Bench Press Program: A Free 8-Week Plan to Raise Your Max

A good bench press program has you benching two or three times a week, with one heavy day, one higher-rep day and an optional lighter technique day, and it raises the weight in small planned steps for seven weeks before you test in week eight. The plan below does exactly that. Every weight is a percentage of a training max you can work out from a set of five, so you never need to grind a risky single to get started.

It's our own programme, written for lifters who've benched for at least six months and whose progress has slowed. If you're newer than that, you'll get further by adding 2.5kg a week to three sets of five until that stops working; come back when it does.

Find your training max without a 1RM test

Warm up, then load a weight you think you could press five or six times. Do as many clean reps as you can while keeping one in the tank: same touch point on every rep, no bounce, bum on the bench. Anything between 3 and 6 reps gives a usable estimate.

Put the result into the Epley formula:

Estimated 1RM = weight x (1 + reps / 30)

Say you pressed 80kg for 5. That's 80 x (1 + 5/30) = 93.3kg. Round it down to the nearest 2.5kg, never up, so your training max is 92.5kg. The formula gets less reliable as reps climb, so don't feed it a set of 12.

To plug it in, multiply your training max by each percentage in the table and round to the nearest 2.5kg. With a 92.5kg training max, 75% is 69.4kg, which you'd load as 70kg. Work everything out for all eight weeks before session one and write it down, because doing sums between sets is how people end up with the wrong weight on the bar.

The 8-week bench press program

Bench on non-consecutive days: Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or Monday and Thursday for the two-day version. Sets and reps are written sets x reps, and the last column shows the heavy day for someone with a 100kg training max.

Week	Day 1: heavy	Day 2: volume	Day 3: paused (optional)	Day 1 at 100kg
1	4 x 5 at 75%	4 x 8 at 65%	5 x 3 at 65%	75kg
2	4 x 5 at 77.5%	4 x 8 at 67.5%	5 x 3 at 67.5%	77.5kg
3	5 x 4 at 80%	4 x 7 at 70%	5 x 3 at 70%	80kg
4 (deload)	3 x 5 at 70%	3 x 6 at 60%	Rest	70kg
5	5 x 3 at 85%	4 x 6 at 72.5%	4 x 3 at 72.5%	85kg
6	4 x 3 at 87.5%	4 x 5 at 75%	4 x 2 at 75%	87.5kg
7	3 x 2 at 90%	3 x 5 at 75%	3 x 2 at 75%	90kg
8 (test)	3 x 3 at 70%	2 x 2 at 65%	Test day	70kg

A few rules make the table work. Rest 3 to 4 minutes between heavy sets and about 2 minutes on the volume day. On Day 3, every rep stops dead on your chest for a full second before you press, which is why the weights look light; it's practice, and no set should feel slow. Week 4 is a planned deload week, so don't skip it because you feel fine.

Running it twice a week? Drop Day 3 and keep Days 1 and 2 as written, then pause the first rep of every Day 2 set so you still get some of that practice.

Is three days better than two?

For most people, yes, though by less than the internet suggests. A meta-analysis of weekly training frequency and strength pooled 12 studies and found upper body strength gains were greater at three or more sessions a week than at one, while two sessions and one came out similar. When total volume was matched, frequency stopped mattering. So the third day earns its place by adding quality sets, and the two-day version is a perfectly good plan if that's what your week allows.

Test week

Bench light on Monday and Wednesday, rest Thursday and Friday, and test on Saturday. With a competent spotter you can work up in singles: 70%, 80%, 90%, then 97.5% and a small jump past your old max if that moved well. Three attempts above 95% is plenty.

Training alone? Don't max out. Load 90% of your old training max, do as many clean reps as you can with one left in reserve, and run the Epley sum again. Three reps at 90kg gives 99kg; five gives 105kg. That number becomes your training max for the next cycle.

Accessory work

Do these after your bench sets. Stop each set one or two reps short of failure, and add weight only when you hit the top of the rep range on every set.

Day	Exercise	Sets x reps
1	Close-grip bench press	3 x 6 to 8
1	Barbell row	4 x 6 to 8
1	Tricep pushdown	3 x 10 to 12
2	Dumbbell bench press	3 x 8 to 10
2	Chest-supported row	4 x 8 to 10
2	Skull crushers	3 x 10 to 12
2	Face pulls	3 x 15
3	Incline bench press	3 x 6 to 8
3	Lat pulldown	4 x 8 to 10

Close-grip work is there for your triceps, which finish every rep. Expect to use less weight on it: in a study of grip width in 28 men, six-rep-max loads were lower with a narrow grip than with medium or wide, and a wide grip produced less triceps activity than the other two. Rows match your pressing set for set to keep your shoulders happy.

After a cycle or two you can swap the Day 3 paused bench for a Larsen press if your leg drive hides a weak chest, or a Spoto press if you lose tightness at the bottom. Change one thing per cycle, or you won't know what helped.

If you stall

Missing reps on one session isn't a stall. Repeat that session next time you're due to do it, and move on if it goes.

If you miss the same session twice, cut your training max by 5%, recalculate, and carry on from the same week. It feels like going backwards. It's usually just correcting a starting number that was a little generous, and that accounts for more failed cycles than anything else I can think of.

Then look outside the gym. Seven weeks of rising weights won't work on five hours of sleep or while you're losing bodyweight quickly. And check your jumps: 2.5% of a 60kg training max is 1.5kg, which standard 1.25kg plates can't load, so fractional plates let you follow the table instead of rounding every week up.

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Technique checklist

Run through this before every working set. Our bench press guide covers each point in detail.

• Eyes under the bar, shoulder blades squeezed together and pulled down, and they stay there for the whole set.
• Feet flat and pushed into the floor, with your bum and upper back on the bench.
• Grip a little wider than shoulder width so your forearms are vertical at the bottom, thumbs wrapped round the bar.
• Big breath and hold before the bar leaves the hooks.
• Lower under control to your lower chest with elbows at roughly 45 to 70 degrees from your sides.
• Touch the same spot every rep, then press up and slightly back towards your face.

Benching safely alone at home

A heavy bench is the one common lift that can pin you by the neck, so plan for a failed rep before it happens.

Bench inside a power rack or half rack with the safety bars or spotter arms set just below where the bar touches your chest when you're arched. Test the height with an empty bar: flatten your back and the bar should rest on the safeties with your chest and throat clear. A solid weight bench that doesn't wobble matters too, since a shifting bench ruins your shoulder position.

No safeties? Leave the collars off so you can tilt the bar and dump the plates, keep a rep in reserve on every set, and never use a thumbless grip. That's a workaround and I wouldn't run weeks 5 to 7 on it. Use dumbbells or the floor press for the heavy day instead, and see chest press vs bench press if a machine is on the table.

What to expect

I'm not going to quote a guaranteed gain, because no honest programme can. How much you add depends mostly on how long you've been training. A lifter in their first year might finish with a clearly heavier test than they started with; someone five years in could reasonably call 2.5kg a good cycle.

What the plan does reliably give you is about 20 quality bench sessions, more practice at heavy triples and doubles than most gym routines offer, and a new training max based on evidence. Run it again with the new number. If you'd like the same idea spread across squat and deadlift with more muscle-building work, our powerbuilding program or an upper lower split is the better fit.

Recommended reads

1. Bench press: how to do it properly
2. The best squat racks in the UK
3. The best weight benches in the UK
4. The best barbells in the UK
5. Fractional plates: who needs them