Watermelon Pecs
& Horse Triceps.
The bench press, broken down honestly. Barbell, dumbbell, machine — and the truth about the 100kg milestone TikTok keeps lying about.
The Bench Press was the second major lift in my fitness marathon. It has been a road paved with failed attempts, grinding sessions, and a few hard-earned personal records. My absolute best was 90kg @ 64kg bodyweight, which I hit using a Mark Bell Slingshot — basically a heavy-duty resistance band for your chest to help overload the top end. Even now, sitting at a lighter frame of 5'7" and 58kg, I can still reliably bench press 80kg.
Historically, the Bench Press is the modern evolution of the Overhead Press. It became the dominant lift because it offers the perceived safety of lying down, using safety pins, and having three distinct points of contact for security. Nailing your rear delts, glutes, and feet into the bench to drive the weight up is the ultimate expression of raw upper-body power.
The movement
The bench isn't just about throwing yourself under a bar and hoping for the best. Form dictates everything.
The Setup & Action
Plant your rear delts, glutes, and feet into the floor like a tripod. This locks your torso into a stable arch — three points of contact, zero wiggle. Unrack the bar so it's aligned above your shoulders. Coil the weight down like a compressed spring, tucking your elbows slightly toward your ribs.
From the bottom, press up and back in a diagonal path — like drawing a backward letter J — pushing the bar toward your safety hooks. Not straight up. Up and back. That diagonal is what keeps the load over your shoulder structure instead of drifting forward into a press your chest can't finish.
Your Latissimus Dorsi aren't pressing the weight up — but they are the literal launching pad. They act as the dynamic brakes on the descent and the shelf at the bottom. Tight lats mean the bar travels a clean path; loose lats mean the bar wiggles, and your shoulders take the damage.
Cue: "bend the bar" as you unrack. That mental image fires the lats and locks the upper back into the arch. The press becomes a chest-and-tricep finish on top of a back-and-glute foundation.
Choosing Your Weapon
Three tools, three different strengths built. Use them in rotation.
Separated weights mean each side stabilises independently. The stabilisers work overtime, and the deeper stretch at the bottom is elite for pec hypertrophy. The honest mass-builder.
By removing the need to stabilise, machines let you train safely to complete muscular failure. Perfect finishing move when the chest is already cooked from barbell or dumbbell work.
Reality vs social media standards
My path hasn't been a straight line. Between inconsistent eating, over a decade of chronic medical cannabis use, and a lack of periodised strength training, my weight has fluctuated. But after seven years of taking this side quest seriously — and learning from natural giants like Alex Leonidas and Ben Johnson — my focus is clear: a lean bulk and a 100kg bench press.
Social media has skewed everyone's perception. With the rise of TikTok fitness, teenagers are parading a 140kg (3-plate) bench as the "new normal." It is not normal. It is not even average. Most of those clips are stripped of context, peak-PR moments, or — let's be real — outright cheated reps with arched bridges and bouncing.
Let's talk numbers honestly. For a lifter weighing 58kg to 64kg:
Objectively, anything above 1.25× bodyweight on a strict bench puts you in an Advanced tier of relative strength among the general population. You aren't "normal" to begin with — you are a high-performing side-questing natty. Stop comparing yourself to algorithm-fed delusion. The numbers don't lie; the videos do.
Letting the barbell bend your wrists backward. This places immense shear stress on the joint, causes an energy leak, and turns a potential PR into a trip to the physio. Your wrists are not designed to be hinges under heavy load — they are designed to transfer force in a straight line from the bar through the radius bone.
To fix wrist collapse, use the Bulldog Grip. Yes — the same grip I roasted in the Overhead Press review. Context matters: Bulldog is wrong for vertical pressing, where your bar path needs to clear your face through the window. But for the horizontal bench, it is the correct tool. Different lift, different physics, different grip. ↻ See Overhead Press · Section 02 for the OHP context
- Place your thumbs at the start of the knurling as a guide for grip width.
- Internally rotate your hands diagonally toward the centre of the bar — like a bulldog's feet.
- Rest the bar directly over the radius bone in the heel of your palm — the meaty section — rather than up against your fingers.
This aligns the bar directly over your forearm bone, preventing the wrist from bending backward and allowing force to transfer cleanly from your chest to the barbell. No energy leak. No wrist hinge. Just power moving in a straight line.