If there’s one undeniable truism about lifting weights that has been drilled deep into the minds of most people who have spent even five minutes in a gym, it’s that bench pressing is performed with an overhand grip.
To take matters even further, the bench press is a core movement of a strength sport — competitive powerlifting — and the thought of a powerlifter pressing the bar underhanded in an adjudicated setting would be downright laughable to most athletes.
It’s just this sort of rigid rationalization that can prevent lifters of all experience levels from reaping the benefits that accompany tackling this familiar exercise from an atypical angle. Put simply, it’s time for you to flip the script (and your hands) on your pec training and unlock the potential of the reverse-grip bench press.
- How to Do Reverse-Grip Bench Press
- Reverse-Grip Bench Press Sets and Reps
- Common Reverse-Grip Bench Press Mistakes
- Reverse-Grip Bench Press Variations
- Reverse-Grip Bench Press Alternatives
- Muscles Worked by the Reverse-Grip Bench Press
- Benefits of the Reverse-Grip Bench Press
- Who Should Do the Reverse-Grip Bench Press
- Frequently Asked Questions
Editor’s Note: The content on BarBend is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. When starting a new training regimen and/or diet, it is always a good idea to consult with a trusted medical professional. We are not a medical resource. The opinions and articles on this site are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional.
How to Do the Reverse-Grip Bench Press
If you’re a savvy gym veteran, you can probably already guess the fundamentals of this exercise based solely on its name, even if you’ve never seen it before. However, if you’re new to fitness training, this explanation will swiftly get you up to speed.
In essence, you’re going to lie down on a weight bench, grab the bar with a supinated grip, and then you’re going to lower the bar to your chest and press it back to its starting position. Here are the steps:
Step 1 — Grip Your Bar
Lie flat on your back on a weight bench with your feet flat on the floor. Reach straight up with both hands and grab the bar with an underhand, supinated grip.
Coach’s Tip: To maximize the stability of the bar in your hands, use a grip slightly wider than shoulder-width and rest the bar in the base of your palms.
Step 2 — Unrack the Bar
Using the muscles in your chest, arms and shoulders, press the bar to elevate it off of the rack and shift it slightly away from the rack so that it hovers directly above your shoulder joints.
Coach’s Tip: Because of what might be an awkward angle for lift-off, you should definitely consider employing the services of a spotter to help you lift the bar off the rack.
Step 3 — Lower the Bar to Your Chest
Carefully bend at your elbows to lower the bar toward your chest. Because of the angle of your elbows, the bar is likely to make contact with your body at either a low point on your sternum, or high on your stomach. Briefly pause for a second and hold the bar on your torso.
Coach’s Tip: Take care not to fully relax your muscles at the bottom of the movement to prevent the full weight of the bar from completely resting on your torso.
Step 4 — Press the Bar Back
Contract and squeeze the muscles in your chest, shoulders, and triceps to press the bar back to its starting position. Keep your elbows relatively tucked and ensure that the bar ends up back over your shoulders.
Coach’s Tip: Let your wrists extend backward throughout your set to help stabilize your grip. You should also rely on a spotter to help you guide the bar back into the rack.
Reverse-Grip Bench Press Sets and Reps
The bench press is among the popular chest-development tools, and also the preferred method for many strength athletes to showcase their might.
There are typically three distinct objectives that people have in mind when lying down on a bench and pressing some weight. Here are some basic guidelines for meeting those three familiar bench-pressing goals.
- For Muscle Mass: Bench pressing is a textbook case where training to hypertrophy is commonly accomplished in the eight to 12-rep range.
- For Strength: If you’re using the reverse-grip bench press to develop explosive strength, use heavy weights and strive to complete five sets of three to five reps.
- For Endurance: If your goal is to build pectoral durability, use a light weight that you can maintain through three sets of 15 to 20 reps.
Common Reverse-Grip Bench Press Mistakes
The reverse-grip bench press may resemble the traditional barbell bench press, but it brings along a wholly different set of concerns that you’ll need to be on the lookout for. Pay very close attention to these common mistakes so you don’t make them yourself.
Failing to Control the Bar
The extended range of motion (the bar tends to make contact with your body lower than in a standard bench press) provides one of the foremost benefits of the reverse-grip bench press, but this extra horizontal displacement can easily work against you.
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If the weight is too heavy or you’re working in an excessively-fatigued state, you’re liable to lose joint alignment between your elbows and wrists. This may cause the bar to slip out of your palms and come crashing down on you.
Gripping the Bar Incorrectly
The reverse-grip bench press is one of those exercises where you need to be careful to position the bar in your palms just right. If it sits too low in your palms, you run the risk of losing control at the top of the movement — and your grip along with it.
If the bar is too high in your palms, the weight might roll toward your fingers and cause excessive wrist extension, thereby placing your joints in a precarious position as well. Take time to fiddle with your grip to find something that is both strong and stable.
