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Where to hold the bench press bar? [Article]

Posted by Pascal Landshoeft

Feb 17, 2017 10:00:00 AM

Bench press grip

Where to hold the bench press bar?

This is an overview of the options of a wide grip, narrow grip and thumb length's grip on the barbell for the bench press to help you decide which one is the best for you to reach your goals.

Bench press calculator

 

Amongst questions like "Where to touch the chest in a bar press?", "How much weight to use on the bench press" and "Are dumbbell or barbell bench presses better" another commonly asked question from beginners is "Where to hold the bench press bar?". When you go to the gym you will find all kinds of variations. Especially in a commercial gym, these have most likely been picked at random. So what made your fellow gym veterans pick the specific spot on the barbell to hold it during a bench press.

Is the aim to feel most comfortable during the press? Maybe the ultimate goal could be to maximize the stretch to the muscles? Is there a rotator cuff injury that only allows you to touch the bar at certain spots without putting yourself through excruciating pain? The more you start thinking about it, the more complex this seemingly simple question can become. I personally think this is the beauty of anything simple. If you break it into tiny pieces and really apply thought to it, it can become endlessly complex and interesting. The bench press is no exception to this rule. To pick the right place to hold the bar for you specifically the first reference point to determine is your main goal.

When you are training there are usually three main goals depending on your personal needs:

  1. Strength
  2. Aesthetics
  3. Rehabilitation from injury

Let us exclude rehabilitation from injury for the sake of this exercise as the barbell bench press is most likely an exercise which you will start to do again after you get the all clear from the doctor. Maybe you will phase in from push ups or machine bench presses to the barbell bench press. So ,for this overview, it has been mentioned but is not necessarily the most pressing.

That leaves you to decide whether you perform the bench press mainly to grow your chest for aesthetic purposes to look better, even though looks are very subjective, or to maximize the power output on the exercise. Based on your priorities you might prefer a certain grip compared to the other. From my personal experience there are three main ways to hold the bar during the bench press:

Bench press wide grip

Example of a wide grip for the bench press

A wide grip is usually placed outside the knurling of the barbell when performing the bench press. With a wide grip, you are usually able to move lesser weight than with a narrower, powerlifting style grip. I personally found the wide grip to be a good variation to work on bench press technique in general and to focus more on my pecs than my triceps. The wider the grip the less the triceps can support the movement and therefore your chest becomes more relevant on each repetition. A wide grip can also be utilized in powerlifting to shorten the distance the bar has to travel to touch the chest. I personally think this is most applicable in shirted bench pressing, where you do not need as much drive from your body to make it through the lower parts of the lift, as the bench press shirt helps out. In raw bench pressing, I find that I am personally giving up too much of the power I get out of the triceps for the lower ranges of the lift in relation to the distance saved that the bar has to travel. Therefore I prefer a narrower grip on raw lifts.

Bench press narrow grip

Narrow grip example

A narrow grip is usually placed just where the knurling of the barbell begins. This is also known as a close bench press grip. I find this to be most beneficial to maximize the activation of the triceps during the barbell bench press while minimizing the role of the pectorals. So if you wanted to train your triceps mainly and utilize the bench press to achieve this goal, this is the grip to go for. Therefore this grip can have its place when people who are generally interested in building a well-rounded physique or more experienced powerlifters who identified the triceps to be the limiting factor to bench more weight.

Thumb wide grip on bench press

Eric Spoto, world record bench presser, using a "thumb-wide" grip

A "thumb wide" grip is in my personal opinion the best option to develop maximum power while still having not to think too much about the setup each time you go under the bar. For this, you place your hands a thumbs length inwards from where the knurling begins. This provides roughly the same amount of activation to the triceps and pectorals without actively manipulating the lift in favor of one or the other. This is the grip I ease whenever I go for maximum power output and I have seen other experienced raw lifters using the same approach on their 1RM attempts.

Most popular Rogue bars in 2020

This is an overview of the most popular Rogue barbells per views and click through rates for Marathon-Crossfit.com in 2020. If you want more details on how the data was collected you can dig deeper in what were the most popular Rogue products in 2020.

Most popular rogue bars in 2020

 
This is an overview of the most popular barbells on Marathon-CrossFit.com during 2020. The ranking is as followed:
 
 
That the operator bar was so popular on Marathon-CrossFit in 2020 came as a surprise to me. It is one of the cheaper Rogue barbells which still has a cool name rather than being a variation of the Rogue Ohio barbell. If you want to feel a little more camouflaged in your life, go with this one. You can read the full review of the operator bar via this link.
 
The West side bar is a variation of the Ohio bar specifically for powerlifting. It is very similar to the Rogue Ohio power bar which recently has gotten a little more attention from influencers. This is a solid bar if you do not intend to do the Olympic lifts and stick to the bench press, deadlift, and barbell back squat in your training. You can read the full review of the west side bar via this link.
 
The Rogue Russian bar is another surprise on the Marathon-CrossFit popularity list. While it is one of the most expensive bars you can get from Rogue I personally find that it is more of a collector's item with nostalgia attached to it. It is a great piece of craftsmanship to recreate a bar from the Soviet era. Unfortunately, the collar system is not used in competition anymore and also tenders the bar useless once you lose one of the collars. Rogue also does not provide an option to buy the custom collars separately in case you do lose them. Based on this I would take the Pyrros bar over the Russian bar any given day for this budget. You can read the full review of the Rogue Russian bar by following this link.
 
The Rogue Multi-grip bar is a great additional tool to bring your bench press training to the next level. Especially if you are a big fan of the Westside training method as it asks for many grip variations. This bar might not be your first purchase, but fun addition to your gym once all the essentials are covered. You can read the full review of the Rogue Multi-grip bar by following this link.
 
The Chan bar is my personal favorite if you want to do it all with your barbell. It is reasonably priced, has a cool design, and can be used for Olympic lifts and the big three alike. If you are a CrossFit fan who wants to workout from home, this is a great pick. You can read the full review of the Rogue Chan bar by following this link.
 

Classic barbell

The classic barbell is what you you will find in most gyms. They vary widely in their quality with the York ones being the most cost efficient and therefore at the lower end of the quality range. You might find barbells with bushing or bearing, still most of them will have bushing in your local gym.

If your local gym is serious about lifting you might find specific olympic weightlifting and powerlifting barbells. These have a more aggressive knurl to ensure more grip for the professionals. You will experience these to be rougher on your skin which has the benefit of being able to lift more and the downside of higher likelihood to get your skin damaged.

In addition the knurl marks are slightly different between olympic and powerlifting bars to show you where to put your hands. Usually the powerlifting bars are built to withhold more psi (basically tells you how mch weight you can put on the bar until it breaks) than olympic bars due to the fact that there is more load moved in the powerlifts than in olympic lifts. 

Lifting is not always for beginners. You need proper technique, balance and a bit of strength to do it. Otherwise you might hurt your shins on the deadlift or pulll some muscles when squatting. Improper squatting might also harm your spine. So get proper advise or start deadlifting with other bars.

Conclusion

How to hold the bar during a bench press is depending on what goals you have and which muscles you want to target during training. I hope this short overview helps you to scratch your head a bit less the next time you step into the gym. Always feel free to leave a comment to share your own experience, ask a question or to provide more information in the comments section below.

Further reading

 

Topics: Lift stronger, Bench Press, Powerlifting, Bench, Bodybuilding