Written by Garett Reid | NSCA, CSCS, CISSN, M.S.E.S.S
Fact checked by Sam Coleman, Co-Founder
FACT CHECKED
Performing the bench press is easy. What gets a bit complicated is knowing how many reps you should do. 8? 12? 1? It's really not too complicated once you understand the movement a little better and how different reps promote different adaptations in the human body.
This article will review how many reps you should be using on the bench press depending on your goals. Plus, we’ll give you some actual rep schemes to use. We'll also go over how many reps to use on bench press for different goals and different bench press variations.
The Bench Press
The bench press might be the most popular exercise in the world. It's been a staple in bodybuilding and strength sports for decades and will likely always be. In fact, it's one of three exercises performed in powerlifting!
Most coaches consider the bench press to be one of your primary compound movements, which lay the foundation for your training. Specifically, it's your primary horizontal pressing movement, with the overhead press being the primary movement for vertical pressing.
For this reason, it's usually one of, if not the first, free weight exercises a person learns inside the gym. You need to master it as it will likely be a part of your training for your entire lifting career.
What Muscles Does The Bench Press Train?
The bench press is an upper-body pushing exercise that trains 3 primary muscles;
- Pectoral muscles
- Triceps
- Anterior deltoid
Pectoral Muscles
Your pectorals are made up of two different heads;
- Clavicle: The clavicle is also known as the "upper chest” Studies show that an incline bench press targets this head more than a flat bench press.
- Sternocostal: Your sternocostal head is much bigger than the clavicle head and is composed of your middle and lower chest.
Together, the pectoral muscles are the primary movers in the bench press and are activated across every variation of the exercise. This is due to horizontal shoulder adduction (moving your arm across your chest) and shoulder flexion (moving your arm up) that occurs.
Several factors can influence the workload on the pecs, including grip width, eccentric control, and the range of motion used.
Triceps
The triceps are essential for elbow extension and serve as the main supporting muscles for the pecs during the bench press. In fact, they are the primary movers during the last ½ or ⅓ of the movement as you're locking out the movement.
Some coaches and lifters will even suggest that the bench press is actually primarily a triceps exercise, but there is a ton of nuance to this. However, we can put it this way: You will never see a great bench press with small triceps.
If you want to increase the demand on the triceps, you can narrow your grip and perform the close grip bench press.
Anterior Deltoids
Your shoulders have three heads;
The front part of your shoulders, the anterior delts, plays a crucial role in assisting the pecs during the bench press, specifically with shoulder flexion, a movement primarily driven by the anterior deltoid.
In fact, many beginner lifters report experiencing more stress in their shoulders than in their chests during the bench press. This is primarily due to improper set-up, specifically benching with a flat back.
Bench Press Reps: Strength vs Reps
Now let’s review how many reps you should use for the bench press. The answer isn't straightforward, as your goal will dictate how many reps you should use, primarily strength of muscle growth—let’s start with strength.
How Many Reps To Use Bench Press For Strength?
Strength is developed by improving our neuromuscular system, basically how our brains communicate with the muscles. By improving this connection, the existing muscle can produce more force. To be clear, improving strength is about the existing muscles working better together to create more force.
Therefore, we recommend using a load of 85% or higher when building strength. Well, it's not just "our opinion," as multiple studies have shown that these heavier loads are optimal, if not necessary, for building strength.
Of course, you can build strength using lighter loads and more reps. However, the farther away you get from your 1RM, the less demand you place on the neuromuscular system. An extreme way to illustrate this is to think about any endurance athlete building large amounts of muscle.
Of course not! Therefore, to optimize your strength using the bench press, use loads of 85% or greater, which equates to 1-5 reps.
How Many Reps To Use Bench Press For Muscle Growth?
We can now look at hypertrophy, also known as muscle growth.
Unlike muscle strength, the primary variable that dictates muscle growth is volume. Several mechanisms are occurring, such as mechanical tension, metabolic damage, and muscle damage. However, it doesn't matter how they play a role in this situation because volume is the training variable we use to increase muscle growth.
With that in mind, you can technically build muscle with any amount of reps. In fact, this is one of the clearer aspects of training we know. For example, this study from Brad Schoenfield put two groups of lifters on different programs:
- A powerlifter group using a rep scheme of 7X3
- A bodybuilding group using a rep scheme of 3x10
However, despite having different rep schemes, their overall volume was equal. At the end of the study, they saw equal amounts of growth (concerning strength, only the powerlifting group saw significant gains, providing more evidence for using heavy loads).