Not Keeping Your Elbows In
One of the foremost benefits to the reverse-grip bench press is the fact that the low-to-high pressing movement automatically incorporates the upper chest in a manner that other flat pressing movements can’t replicate.
However, the reverse-grip bench press necessitates a tucked elbow position. If your elbows flare out as you lift or lower the weight, it’ll lower your strength potential, impact muscle recruitment, and potentially put your joints at risk.
Reverse-Grip Bench Press Variations
Below are three variations of the reverse-grip bench press in order of the least challenging to the most challenging. One of them involves altering the angle of the lift, and the other two require a change in equipment. Still, they’re all viable.
Incline Reverse-Grip Bench Press
To place even more emphasis on the muscles of your upper chest, you can perform the reverse-grip bench press on an incline.
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Working on an inclined surface may help you emphasize your upper pecs even more than benching on a flat bench. It could also assist in helping you find a smooth and consistent bar path.
Reverse-Grip Dumbbell Bench Press
To achieve most of the same benefits of the barbell variation without the awkwardness of unracking a heavy bar with “backwards” hands, go for dumbbells instead.
This version of the lift will likely result in your hands being in a slightly narrower position than they would be if they were forcibly locked into position on a barbell, but also allows for more freedom of movement at the shoulder.
Reverse-Grip Dumbbell Bench Press With Rotation
Using this hybrid movement, you will rotate your hands as you elevate the weight so that they are in a pronated, overhand grip at the top of the movement — kind of like a horizontal Arnold press.
This will enable you to experience several of the upper-chest benefits of the low-to-high movement pattern while also enjoying improved stability at the top of the pressing motion. Portions of your chest fibers contribute to internal rotation at the shoulder, so this extra movement may help engage your pecs a bit better.
Reverse-Grip Bench Press Alternatives
The reverse-grip bench press may seem simple at face value, but it is a far more technically complex exercise than it initially appears to be. If you want to try another pressing exercise that captures the essence of the reverse-grip bench press, here are three options that will offer you similar benefits.
Barbell Bench Press
There’s nothing wrong with engaging in the world’s most popular mass-building movement for the chest. This exercise is fundamentally the same, except it involves an overhand grip, and provides your body with a more stable base from which to press heavier weights.
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It’s essentially a trade-off; the standard bench press is easier to get ahold of (literally), lets you lift heavier, but slightly adjusts your range of motion and muscular activation. You can make the bench press the centerpiece of your chest workout and follow up with some reverse-grip pressing afterwards.
Neutral-Grip Bench Press
If you’re looking for most of the same variability in the movement of the bar and a similar minimization of the internal rotation of your shoulders, you can do that by assuming a neutral grip, either on a specialized barbell, or with a pair of dumbbells.
You’ll find that the neutral-grip bench press is both comfortable and intuitive. This is primarily due to the fact that your joints aren’t pushed into the fringes of their range of motion, and it’s easy to maintain a stacked, vertical alignment between your wrists and elbows throughout.
Incline Bench Press
If your foremost reason for using a reverse grip with your bench press is because you want to target your upper chest muscles, you can reap similar benefits from placing the bench at an incline and using a conventional, overhand grip.
Pressing from an inclined surface changes the angle of your upper arm relative to your torso. This adjustment gives your upper chest more leverage, meaning it will take over a larger portion of the mechanical load during your set.
Muscles Worked by the Reverse-Grip Bench Press
The reverse-grip bench press works all of the most powerful pushing muscles of your upper body. Simply by grabbing a heavy bar, lowering it, and pressing it, you will be taking solid steps toward improving your overall power in at least three sections of your anatomy.
Pectorals
The powerful muscles of your chest flex mightily as you lower the weight and then press it back to its starting point. A heavier emphasis is placed on the upper chest during the reverse-grip bench press than during most flat-back pressing movements due to how you perform the exercise.
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One of the primary functions of the clavicular head of your pecs is shoulder flexion. That is, raising your upper arm out and forward relative to your torso. When lying down on a bench, the horizontal movement of the bar during the reverse-grip bench press replicates this action.
Triceps
No matter what style of bench press you perform, your triceps ride shotgun. Though a portion of your triceps brachii does cross your shoulder joint, their main function during any type of bench press is to extend your elbow during the second half of the range of motion.
Anterior Deltoids
As with virtually all pushing and pressing exercises, the muscles at the front of your shoulders assist you to stabilize the weight and drive it upwards. You may find that the reverse grip bench press is especially useful for targeting your front delts, since the tucked-arm position gives those muscles excellent leverage to contract.
Benefits of the Reverse-Grip Bench Press
Whether you have a mind for joint safety or athletic improvement, the advantages of the reverse-grip bench press are far-reaching. This means that it doesn’t matter what age you are, or what your level of weight-training experience is; the reverse-grip bench press will present your body with an exciting opportunity for improved comfort, enhanced performance, or both.
