
But mostly, for all intents and purposes, you’d see what looked like standard fair when it comes to bench press form.
- Lie on the bench
- De-rack the barbell
- Lower the barbell to chest
- Push the barbell to the ceiling
- Repeat
- Rack the bar
Seems pretty stock standard, right?
Wrong.
Where did I go wrong?
As a teenager, I was first introduced to the bench press when using a free one-week gym membership. My buddy Marcus had spun it my way hoping I’d sign up. After school, we’d head into our local gym in West Auckland suburbia. I’d blindly follow Marcus from machine to machine, bench to rack to stack. I had no clue about what I was doing.
There was never any real workout plan, and consequently, we’d usually find ourselves milling around the bench press area.
Here, I picked up some lifelong bad habits. And as a result, my bench press form would suffer for many years to come.
In this article, I want to help you avoid the technique flaws I engrained.
What are we trying to achieve with the bench press exercise?
If you are doing bench, you most likely want to increase chest strength, size or both.
There are 1000’s of articles that will detail the specifics on this, but let’s just keep it simple here.
Bench press muscles
The *2 main muscles we are working in the bench press are:
- Pectoralis Major
- Anterior Deltoids
In that order.
Unless your form sucks like mine did and you find you are shoulder dominant and your pecs have gone MIA.
* No, I didn’t include the triceps here. Although a great little helper muscle for the bench press, it’s not really a target muscle in this case.
With that being said, let’s look at the common mistakes new lifters (including some older ones) make with their bench press form.
5 common mistakes that are hurting your bench press form.
Prefer to watch the video?
Mistake 1. Keeping your back too flat and not lifting the chest.
This is super common. Perhaps a hangover from the old days. Back then keeping a “straight back” or “neutral spine” was the autocue for any lift.
I’ve seen plenty of textbook examples and even technical articles from scientific journals where it was explicitly stated to keep your back flat. Doing this encourages overactivation of the anterior deltoid. Furthermore, a flat back increases the forces acting on the shoulder during the pressing phase of the movement. As a result, you’re throwing your shoulder into a less stable position, which under serious load is going to end in a bad way for your shoulder joint.
Mistake 2. Allowing your wrists to move into extension under the bar.
For many new lifters, this bad habit is engrained from the outset unless it’s picked up early and remedied.
It may feel quite comfortable to allow the wrist to relax into an extended position with the weight of the bar pushing back on the palm of the hand.
However, with heavy loads you are placing undue strain on the wrists as the wrist flexors are stretched and forced into a load-bearing position in an attempt to stabilise the bar. You are also compressing the wrist joints in extension at the same time. This position will limit the loads you can tolerate as you begin to lift heavier.
Keep the bar sitting comfortably within the palms of your hand and away from the first knuckle region. By doing this, you concentrate on keeping the wrists strong and aligned; allowing the forces to travel from your muscles directly up and through the bar.
Mistake 3. Flaring your elbows too wide
This is often a result of trying to lower the bar too close to your neck or using too wide a grip.
Lowering the bar too high up your body reduces the amount of space in the shoulder capsule and can lead to impingement of the shoulder muscles and tendons as they rub or compress during the movement.
Most people will find a sweet spot where their elbow angle sits between 45 – 70 degrees. In this range, the joint capsule is in a better position for the tendons of the shoulder muscle allowing them to move without undue compression. Consequently, with the elbows and shoulders in the right position, you’ll experience less rubbing and wear and tear as you complete the bench press.
Mistake 4. Not using your legs
Yes, we are targeting your chest here, but creating a strong and rigid body position from your shoulders to your feet is a simple way to add strength to your bench.
Now, the scientific community is split on whether applying a focused leg drive effort is actually beneficial in increasing overall bench pressing strength. However, I suggest that providing a solid base of support to transfer force is important. No matter what resistance exercise we choose.
Use your feet and a locked-in core to ensure you have something to push against when you start to drive the barbell up off your chest.
Mistake 5. Lifting your head off the bench
When you lift your head off the bench you are making it easier for mistake number 1 (flat back – numero uno of faults) to occur. Keeping your back too flat and not lifting the chest is more likely when you lift your head as you press.
As we move our head forward, we encourage the chest to collapse, we roll our shoulders forward and lose activation in the pecs.
You do not need to watch the bar. With a good back arch and strong foot contact, you simply feel the bar touch the sternum area and then punch the load back up. Some say the bar should stop an inch off the chest. I don’t. But if the chest isn’t up (e.g. good back arch and strong foot contact) then bar to chest just means more shoulder joint strain.
For a novice lifter, this may feel awkward. So, starting out with a light weight until you can feel the correct movement path will allow you to maintain an effective and safe bench press.
How’s your bench press form shaping up?
If you often find yourself gazing skyward under the bar at the gym, then one or two of these common bench pressing mistakes may be eerily familiar to you.
If like me, you discovered your bench press form could do with a slight fine-tune, let me assure you it’s never too late to make those adjustments.
Next time you are benching do a mental check;
- Are my feet firmly on the ground and can I push a little through my heels?
- Is there a good arch in my back with my rib cage up and chest out?
- Are my wrists in a strong position?
- When I press, does the bar touch near my sternum, below my nipples, with my elbows in, not way out?
As I found out, this is not a new way to do an old thing. Its what I would have learnt by studying a specific Personal Training course at the outset. One that focused on learning, applying and perfecting the basics.
Don’t worry though, my bench press form is on the improve and I hope you find a couple of tweaks here for yourself too.
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Great article Brock
I like how you simplified these mistakes in a topic, as you said, has, a ton of articles.
Thanks Luis. I’m glad you enjoyed the article and hope you found it useful.
Hi Brock
Thanks for the article on Bench Press.
I am a 74 year old senior and love health and fitness.
I usually go to the gym.at least 4 days a week and am part of.a walking group that was created in our community and walk around 10 k a week.
I am vwr disappointed that PT Instructors seem to have little training in how to look after us Seniors and I keep seeing instructors trying to teach us ,with no understanding of how our bodies change with age.
All the info I have learnt comes from www. acc, www.health govt and www.hqsc.
Recently our gym has been employing trainee undergraduates that treat is oldies like 20 year olds in our excercise classes, I know is extremely dangerous.as oldies have joint problems in hips and knees plus we are certainly not as strong as we were pre retirement
Would you consider sharing your knowledge with me as I would like some references on how these lessons should be taught.
eg what is a safe set of excercises for an over 65 group.
Kind regards
Chris Shirley
Dip T TTC Waikato University
NZIHF LEVEL4 Excercise
Commercial Sailor NZCLM
YNZ Sailing Master.
Hi Chris, sounds like you are doing amazing with your current fitness regime. I’m impressed.
Stay tuned as we will have some specific content for training our more senior clients safely and effectively in the not-to-distant future!
As with all exercise programmes, there is not a one size fits all approach. Even more so, as we age. I definitely didn’t envisage the creaky knees I have now when I was in my 20s starting out! And I think a lot of young trainers still struggle to fathom the true nature of aging. We’ll cover more on this in future articles.
Thanks for your comment.
Very informative article I loved it !!
Hi Andy, thanks for taking the time to check it out.