reckonerBarbell bench press
The heaviest press most lifters own. It trains the chest, the front of the shoulder and the triceps in one movement, and it is usually the first lift on a push day because everything after it is easier when it is done.
Elbows tucked, lower to the chest.
- Pattern
- Horizontal push
- Trains
- Chest, triceps, front delts
- Kit
- Barbell, bench, rack
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Bar
- 20 kg
- Skill
- Technical
- Recovery cost
- High
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder, wrist, elbow
How to do it
Set the bench
Lie down with your eyes under the bar. Feet flat on the floor, wide enough that your knees sit over your heels, and keep your legs pushing into the ground for the whole set.
Set the back
Pull your shoulder blades together and down into the bench, then hold them there. This is the position you press from, and it is the position you have to still be in on the last rep.
Find the groove
With your arms straight the bar sits over the base of the sternum. Lower it under control to the lower chest with your elbows at roughly sixty degrees, not flared out to the sides.
Press
Drive the bar back up and slightly towards your face, so it finishes over the shoulder joint. If the bar path is drifting towards your chin on the way up, the weight is winning.
What goes wrong
Bouncing the bar off the chest
The bounce does the work instead of the chest, so the number you log is not a number you own. Touch, pause for an instant, then press.
Flaring the elbows out to ninety degrees
It shortens the range and puts the shoulder in the worst position it can be in under load. Tuck to about sixty degrees and the press gets stronger and stops hurting.
Letting the shoulder blades unset on the last rep
That is the rep people get hurt on. Rack it while your back is still where you put it, and log the set you actually finished.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 60 kg, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 x 6 at 60 kg | More reps 6 → 7 repsRPE 7.5 with room left in the range, so reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 4 x 7 at 60 kg | More reps 7 → 8 repsRPE 7.5 with room left in the range, so reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 4 x 8 at 60 kg | Deload 40% of sets offThree weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 4 | 2 x 8 at 60 kg | More reps 8 → 9 repsRPE 7.5 with room left in the range, so reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to four sets. |
| 5 | 4 x 9 at 60 kg | More reps 9 → 10 repsRPE 7.5 with room left in the range, so reps climb before the load does. |
| 6 | 4 x 10 at 60 kg | Load up 60 kg → 62.5 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7.5, so the bar goes up 2.5 kg to 62.5 kg and reps reset to six. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running reckoner/engine.py when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
How often should I bench press?
Twice a week suits most lifters. Reckoner puts three or four days between the heavy session and the lighter one, so the second is not paying for the first.
How much should I be lifting?
There is no number that fits everybody. Reckoner compares your best set against population data and gives you a percentile, which is a yardstick rather than a target.
Is the bench press safe for my shoulders?
For most people, with the shoulder blades set and the elbows tucked. Tell Reckoner your shoulder is a problem and it will not prescribe this lift at all: it picks a press your shoulder tolerates instead.
Similar movements
Reckoner will offer any of these when this lift stalls. One of the two has a page so far.