Barbell bench press

What it is

Lie on a bench with your eyes roughly under the bar, feet flat on the floor. Set your shoulder blades down and back into the bench.

Take a grip a little wider than your shoulders, unrack the bar to over your chest, lower it under control to about the lower chest, and press it back up. Rack it deliberately at the end.

What it demands

Pressing strength from pectoralis major, the front of the deltoid and triceps brachii, at a load nothing else in the collection matches for the upper body.

Shoulder tolerance at the bottom, where the arms are below the line of the body and the joint is least bony-stable.

Less balance and coordination than dumbbells at the same total load, because the bar holds the two sides in a fixed relationship — which is why a barbell moves more weight than two dumbbells.

Safety, and this is not optional

This is the only movement in the collection that can trap you. A failed repetition leaves a loaded bar on your chest, and people have been seriously hurt and killed this way.

Three ways to make that a non-event, and use at least one:

• Safety bars or pins in a rack, set just above chest height
• A spotter who is paying attention
• No collars, so that if you are truly stuck you can tip the bar and let the plates slide off one end at a time. Ugly, loud, and it works.

The floor press and dumbbells have no equivalent failure mode — dumbbells can simply be dropped sideways.

What usually goes wrong

Bouncing the bar off the chest. It touches under control; it does not rebound.

Elbows flared to ninety degrees. Tucked somewhat is stronger and easier on the shoulder, as in a push-up.

Feet up on the bench. Removes a stable base for no benefit.

Losing the shoulder blades. They stay set down and back throughout, not shrugging up as the press finishes.

Where it sits

The top of the horizontal push pattern by load. The route runs push-up → floor press → dumbbell bench press → here, with the range and the consequences of failure both increasing along the way.