A Larger Chest
The bench press is unmatched in its ability to develop your chest. The fact that your grip has been completely flipped over by this reverse-grip rendition does nothing to dampen the effectiveness of the bench press. In fact, if you’ve never performed it before, the novelty alone should induce one heck of a hypertrophic stimulus.
A Stronger Upper Body
The reverse-grip bench press is a terrific all-purpose pushing exercise. It simultaneously strengthens all of the key muscles your body calls upon when you push against an object. Obviously this includes your chest, but it also encompasses your anterior deltoids and triceps as well. An adjusted hand position also helps you develop versatile, functional strength.
Safer On Your Shoulders
The reverse-grip bench press eliminates the internal rotation required for a standard bench press. Internal rotation at the shoulder is in no way harmful by default, but does place the joint in a low-leverage position.
Most folks find an externally-rotated shoulder more comfortable to press with, allowing you to focus harder on contracting your chest without worrying so much about shoulder stability.
More Helpful Biceps
It’s true that you can’t technically push an object with your biceps, since they’re a hinge joint that can only close your elbow angle against resistance. Despite this, your biceps still assist extensively to stabilize the weight being lifted during the reverse-grip bench press, specifically because you’re benching with a supinated grip. This grip pulls your biceps taut and calls them into action to stabilize the bones in your forearm.
Who Should Do the Reverse-Grip Bench Press
Many people can benefit from a pressing exercise that strengthens their chests from an underutilized angle. Pragmatically speaking, there are several reasons why the reverse-grip bench press might be the missing ingredient that lengthens your weight room viability or improves your effectiveness in your favorite sport.
Here are three groups that might have an outsized interest in adopting the reverse-grip bench press as an integral part of their chest workouts.
Lifters With Shoulder Problems
Bench-presser’s shoulder is a common ailment in the weight room; a label that refers to any manner of shoulder discomfort you may feel during horizontal presses.
The reverse-grip bench press is in no way a medical remedy for an acute or chronic shoulder injury. That said, the setup and execution tends to be a bit friendlier on your shoulder capsule. A moderate level of external rotation is easier to load than an extreme amount of internal rotation in most (but not all) cases.
If you’re experiencing discomfort when performing a standard overhand bench press, flipping your grip may allow you to work around that issue while still maintaining your fitness. However — and this is the important bit — you should still seek medical attention from a physician if the issue persists.
Bodybuilders
As a bodybuilder, you may want to place extra attention on the uppermost muscle fibers of your chest to round out the shape of your pecs. One of the most efficient ways to remediate this problem is to set your weight bench at an incline that forces more resistance into the upper chest.
However, if you don’t have access to a bench that inclines, the natural low-to-high motion created by the reverse-grip bench press provokes a similar degree of upper-chest tension, making it a great option if you’re limited on equipment.
Athletes
If you play hockey, lacrosse, or any other sport that requires you to hold onto a stick, you’re likely to find yourself doing a lot of shoving, poking, and prodding while at least one of your hands applies an underhand grip to your fielding implement.
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Since you can’t do a whole lot of grip adjustment on the fly, it’s a good idea to train yourself to apply the maximum amount of pushing force while your hands are in the position they will be in while you’re playing the game.
Grab Those Gains
As atypical and unorthodox as the movement may seem when you first try it, the reverse-grip bench press can unlock unprecedented muscle gains and offer a much-needed alternative to the run of the mill, done-to-death bench press. Give it a shot during your next push day and see for yourself.
FAQs
You may be anxious to get started, but before you begin bench pressing a bar with a reverse-grip, here are the answers to a few questions that might have sprung to mind:
Should I be able to lift the same amount of weight with a reverse-grip bench press as I can with a traditional bench press?
Probably not. While the squeeze in your muscles may feel similarly taxing to a conventional bench press, the stability and contribution from some of your key pressing muscles isn’t quite at the same level. Expect to work with much lighter weights to begin with.
Can I substitute reverse-grip push-ups and get the same results?
The answer is no, and for several reasons. Reverse-grip push-ups require you to keep your palms flat on the floor while pushing straight up. Because your hands are fixed, you won’t be able to create the up-and-back motion that would come close to replicating the path of the bar during a reverse-grip bench press.
How important is it to have a spotter for this exercise?
It can be critically important. The intricate setup and execution of the reverse-grip bench press can make it potentially unwieldly. You’ll probably find it awkward to manually remove the bar from the rack with your hands “backwards.”
Further, as you accumulate fatigue, the bar does have the potential to slip out of your hands as your wrists tire out. A spotter can help guarantee nothing goes awry during heavy sets of the reverse-grip bench press.
Featured Image: Dmitry Markov152 / Shutterstock
