Walk into almost any gym and you’ll see the same picture: every flat bench taken, bars clanging, and athletes comparing numbers. The bench press is the cultural yardstick for upper-body strength, even when the room also has platforms, racks, and medicine balls quietly gathering dust. The problem is not that the bench press is “bad.” The problem is what happens when one lift crowds out everything else when an athlete needs to prepare for sport.
The core question is transfer. A lift earns its time when the strength it builds shows up in position-specific tasks. As soon as you evaluate the bench through that lens, its limitations become obvious and the programming decisions get clearer.
What the Sport Demands vs. What the Bench Trains
Take an NFL linebacker as an example. He reads keys, changes direction, sheds hands, absorbs and delivers contact, and still has to finish a tackle. That requires upper-body force in multiple planes – not just horizontally – and at variable joint angles while the lower body keeps moving. Spending large volumes on one pressing pattern trades breadth for a narrow display of strength. That trade rarely pays off.
Angles That Carry Over: Incline and Vertical Pressing
In most sports pushing and strikes occur with the upper arm angled upward around forty-five degrees relative to the trunk. Think of a lineman’s punch, a shot put release, or a boxer’s cross. Incline and vertical presses line up better with those actions and let the scapulae rotate and upwardly tilt, a prerequisite for healthy overhead work. The flat bench, by design, pins the shoulder blades and limits that motion.
That does not make flat pressing useless. It makes it one slice of a larger pressing menu. When the goal is transfer—force you can use at game-speed and game-angles—incline and overhead variations pull more weight.
Programming Priorities
Now, the real question is, how much time should be spent on each pressing angle? Based on the structural balance concepts proposed by Coach Charles Poliquin, the following values represent appropriate strength ratios across the pressing angles of the upper body.
Flat Close Grip Press 100%
Shoulder Width 30d Incline Press 100%
Seated Behind The Neck Press 66%
V Bar Dip 117%
By comparing the 1RM scores (or calculated scores), of these lifts, as you can make the determination of which angle is relatively weakest in comparison to the others, guiding program design. One other consideration, beyond covering the strengths of all angles for better athletic performance, is the impact of poor structural balance of joint integrity. Having unbalanced strength across the various muscles that attach to any joint, can disrupt the positioning and function, leading not just to impaired performance, but a much greater risk of injury.
So, Is The Bench Press Overrated For Athletes?
Given that far too much emphasis is placed on it, at the expense of other pressing angles, yes it is. Train for a more balanced pressing strength, for stronger shoulders, and more sport specific outcomes.
