There are two constant truths of life. The first is death.

The second is that all bros will bench press and curl on Mondays.

This act of suspending heavy weight over our supine body, lowering it and lifting (or bouncing) it back up seems to be a constant ritual in the iron world. Go to any gym, and the bench press (along with squat racks and deadlifting platforms) will be a revered piece of equipment that is analogous to an altar in a church.

It’s seen as a badge of honor; the unspoken contest by which the gym’s pecking order is established.

Everyone bench presses.

But… Should they?

What I’m about the suggest may be seen as sacrilege in many gyms. Blasphemy. Heresy at the very least. But it’s really coming from a deep, warm place in my heart and years as an experienced lifter and clinician that’s just fed up with your macho and bro science bullshit.

Not everyone needs to (or should) bench press with a straight bar.

Yo what the #*%&?? You booing me? I’ve been lifting weights for longer than you’ve been growing pubes, you punk!

Oh the drama of the lifting world… But I do bring up an actual problem for people, and that is the fact that most people either don’t have the appropriate mobility to bench press (with a straight bar), don’t need to bench press, or would get better results doing something else.

Let’s take a hard look at the bench. You’re taking a straight, rigid bar and forcing your wrists, elbows, and shoulders to run through the same range of motion (ROM) over and over and over again. If you’re in this for the long run (and you should be), this is a ton of mileage on your joints and tendons.

Pull your elbows to your sides like the bottom position of the bench press and let your elbows and wrists fall into its natural positioning. See how your hands are facing in a bit? That’s the natural position of the wrists and elbows. When you bench press properly, you’re forcing your wrists and elbows into unnatural positions.

It may not be a problem now, but if you’re the type to only ever do the bench press for your horizontal pressing every week, it will more than likely start to cause some shoulder and elbow issues. Once it becomes a major issue, it is absolutely miserable. Keep in mind that the healing rate of cartilage, tendons, and ligaments is much slower than muscle so if you hurt your joints or tendons, the recovery period is much longer.

Don’t get me wrong. I still bench. I love the bench press. You’ll have to pry that exercise from my cold, dead (and probably arthritic) hands. Powerlifters will have to bench because it’s their sport. But to me, it’s not the holy grail exercise. In fact, there was a point in time when I was really into the Olympic lifts and just didn’t bench for years. I had no desire to do it. I simply did a ton of overhead pressing, rows, and maybe the occasional dumbbell bench. Then, the first time I came back to bench pressing, I put up an easy 10 reps at 225.

A friend of mine consulted me one day saying that his patient had persistent shoulder pain when benching. This guy was huge, regularly putting up over 300 pounds on the bench. At this point, 95 pounds hurt. Nothing my friend did was helping. After asking my usual questions, I asked him how often he benched. He told me, twice a week. The same grip, the same angle, the same bar. Month after month. Year after year.

I simply told him to stop benching and do something else. Use an incline bench, vary his grip width, do board presses, speed presses, use a different bar… Do literally anything else but bench. His patient first resisted but relented when my friend pointed out that he couldn’t even work with 95 pounds pain free. How did he expect to put up 400 pounds?

Needless to say, it didn’t take any special treatment outside of that. He came back healthier and stronger.

What I’m suggesting is variation. You’ve probably heard this before. Rotate your god damn exercises for once, you fool! The more extreme suggestion here is that you probably don’t even have to do a real bench press. Ever. You’ll be fine. Do something else. At the very least, change up your grip width. You might even get stronger at the bench press…

I’m a firm believer that frequent rotation of exercises is important for joint health as well as overall progress. If you only ever bench press in one way, you only get strong and proficient in a single groove of the movement. How much stronger and more adaptable do you think you would be if you simultaneously kept improving your bench at different grip widths, improving your dumbbell bench, incline bench, floor press, overhead press, weighted push up…? All of those variations build each other up. If you can only bench with 50 pound dumbbells, how much stronger do you think every variation would get if you pushed that up to 100 pound dumbbells?

Forgoing the bench press for variation will only help you in every way. Build up a giant foundation with variation and then work into specificity later. Here are a few variations to get you started.

-Speed Bench Press: See? You don’t even need to actually stop bench pressing to not bench press. Speed work is one of the most important elements to programming. Some of the most successful powerlifters and strongman emphasize speed work as a central part of their programs.

You can do this in 2 ways. First is to do 7-10 sets of 3 reps at 75-85%. The second is to use 55-65% of normal weight and 20% of either band or chain weight. The sets and reps will be the same. Each rep will be as fast as possible. Rest for 30 or so seconds between sets. The goal is to perform the work as quickly as possible for density. When you don’t allow yourself to fully rest, you force your body to activate muscle fibers that are kept in reserve.

-Vary your grip width: This is self-explanatory. Allow yourself to train different grooves to emphasize different parts of the lift. You will be surprised how much stronger your usual grip will become.

-Dumbbell variations: This is probably one of the best ways to go. When you bench with ‘bells rather than a bar, each limb needs to work much harder in order to stabilize the weight. It will also hit your pecs much more efficiently. You’ll also find that you can keep your wrists and elbows in a much more natural position. You can further vary the lift using an incline bench.

-Incline Bench Press: The pec is made up of two parts: The sternocostal head and the clavicular head. The flat bench primarily hits the sternocostal head, which some people refer to as the “lower” pec. The incline bench hits the clavicular head, or the “upper” pec. This variation also tends to be a bit easier on the shoulders because you’re not forcing them to go into the ends of extension.

-Board Press: Sometimes cutting the ROM for a day or two or twelve can pay dividends. This exercise is used by powerlifters for variation and to address weak points in the lift. Essentially, this is just a bench press with a 2×4 or two on your chest. Because of the reduced range, you might be able to hit the exercise much heavier.

You can also use a parallel grip bar or football bar, but those are hard to find at most gyms. Don’t sleep on bodyweight variations either. TRX push ups, single arm push ups, and ballistic clapping push ups are an appropriate substitute as well.

The bottom line here is that eventually, most people’s body’s will break down if you repeatedly do the same thing over and over again. Intelligent programming and problem solving involves getting people stronger in a pain-free manner. If you’re tasked with getting athletes ready to perform, you better be doing your best to prevent injuries. Better yet, if you’re given an individual with some bum shoulders or elbows, what are you going to substitute with the bench?