Am I bench pressing wrong?

The bench press has proven time and time again that it’s the exercise for building a powerful chest. Studies confirm this over and over again (study, study). Thing is, the studies are confirming that the bench press is the best exercise on average.

There are always people whose chests don't even activate much when benching. For them, it does nothing. If you're one of those guys, should you even be benching at all?

You know how some people are naturally overweight, and others are naturally skinny? Different problem, right? One requires a fat-loss diet, the other requires a bulking diet. Different problems require different solutions. Perhaps you need a fundamentally different approach.

Am I doing the wrong exercises?

Maybe the problem isn't that you're relying on the bench press, it's a lack of isolation exercises. What about pec flyes, close-grip push-ups, incline bench presses, and dumbbell bench presses? Most guys with stubborn chests have tried every isolation exercise imaginable and their chests are still lagging behind.

Why won’t my chest activate no matter what I try?

Let’s say that your shoulders and triceps activate more during the bench press instead of your chest. That’s a totally normal problem for guys with stubborn chests. They develop great arms but their chests stay flat. Thing is, if your arms are getting even stronger relative to your chest, they’re growing even more dominant and will try and steal away even more gains from your chest.

Benching even more won't fix the problem, it will gradually make the problem worse…

WHAT IF TIPS & TRICKS AREN’T WORKING?

• Try a wider grip? Or is flaring your elbows dangerous to your shoulders?
• Stop clinking the dumbbells at the top during flys to get more time under tension?
• Build up your back, shoulder or triceps first?
• Do pause reps? Or supersets?
• Try focusing on doing cable low-to-high ultra-flyes?
• Get under a heavy bar more often and do compound lifts like bench and incline bench?
• Try pyramid or reverse-pyramid sets when benching? 5x5? Or try higher reps and focusing on a burn?
• What about chains? Elastics? The natural strength curve?

Did your chest finally start getting consistent, predictable growth? Was the mystery finally solved? Probably not.

It’s not that these tips are bad—well, some of them are bad—but rather that there’s no cohesive system tying them together.

Besides, these tips are all for people with very different problems. If you’re not a powerlifter bench pressing over 315 pounds, you don’t need to worry about chains or elastic bands.

If your bench press isn’t primarily working your pecs, doing pyramid sets or heavy strength training has nothing to do with fixing your chest activation problem.

And cable crossovers might give a larger range of motion or a smoother resistance curve than dumbbell flyes, but they’re the icing on the cake—not a cornerstone that you can build a good chest routine around.

But the real solution is to go beyond these surface-level tips and tricks. We need to build a dedicated, merciless chest routine from the ground up.

The whole routine needs to fit perfectly together:

• The perfect exercises to stimulate your chest
• The perfect volume for growth and recovery
• The perfect progression to avoid plateaus
• The perfect balance of rep ranges
• And discovering why your chest is stubborn, learning about the “limb and torso” problem, and then figuring out how to overcome the problems your frustratingly unique chest is facing.

All of the true tips and tricks will be like perfectly placed gears inside a precisely made spring-powered mechanical watch.