With that said, using moderate loads (70-80%) that equates to 8-12 reps is ideal. The reason is due to the relation between %1RM and the number of reps you can perform. For example, let's say your 1RM is 100 lbs. This is how many reps you can perform at different percentages with total volume;
- 1 Rep X 100lbs = 100lbs
- 2 Reps X 97lbs = 194lbs
- 3 Reps X 94lbs = 282lbs
- 8 Reps X 81lbs = 648lbs
- 10 Reps X 750lbs = 750lbs
As you can see, dropping the load slightly allows for many more reps, which means more volume. Therefore, when muscle growth is your main goal, stick with 8-12 reps.
Explosive Strength/Max Intent With Bench Press
There’s another variable you can use for bench press that many people don’t talk about often; we’re talking about explosive strength or maximal intent.
Max intent refers to pressing the barbell as fast as possible which produces the greatest amount of force. Newer research has found this to be a viable option for increasing strength without using maximal loads as well as explosive strength and power. There are traditional power exercises, such as ballistic barbell throws, these are a bit difficult and have unneeded risk.
That said, these are usually performed with low reps, no more than 5. Even though you may be using a light load, you're pushing it with so much force that you will fatigue. Basically, every rep is like a max effort. If you have never done this, try it,, and you'll see what we're talking about.
You could do ballistic barbell throws, which is exactly what they sound like, but we don't think the benefits outweigh the risks. You could perform them on a Smith machine. However, we'd recommend explosive push-ups or max intent.
Is Bench Press Better With High Reps Or Low Reps?
The bench press can be used for anything—strength, muscle growth, power—it doesn't matter. However, there are dozens of chest exercises, and they all help optimize training. That means the barbell bench press is best used in a specific way with a certain rep range. With that in mind, this is our opinion on how best to use the bench press in your training.
Barbell Bench Press For Strength (Low-Moderate Reps)
We think that the barbell is best used for strength, with the highest rep range going up to 8 reps but more often used with 1-6 reps. Due to the movement pattern and muscles involved, along with the barbell using both hands for stabilization, the bench press allows very heavy loads. Remember that strength is dictated by increasing the demand for force production, meaning greater loads so it makes sense to use that to increase strength.
We are not saying you can never go higher or can't. We're simply saying that the barbell bench press is best utilized within these ranges. This is especially true for 85% and lower (1-5 reps) as performing heavy reps can be challenging with dumbbells.
Dumbbell Bench Press For Muscle Growth (Moderate-High Reps)
When training for muscle growth, you may want to consider using dumbbells when performing bench presses. While not concrete, there's a general rule that says barbells are for strength and dumbbells are for muscle growth. This is primarily due to dumbbells allowing greater range of motion and more muscle activation.
In addition, if you want to focus on muscle growth, you should use moderate to high reps. The lowest we'll ever go with dumbbells is 5 reps, but only after someone has sufficient training with them. Generally, 6 reps is the lowest when performing a dumbbell bench press.’
We will generally stop at 12 reps, on the high end, but you could go higher. On occasion, we may go do 15+ reps on bench press, but this is rare and done just to shake thing
Bench Press Variations
Another factor that dictates the number of reps to use is what bench press you're doing! Of course, when we say bench press, the main exercise is the flat bench press. However, quite a few variations are used inside the gym. Each variation tends to have a rep range that suits it best. Remember, these are general guidelines, not hard fast rules:
Incline Bench Press
The incline bench can refer to any bench press with an inclined angle but is generally performed at 30°or 45°. While this has nothing to do with reps, studies suggest that 30° may be the optimal angle for upper chest activation.
That said, the reps used for the incline press are generally similar to those used for the flat bench press, including the use of the barbell or dumbbell.
- Barbell: 1-8 reps with more strength training using 1-6 reps
- Dumbbell: 6-12 reps, which is used more for muscle growth
- For both: 6-8 reps is the middle ground
With that said, it's less common to see people perform very low reps (1-3). This doesn't mean you can't, but it's not as often seen.
Decline Bench Press
The decline bench is a bench press variation that puts the bench at a decline with your head lower than your hips. Similar to the incline bench press, an angle of -15° or -30° can be used.
It's used to target the lower chest, and studies have shown that training at -15° does, in fact, produce greater muscle activation in the lower pecs; however, it is slight.
