Close Grip Bench Press: How to Do It and Muscles Worked

The close grip bench press is a bench press with your hands set about shoulder width apart instead of wide. That one change tucks your elbows in, lengthens the distance the bar travels, and shifts a chunk of work from your chest to your triceps. It is the single best exercise for building genuinely strong triceps, and it is the accessory lift most likely to add kilos to your main bench. It is also frequently done with a grip so narrow that it becomes a wrist exercise. Here is how to get it right.

How to do a close grip bench press

Set up in a rack or on a bench with safeties if you have them, especially when training alone. A power cage with adjustable pins is the safest home set-up.

1. Set your grip. Put your hands roughly shoulder width apart on the bar, around 40cm between them. A useful check is that your forearms should be vertical when the bar touches your chest. Grip hard and keep your wrists stacked straight over your forearms, not bent back.
2. Set your body. Lie back with your eyes under the bar. Plant your feet flat, squeeze your shoulder blades down and together, and keep a natural, modest arch in your lower back. Your shoulder blades stay pinned to the bench throughout.
3. Unrack and set. Take the bar out and bring it over your lower chest. Take a breath and brace your abs.
4. Lower with elbows tucked. Bring the bar down to your lower chest or upper stomach, keeping your elbows at roughly 45 degrees to your body rather than flared out to the sides. Control it down, do not drop it.
5. Touch and press. Touch your chest lightly, then drive the bar back up and slightly towards your head, finishing over your shoulders. Push your feet into the floor and keep your shoulder blades tight.
6. Lock out. Straighten your arms fully and squeeze your triceps at the top. Then reset your breath for the next rep.

Muscles worked

• Triceps brachii. The headline muscle. Your elbows travel through a longer range than in a wide grip bench, so your triceps do more total work extending the elbow from a deeper bend to full lockout.
• Pectoralis major (chest). Still a major contributor. This surprises people who treat close grip bench as a pure triceps move, but your chest is driving your upper arms forward on every rep. Plenty of lifters feel their inner chest working hard here.
• Anterior deltoids. Your front delts assist the press, particularly off the chest and through the middle of the lift.
• Forearms and wrists. Working isometrically to hold the bar in a stable, stacked position.
• Upper back and lats. Working to keep your shoulder blades retracted and create a solid platform to press from.

It is worth being straight about the evidence here, because the gym folklore overstates the case. When researchers compared narrow grip and wide grip bench press, the ratio of chest to triceps muscle activity showed no significant difference across most conditions tested (lateral force and EMG activity in wide and narrow grip bench press). Other work on bench press variations has found similarly modest differences in muscle activity between grip positions (the effects of bench press variations on muscle activity and performance). The close grip bench is still an excellent triceps builder, but the mechanism is mostly the longer elbow range of motion rather than some dramatic switch that turns your chest off and your triceps on.

Benefits

• It builds triceps strength that transfers. Your triceps finish every bench press rep. Strengthening them with a heavy compound movement, rather than only isolation work, is the most direct way to fix a lockout that stalls.
• You can load it heavy. Unlike skull crushers or pushdowns, you can put real weight on the bar, which drives strength gains you will not get from cables alone.
• It is easier on the shoulders. Tucked elbows put your shoulders in a safer position than a flared, wide grip bench. If wide benching aggravates your shoulders, this is often the version you can keep doing.
• It trains chest and triceps together. Efficient if you are short on time, and useful in a home gym where you may only have a bar and a weight bench.
• It covers real strengthening work. The NHS advises muscle-strengthening activity for all the major muscle groups on at least two days a week, and a compound press covers several at once.

Common mistakes

Gripping far too narrow. Hands touching, or thumbs almost together, is the classic error. It bends your wrists, hurts your elbows and limits the load. Shoulder width.

Flaring the elbows. If your elbows drift out to 90 degrees, you have lost the point of the exercise and you are back to a normal bench with a bad grip. Keep them around 45 degrees.

Bending the wrists back. The bar should sit low in your palm, over the bones of your forearm, with a straight wrist. A bar sitting high in your fingers with a bent wrist is how wrist pain starts.

Bouncing off the chest. Bouncing hides weakness and puts your sternum and shoulders at risk. Touch lightly, pause if you can, then press.

Touching too high. With a close grip, the bar naturally wants to touch lower, around your lower chest or upper stomach. Forcing it to your upper chest flares your elbows and cramps your shoulders.

Expecting your normal bench numbers. Most lifters close grip bench 10 to 20 percent less than they regular bench. That is normal. Leave your ego at the door.

Variations

• Close grip bench with a pause. Pause for a full second on your chest with no bounce. It kills momentum and builds real strength out of the bottom.
• Close grip incline bench. Set the bench to around 30 degrees. It brings your upper chest and front delts in more while still working your triceps hard.
• Close grip floor press. Pressing from the floor caps the range at your elbow and takes your legs and back out of it. Excellent for triceps lockout strength and kind to sore shoulders.
• Close grip dumbbell press. Hold two dumbbells with a neutral grip, palms facing each other, and press with your elbows tucked. Far easier on the wrists, and each arm works independently. A pair of adjustable dumbbells makes this simple at home.
• Close grip bench with a Swiss or football bar. The neutral grip handles remove wrist strain almost entirely. If you have chronic wrist trouble, this is the answer.
• Board press or pin press. Limiting the range to the top half overloads your lockout specifically. Useful if that is where you fail.

Sets and reps

How you programme it depends on what you want from it.

• Triceps and bench strength: 3 to 5 sets of 5 to 8 reps, heavier, as your second lift after your main bench press. Rest 2 to 3 minutes.
• Muscle and size: 3 to 4 sets of 8 to 12 reps, controlled tempo. Rest 90 seconds.
• Learning it: 3 sets of 8 with a light bar, focused on grip width, tucked elbows and straight wrists.

Once or twice a week is plenty alongside your regular pressing. Pair it with dips or tricep pushdowns if you want to finish your triceps off properly, and add weight in small jumps only when your form holds on every rep.

Recommended reads

1. Bench press: technique, muscles worked and mistakes
2. The best weight bench in the UK
3. The best barbell in the UK
4. Skull crushers: how to build your triceps
5. Tricep pushdown: form and variations