If you want to learn how to increase bench press AND in the fastest way possible, you’ve come to the right place.

Most people in the gym are focused on the bench press, whether they like it or not. It’s often the first lift that people want to know your numbers on.

This is a good exercise to do to improve your upper body strength and size. It should be a regular part of your workout routine.

However, the bench press is also the lift that people usually struggle to improve on in terms of strength. This lack of progress can be detrimental, as there is a strong correlation between bench press strength and size.

If you’re looking to increase your bench press, there are only a few methods that have been proven to work. The rest aren’t worth your time and effort.

I will share what the methods are and how to use them to increase your bench press strength

Tip #1: Focus on progressive overload.

If you want to increase how much you can bench press, you need to continually add weight or reps.

Progressive overload is the best way to increase strength and muscles while weightlifting.

Increasing your weights only once you hit the top of your rep range for a certain number of sets is the easiest way to do this.

For example, if your workout says to do 4-6 repetitions of a flat barbell bench press, and you can do 6 repetitions in one set, you would add 5 pounds to each side of the bar (10 pounds total) for your next set. You would keep using that weight until you can do 6 repetitions, and then you would add more weight.

If you only manage to get 3 reps or fewer with your new, heavier weight, then you should reduce the weight by 5 pounds so that you can stay within your target rep range for all future sets.

If you want to see progress in your workout routine, try to increase the reps or weight for each exercise with each workout.

Tip #2: Bench More to Bench More

The best way to improve your bench press is to practice it more frequently. Because it is a skill, and like any skill, the more you practice it the better you will get at it.

Benching More Often Allows For More Volume Work

However, although the previous studies matched volume, another benefit of benching more often is that it does allow you to perform more benching volume per session. Since you have more days to allocate this volume to, you can perform more benching volume per session.

More weekly bench press volume is associated with faster strength gains, so it is beneficial to bench more frequently.

The 2017 meta-analysis from the Journal of Sports Medicine found strong support for the idea that doing more bench presses per week leads to faster strength gains, even in experienced weightlifters. The study found that going from doing less than 5 sets of bench presses per week to 5-9 sets per week led to 16% faster strength gains. When weightlifters did 10 or more sets of bench presses per week, they gained strength 20% faster than when they did fewer than 5 sets per week.

And all in all, suggests that the best way to speed up the strength gains you’ll experience is to:

Increasing the number of days you bench per week as well as
The number of weekly sets you perform.

How To Increase Your Bench Press By Benching More

So, how can you best do this?

Split Your Weekly Bench Sets Into Multiple Sessions

If you want to bench more often, one option is to split your weekly bench sets into multiple sessions. So rather than performing 6 sets of bench press on chest day once a week, split this up into 2 or 3 days per week.

Increase Your Benching Volume

Once you have increased the number of sets you are doing, you can also gradually increase the amount of benching you are doing each week. For example, if you are currently doing 6 sets of bench press per week spread across 2 upper body workouts per week, you can add another 1-2 sets of bench press each week. Eventually, you can add an extra bench day to your workout routine to accommodate the added sets.

Would 5-9 sets of benching per week provide a significant strength boost? According to the research I read, it seems that it would. If you increased that to 10-15 sets per week, would you see a further slight boost?

I recommend doing 5-9 sets per week and gradually increasing it to 10-15 sets per week. This is if your body is still recovering well and you’re focusing on maximizing your bench press strength.

You need to make sure you aren’t training your joints too much. You should manage how often and how intensely you do these bench sessions and other workouts. The next tip will help you with this.

Tip #3: Perform The Right Accessory Lifts For Bench Press

You can boost your bench press strength by adding accessory exercises to your workouts. The best way to do this is by choosing exercises that help strengthen the weak points of your bench press.

If You’re Weakest And Fail Most Right Off The Chest

One way to strengthen a weak point is to do the paused bench press. This is when you pause for 2-3 seconds at the bottom of each rep before going back up. This makes it so that momentum does not help and you have to purely rely on strength and leg drive.

If You Fail Midway Through Your Rep Or During Lockout

The primary reason you can’t bench press more weight is probably because your triceps are weak. The floor press is a great exercise to strengthen your triceps. You can do this exercise with a barbell, but dumbbells are generally much easier to setup. For the floor press, you simply press the weight up as you would normally – but on the floor instead. This helps you prioritize strengthening that mid-range to lockout position that’s limiting your bench press strength.

Other great exercises for building triceps muscle include close grip bench presses and extensions, such as dumbbell extensions or skull crushers.

