Larsen Press: How to Do It, Muscles Worked and How It Compares to Bench Press

The Larsen press is a bench press done with your legs held straight out in front of you, hovering off the floor, so you can't use leg drive at all. It takes away your base of support, which forces your chest, shoulders and triceps to move the bar without help and makes your upper back and trunk work much harder to keep you stable. You'll lift less than on a normal bench press, usually 10 to 20% less, and that's the point: it shows you exactly how solid your upper-body setup really is.

How to do a Larsen press

Set up exactly as you would for a normal flat bench, with the bar racked at a height you can unrack with your arms nearly straight. Use safety arms or a spotter. You're less stable than usual, and a failed rep with your legs in the air is clumsy.

1. Lie down and set your upper back. Pull your shoulder blades back and down, as if you're tucking them into your back pockets, and wedge your upper back into the bench. This is your entire base now, so make it tight.
2. Grip the bar. Use your normal bench grip, usually with your forearms vertical at the bottom. Squeeze the bar hard.
3. Lift your legs. Straighten your legs and raise them a few centimetres off the floor so they're roughly in line with the bench. Keep your legs together and your toes pointed. Don't cross your ankles or swing them up high.
4. Unrack and brace. Take the bar out to above your shoulders, then take a big breath into your belly and lock your ribs down. A spotter's hand-off really helps here.
5. Lower to your chest. Bring the bar down under control to roughly your lower sternum, elbows tucked at around 45 to 70 degrees from your torso. Touch, don't bounce.
6. Press. Drive the bar up and slightly back towards your face, finishing over your shoulders. Your legs shouldn't move. If they kick or drop, the rep got away from you.

Larsen press vs bench press

Both use the same bar path, grip and range of motion. The difference is all in what's happening below your hips.

On a regular bench, your feet are planted and you push through the floor, which drives your upper back into the bench and lets you hold a bigger arch. Good lifters get a real performance boost from this. On a Larsen press none of that is available, so you can't hide a soft upper back or a wobbly bar path behind your legs.

	Bench press	Larsen press
Feet	Planted, pushing through the floor	Straight, held off the floor
Leg drive	Yes	None
Arch	Moderate to large	Minimal
Typical load	100%	Around 80 to 90%
Main job	Moving the most weight	Building upper-body stability and pressing strength

A study from the University of Almería compared a bench press with feet on the floor against one with the hips and knees held up at 90 degrees, at 60% of each lifter's max. That isn't quite a Larsen press (the legs were bent, not straight), but it removes the feet in the same way. Activation in the pecs, front delts, triceps and abs was significantly higher in the feet-up version (Muyor et al., 2019, PLoS One). The same load simply asked more of the muscles once the floor was gone.

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the same as for any flat press:

• Pectoralis major. Your chest does the bulk of the work, and it gets loaded through the full range because you touch the chest on every rep.
• Anterior deltoids. The front of your shoulders assists throughout, especially off the chest.
• Triceps. They take over in the top half to lock the bar out.
• Core and trunk. Your abs and obliques work far harder than on a standard bench, because they're holding your legs up and keeping you from rolling. Older research on unstable bench pressing found trunk muscle activity climbs as you take stability away from the lower body (Norwood et al., 2007, J Strength Cond Res).

Your lats and upper back muscles also work isometrically to keep the shoulder blades pinned, which is a big part of why the lift feels so different.

Benefits

It exposes a weak setup. If your shoulder blades slide out of position halfway through a set, you'll feel it immediately on a Larsen press. That feedback carries straight back to your main bench.

More work for the chest and arms with less weight on the bar. Because you're lifting less, your joints take less load for a similar training effect on the pressing muscles. Useful in a hard training block or when your elbows are grumbling.

It's kinder to a sore lower back. You can't hold a big arch with your legs in the air, so lifters with a cranky back often tolerate it better than a full powerlifting-style bench.

It cleans up your bar path. With no legs to bail you out, any drift towards your belly or your face shows up as a wobble, and you learn to press in the same groove every rep.

Common mistakes

Going too heavy straight away. People load their usual bench weight and wonder why the bar tips. Start around 70% of your normal working weight and earn your way up.

Lifting the legs too high. Raising your legs towards the ceiling turns the lift into a crunch and rounds your lower back off the bench. A few centimetres off the floor is plenty.

Letting the shoulders roll forward. As the set gets hard, the shoulder blades spread and the shoulders come off the bench, which puts the front of the shoulder in a worse spot. Reset your upper back between reps if you need to.

Bouncing off the chest. Without leg drive you're more likely to cheat with a bounce to get the bar moving. Touch and press, or add a pause to remove the temptation.

Skipping safeties. Rolling off a bench with a loaded bar and your legs in the air goes badly. Use safety arms set just below chest height, a spotter, or dumbbells.

Variations

• Paused Larsen press. Hold the bar on your chest for 1 to 2 seconds before pressing. It kills any bounce and is brutal for strength off the chest. Expect to drop the weight another 5 to 10%.
• Dumbbell Larsen press. Same position, but with a pair of dumbbells on a flat bench. It's the best option at home without a rack, since you can dump the weights to the side if a rep fails. A sturdy flat or adjustable bench matters here, because you're shifting around on it more than usual.
• Bent-knee Larsen press. Knees bent and heels resting on a box or the end of the bench. A good halfway house if straight legs bother your lower back or hip flexors.
• Close-grip Larsen press. Combine the legs-up position with a close-grip bench press grip to put more of the work on your triceps.
• Spoto press (for comparison). Not a Larsen variation, but it's often mentioned alongside it. Feet stay planted and you stop the bar an inch or two above your chest, pause, then press. The Larsen press trains stability and setup. The Spoto press trains control and strength just off the chest. Many lifters rotate both through a training year.

If your shoulders don't tolerate the full range of either, the floor press takes away the bottom few centimetres and leg drive at the same time.

How heavy and how to programme it

Treat the Larsen press as your second pressing movement of the day, or as the main bench variation on a lighter day.

• Strength: 3 to 5 sets of 3 to 6 reps at roughly 80 to 85% of what you'd use for the same reps on a normal bench.
• Muscle building: 3 to 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps, leaving 1 to 2 reps in reserve.
• Technique work: 3 sets of 5 with a 2-second pause on the chest, using a weight that feels easy.

Run it for 4 to 6 weeks, then swap it for another variation. Once a week is enough for most people, alongside your normal bench. If you train at home, you'll need a flat bench that doesn't wobble when you shift your weight. The JOROTO MD85 is a sensible pick, rated at 450kg static load (see our full JOROTO MD85 review), and the best weight benches in the UK covers cheaper options too.

Check the JOROTO MD85 bench price on Amazon£218.49

For more pressing and chest work, browse the rest of our workout guides.

Recommended reads

1. Bench press: how to do it properly
2. Close-grip bench press guide
3. Floor press: how to do it and why it saves sore shoulders
4. The best weight bench in the UK
5. Chest exercises for strength and size