Or, why bench pressing is nearly always a good idea

I thought, post-Valentine’s day, it would be a good week to focus on the bench press, my most recent but intense gym crush. Whilst all other parts of gym and/or life may not be playing ball, there is always bench to come back to. I never get bored of it, no matter how slow the progress. In a snog/marry/avoid choice between squat/bench press/deadlift then I guess bench would be the snog – marriage still being reserved for the deadlift, of course.

I was talking to coach Chris Allen about benching (he himself a mean bencher having been GB record holder at the age of 19 with a 107.5kg bench whilst weighing under 59kg himself) and he described it as being a ‘total body exercise which gives you the biggest bang for buck in terms of developing upper body strength compared to other lifts, and to be athletic and co-ordinated enough to stabilise your body to press the maximum weight physically possible is highly satisfying. Sure, you can develop muscle in other ways but by using the body as a whole system is deeply gratifying and worth pursuing. As well as being able to utilise this strength then in your everyday life.’ I started thinking about why I like it so much and I guess my answer is: what he said. Plus also for me, this is all new and therefore exciting, as like many non-athlete females, my upper body strength and muscular base was pretty much nothing.

In fact, Before Bench, I had managed to live a perfectly satisfactory life, thank you, without the need to develop pecs, shoulders, triceps, lats, rhomboids and triceps. Or so I thought. How little I knew of the wonders and enjoyment of training my upper body. I am lucky then that my coach made me try the bench press despite my protestations, otherwise I may never have discovered it.

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But it’s still fairly uncommon though to see women benching in the gym. Whereas a female friend of mine was discouraged from benching too much just in case she started to become ‘flat-chested’ I, on the other hand, have been actively trying to build up ‘too much muscle’ ever since the first small signs of upper body development appeared. To me I feel I look more curvy with muscle than without, no slouchy pigeon-chest for me these days.

And as this is a blog about badassery I have to point out that my bench press total (59kg with competition pause at the bottom, harder than touch-and-go) is as nothing compared to Hettie Simpson, nutrition coach and advanced powerlifter (3^rd in the GB Open in 2023). Last year I saw an Instagram post of her and her coach as she worked towards a massive 100kg bench press and I thought this was stone cold awesomeness, pure badassery even.

She was kind enough to talk to me about that and her relationship with the bench press, and about how she almost never event took it up at all, ‘Before I came to JC Strength Academy (a powerlifting focused gym near Weston-Super-Mare) I used to train in a commercial gym and there was one maybe two other women in the whole gym who I would see train bench on a regular basis, very, very light weights. Other than that I was the only one.‘

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Once Hettie got introduced by a colleague into the world of powerlifting and competition she just ‘got the bug’ and threw off her school and teenage years of ‘doing anything, everything to get out of doing PE’ to where she is now, very much at the top of her game and someone who really gets inspired by competition. And at Project:Badassery we are very much here for people deciding that they are actually really competitive when they weren’t before!

But she so nearly never benched.

‘In fact, I had been strength training in the gym with a pt, including upper body which was really quite strong, for over 5 years before I even touched a bench press. Hilariously I had only been training bench for about 6 months before my first ever powerlifting competition! That may have been because it was the slight stigma of it being such a male-dominated movement. I don’t really think I consciously considered that was how I thought about it, but the fact that was what was going through my mind meant that I just instantly wrote it off. It wasn’t that I was intimidated by it being practised by men, rather that it didn’t even cross my mind to do it myself because it was such a big deal to them (and not the women).’

So let’s counteract this narrative, in this my late valentine missive. Here are 10 positive things about developing a love of Benching for anyone who has ever wondered if it might be for them:

1. It’s just as much about back, shoulder and tricep strength as chest so it really is an all-round exercise
2. I think everyone looks good and feels good whilst benching. In fact it is the ultimate feel good lift (maybe apart from the deadlift)
3. It takes a long time to master the technique properly and that keeps it interesting (my coach Chris Allen is a bench specialist which helps)
4. Contrary to received wisdom I can testify that benching is actually good for chest shape and definition for women, as well as for men
5. The process of getting into position, pulling the bar down onto the chest, resting it briefly and then pushing it away feels elegant as well as strong
6. Being able to create the back ‘arch’ which helps create body tension to press the bar away comes with practice and is particularly satisfying when you were never of a previously yogic or gymnastic persuasion
7. Just to repeat, I think it helps me build the ‘bad bitch vibe’ look as my friend Steph put it. She is also an ultimate badass also with a strong bench even though she doesn’t compete
8. Having the weight above your chest can be a little scary when it gets heavier (make sure you have a spotter or use pins if you’re not sure…) making it a great purposeful activity. You cannot be thinking about anything else because you mustn’t drop the bar!!
9. You don’t get as exhausted and fatigued in the practice of it compared to other lifts – I bench 3 times per week and don’t feel particularly tired afterwards like one does with a squat or deadlift
10. As it still seems to be a minority pursuit (particularly for women) you can be part of a small and select group of people who understand what a great exercise it is and there’s often a small nod of respect between benchers…..

So how was Hettie’s journey to that 100kg bench press? What I heard from her on our call was all about patience and knowing that sticking with the plan would eventually get her to where she wanted to go… Anyway, it paid off for her and her coach Jon Clarke, in December 2023.

If you want to watch it have a look here:-

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0pXJ3eIwIGU-MZcDjvbWT3CDJhCTelTXv2xJc0

‘There’s many steps to it, primarily I knew that one day it was going to be there for me but it took me two years from the first day I said I am going to bench 100kg. Sometimes you just have to be patient because the rate of improvement is going to slow down. I didn’t rush the process. Every time we peaked bench and we knew a pb was there, rather than overshooting and trying to get to it to it we had a lot of 1kg wins on the way. I went from 92.5kg to 93kg with my next pb, then 95kg, then 96kg. Then I got 96kg in May last year and then not another pb until the day I got 100kg in December.

‘And no it wasn’t planned. It was the week before my next competition and we were going to do a single at 95kg and that was supposed to be it but we did the single and it just flew up and so we thought great, this is the day to do a pb and so we got 97kg and then the 97kg flew up as well, and so we thought well we’ve got no choice we’ve got to try it now because if it’s going to be there then we have to go for it. And that’s the good thing about bench you can get away with that because you can’t do that with squat and deadlift because they are so taxing on the system. That is one of the things that makes bench so exciting in the middle of a programme, at the wrong time, if it feels good, you can just cheat the system and go for a pb on the day. And so that’s what we did, and it was completely out of the blue, entirely unexpected, I had set the goal of when I would like to hit the 100kg and I didn’t expect it before competition…’

The fact that bench pressing 100kg is so immense is not lost on her. It’s a scary amount of weight to have above you whilst lying on your back. As she said in her Instagram post:

‘Powerlifting? Completed it mate.’

I agree.

And, vive la bench!

Photo: Copyright White Lights Media