If you identify which part of the bench press is your weak point, you can make adjustments to your routine to help you improve your strength.

Tip #4: Vary Your Rep Range

If you are new to working out, you don’t need to use difficult schedules or plans to get stronger week by week.

If you are benching more than once a week, it is effective to vary your rep ranges from workout to workout in order to boost strength gain, according to research.

Let’s take a look at how this might fit into my 5-day Bigger Leaner Stronger program if you want to bench press twice per week:

Monday: Push workout (including 3 sets of 4-to-6 reps of flat barbell bench press at 80-to-85% of one-rep max)
Tuesday: Pull and calves
Wednesday: Upper body and core
Thursday: Legs
Friday: Upper body and core (including 3 sets of 8-to-10 reps of flat barbell bench press at 70-to-75% of one-rep max)
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Rest

And here’s how it might look if you want to bench three times per week:

Monday: Push workout (including 3 sets of 4-to-6 reps of flat barbell bench press at 80-to-85% of one-rep max)
Tuesday: Pull and calves
Wednesday: Upper body and core (including 3 sets of 2-to-3 reps of flat barbell bench press at 90-to-95% of one-rep max)
Thursday: Legs
Friday: Upper body and core (including 3 sets of 8-to-10 reps of flat barbell bench press at 70-to-75% of one-rep max)
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Rest

Tip #5: Lift Explosively

According to research, explosive lifting is more effective than slow-rep lifting when it comes to gaining strength.

For example, in one study conducted by scientists at Pablo de Olavide University, researchers split 24 participants into two groups:

A fast rep tempo group that did each rep of bench press as fast as possible.
A slow rep tempo group that did each rep of bench press at about half the speed of the fast rep tempo group.

The benches used in the study had a weight of 300 pounds The study found that those who lifted at a fast tempo increased their bench press by 18%, while those who lifted at a slow tempo only increased their press by 10%.

The main point is that you should lift weights quickly while still using good form and being able to control the weight.

The weight should be lowered in a steady and controlled manner, and then raised as quickly as possible.

Tip #6: Do the Right Accessory Exercises

An accessory exercise is any exercise that you do that directly improves your performance on another exercise. For example, doing bicep curls will not help you improve your performance on a squat, but doing exercises that improve your stability, mobility, and explosiveness will.

The Romanian deadlift is a good exercise to do in addition to the deadlift because it helps to strengthen many of the same muscles. It is also not as taxing as the deadlift, so you can do it more frequently without tiring yourself out.

The heavy weights you use in exercises like the bench press will help increase your bench press. Exercises that allow you to use similar movement patterns will also help increase your bench press.

While we are talking about it, do not use the Smith machine for any of your exercises that are related to bench pressing.

If you want to get stronger at the bench press, you should avoid using the Smith machine, according to research.

Tip #7: Strengthen Your Triceps

The muscles in your chest and shoulders are the ones doing most of the work when you press the bar during a bench press, but it is your triceps that give the extra power to “lock the weight out” at the top of each repetition.

You need to have strong triceps if you want to be able to lift heavy weights for repetitions.

There are many exercises that can be done in order to build strong triceps, but some exercises are more effective than others. The best exercises for building strong triceps are the triceps extension, the triceps pushdown, and the triceps dip. These exercises are the best because they target all three heads of the triceps muscle, and they can be done with a variety of different weights and intensities.

Close-grip bench press
Weighted dip
Dumbbell overhead Triceps extension
EZ-bar skull crusher
Cable triceps pushdown
JM press

Tip #8: Take the Right Supplements

This is the least important.

Although there are many pills and powders available that claim to increase your bench press, they will not work automatically.

But here’s the good news:

You can build muscle faster by taking certain supplements if you know how to eat and train properly.

Here are the best supplements for increasing your bench numbers:

0.8-to-1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day. This provides your body with the “building blocks” it needs to build and repair muscle tissue and help you recover from your bench press workouts. If you want a clean, convenient, and delicious source of protein, try Whey+ or Casein+.
3-to-5 grams of creatine per day. This will boost muscle and strength gain, improve anaerobic endurance, and reduce muscle damage and soreness from your bench press workouts. If you want a 100% natural source of creatine that also includes two other ingredients that will help boost muscle growth and improve recovery, try Recharge.
One serving of Pulse per day. Pulse is a 100% natural pre-workout drink that enhances energy, mood, and focus; increases strength and endurance; and reduces fatigue. You can also get Pulse with caffeine or without.