With that said, it is rare to see a decline in bench presses performed with heavy weights and low reps. The primary reason is linked to safety. If you miss a lift or god-forbid you drop it, the barbell will come back on your head. Not good.
In addition, muscle growth is the primary reason people will perform the decline bench press. Therefore, the lowest we would ever use is 6 reps, with 8+ being more common.
Another unique aspect is that the barbell is still used even with higher reps. We can't say for sure why this is, but it's likely because dumbbells are awkward.
Close Grip Bench Press
The close-grip bench press is a great addition to target the triceps. In fact, we think it should definitely be in your rotation. That said, it's primarily used with higher reps, with 6 reps being the lowest. The range of motion is significantly larger with this movement, so using heavier loads can be difficult.
Therefore, anywhere from 6-12 reps would work great with 8 reps being the sweet spot.
Floor Press & Block Presses
Floor presses and block presses are both bench press variations primarily used in the strength world. Their primary focus is to train the top half of the movement, including the lockout.
The floor press has you perform the press laying on the ground. Therefore, when you bring the load down, your arms are stopped by the ground. On the other hand, the block press has you place a block on your chest that you bring the barbell down to.
These are strength-specific but usually used with lower reps of 1-6. Mind you, when you do perform singles, they are rarely a true 1-rep max.
When Do You Do Bench Press In Your Session (Exercise Order)
Another aspect of the bench press and reps used is where it sits in your exercise order.
Generally speaking, the bench press is the primary pushing exercise for most people. Sometimes, we will use the overhead press as the primary exercise, but the bench press would then be used second.
Or, if you train your pushing muscles twice a week, the bench press would be the primary exercise on one day, while the overhead press would be the primary exercise for the other day.
Regardless, it just follows the basic rules of exercise order that states your biggest exercise (or most important) first. The "biggest" can have some different meanings, but it's either the heaviest (absolute) or the exercise with the highest intensity (lowest reps, highest %1RM). This is why your overhead press may come first sometimes as you use a lower rep/higher %1RM.
Examples:
- Bench Press 4X4 @85%
- Overhead Press 3X6 @80%
- Incline Dumbbell Press 3X8 @75%
Or:
- Overhead Press 4X4 @85%
- Incline Bench Press 3X6 @80%
- Decline Bench Press 3X10 @70%
Or:
- Incline Bench Press 3X6 @80%
- Overhead Press 3X8 @75%
- Close Grip Bench Press 3X10 @70%
The Best Rep Schemes For The Bench Press
We’re not going to go over some rep schemes that work well with the bench press. These are ones that stand out other than basic schemes such as 3X8 or 3X10.
3X5 Or 5X5 (Strength)
3X5 and 5X5 areclassic strength rep schemes that work well with any compound movement. It’s basic and straightforward but works real well, especially with new to intermediate lifters.
Newer lifters should start with 3X5 while those with experience could use 5X5. This rep scheme uses basic progressive overload and adds 5lbs weekly.
5X10 EMOM (Muscle Growth)
5X10 in an EMOM fashion is similar to German Volume Training except you’re “only” doing 5 sets. To do this, use a load that’s around 60% of your 1RM. You’ll then set a timer and perform 10 reps. Check the clock and once it hits 1:00, you’ll perform another 10 reps. Then, once the clock hits 2:00, you’ll perform another 10 reps.
10/8/6/4 Or 8/6/4/2 (Muscle & Strength)
These ramp up sets are great as they work different rep schemes in the same session. You can choose either one and see how it works for you.
5/3/1/10
5/3/1/10 is a type of periodization that cycles through in 4-week blocks. The weeks look like this;
- 5X5 @80%
- 3X3 @85-90%
- Work up to single at 95% or 9RPE
- 3X10 50%
This is built as a pure strength rep scheme. After each block, you’ll increase the load and repeat.
Optimal Rep Range For The Bench Press
As you can see, you can utilize a wide range of reps to improve your bench press training. That said, if we could only choose one rep range, it would be 4-6. As we think this makes the most out of the barbell bench press.
Ultimately, you'll likely use the entire rep range (1-15) when bench pressing during your career. Regardless of what you use, the most important aspect is to always apply progressive overload. Whether you have 3 reps, 6 reps, or 10, your goal should be to use more load with those reps and always use progressive overload.
Must Read: The Best Bench Press Program
Garett Reid
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