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Horizontal push · Barbell

Close-grip bench press

The bench press with your hands in to about shoulder width. It is still a chest press: chest activity was much the same across grips, while the triceps worked harder than on a wide grip1. The weight comes down a little2, which makes it a second bench for the week rather than a triceps lift in disguise.

Hands shoulder width, elbows tucked in.

The cue Reckoner puts on your wrist mid set.
Pattern
Horizontal push
Trains
Chest, triceps, front delts
Kit
Barbell, bench, rack
Loading
A weight you choose
Reckoner prescribes
3 sets of 8 to 12 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

Muscles worked

Primary
Chest · Triceps · Front delts

How to do it

  1. Set the safeties first

    Set the rack's safety bars a little below where your chest sits when you lie down, so a missed rep lands on steel and not on you. A narrow grip makes the bar harder to steer at the bottom, so this is not a step to skip. Lie with your eyes under the bar.

  2. Hands about shoulder width

    Grip the bar so your forearms are vertical when the bar is on your chest. That is a hand or so inside your normal bench grip, not hands touching. Keep your wrists stacked straight over your elbows, because a bent wrist under a loaded bar is the first thing to complain.

  3. Lower to the bottom of your breastbone

    Elbows travel close to your sides rather than flaring out, and the bar touches lower on your chest than your normal bench does. That lower touch point is what lets the elbows stay tucked. Touch, do not bounce.

  4. Press up and back over your shoulders

    Drive the bar off your chest and finish with it over your shoulders, wrists still over your elbows. Finishing over the shoulders rather than over the face is where the bar is easiest to hold. Lock out under control and rack it from there.

What goes wrong

How Reckoner progresses this lift

Six weeks of this lift, from 50 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.

Close-grip bench press, six weeks
WeekPrescribedWhat it did
13 x 8 at 50 kgMore reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does.
23 x 9 at 50 kgMore reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does.
33 x 10 at 50 kgMore reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does.
43 x 11 at 50 kgMore reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does.
53 x 12 at 50 kgDeload 40% of sets offFive 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.
62 x 12 at 50 kgLoad up 50 kg → 52.5 kgYou hit the top of the range with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7), so the bar goes up 2.5 kg to 52.5 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to ten. You are now working 8 to 12. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets.

Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself 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

Is the close-grip bench a chest or a triceps exercise?

Both, chest first. Chest activity was much the same across narrow, medium and wide grips, and the wide grip used the triceps less1. Reckoner counts it as a chest lift with the triceps and front delts working beside it.

How close is close grip?

About shoulder width, with your forearms vertical at the bottom. Think a hand or so narrower than your usual bench, not thumbs touching.

Will Reckoner put this in my plan?

It can, once you are past the beginner stage, and never as the main lift a block is built around. It sits in the flat press group with the bench press, so it is one of the lifts offered when you want to change your bench. Shoulder, wrist and elbow are recorded against it.

Similar movements

Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.

Barbell bench pressDecline barbell bench pressDecline dumbbell pressDumbbell bench pressDumbbell floor pressDumbbell squeeze pressSmith machine bench press

Sources

  1. Saeterbakken and colleagues, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021. The Effect of Grip Width on Muscle Strength and Electromyographic Activity in Bench Press among Novice- and Resistance-Trained Men twenty-eight men lifting six rep max loads with narrow, medium and wide grips, with similar activity in the other muscles measured including the chest, lower triceps activity with the wide grip than the medium and narrow, and lower six rep max loads with the narrow grip
  2. Larsen, Gomo and van den Tillaar, Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 2021. A Biomechanical Analysis of Wide, Medium, and Narrow Grip Width Effects on Kinematics, Horizontal Kinetics, and Muscle Activity on the Sticking Region in Recreationally Trained Males During 1-RM Bench Pressing fourteen bench trained men pressing a one rep max of 103.7 kg with a narrow grip against 108.9 kg medium and 109.8 kg wide, with more triceps activity on the medium and narrow grips than the wide