Stronger

Built from 1,668,369 verified lifts · updated Sep 2026

Bench Press Strength Standards: Average, Good & Elite

Among people who compete, the average man benches about 281 lb127 kg; the average woman, about 127 lb58 kg. Here is where every number sits, by bodyweight, age and sex, on the same six-level scale Stronger uses.

Units

Men · 180 lb82 kg bodyweight

six levels · one-rep max

average man · 281 lb127 kg
Beginner
from the bar
Novice
from 12155
Intermediate
from 16575
Advanced
from 20995
Elite
from 265120
World Class
from 331150

Women · 140 lb64 kg bodyweight

average woman · 127 lb58 kg

Find your rank

Where does your bench sit?

Your bodyweight, your best set, and the level you are at right now, against lifters your size. One rep is a one-rep max; a set of up to twelve gets estimated.

Sex

1 rep = your one-rep max. Enter a set of up to 12 reps and we estimate it (Epley).

Calculations run in your browser. We measure usage, including strength levels and broad bodyweight ranges.

Your bench

281lb

Elite

at or above 60% of men competing in the data at your bodyweight

NOVINTADVELITEWC
281 lb127 kg

A 1.56× bodyweight bench is Elite for a 180 lb82 kg man. World Class starts at 331 lb150 kg, 50 lb23 kg away.

Standards by bodyweight

Bench Press standards for men and women

Sex
Units
Men · six levels by bodyweight · one-rep max in lbkg, bodyweight in lbkg · small figure: share of men competing in our data who bench less than that floor
BodyweightBeginnerNoviceIntermediateAdvancedEliteWorld Class
under 1436545201%88402%121558%1657530%2099565%26512092%
14365–165754520<1%110501%143654%1878516%24311055%29813587%
16575–18785avg man4520<1%12155<1%165754%2099515%26512045%33115087%
18785–209954520<1%13260<1%176803%23110515%28713045%35316085%
20995–2311054520<1%14365<1%187853%24311013%30914045%37517080%
231105–2541154520<1%154701%198904%25411514%32014540%38617574%
254115–2761254520<1%165751%209954%26512014%33115038%39718070%
276125+4520<1%176802%2201005%27612516%34215540%40818570%

Each cell is the floor of its level: a 180 lb82 kg man who benches 209 lb95 kg is Advanced, and stays Advanced until 265 lb120 kg. Beginner starts at the empty bar, because everyone starts there. Find your row by bodyweight (the top bracket is open-ended), read across, and the column your best single sits under is your level. If you are between brackets, we round toward the lighter row: the standards are a floor, not a target.

Distribution

How rare is a good bench?

Every tested one-rep max in the data, men, all bodyweights. 78% of them have benched 225 lb; 33% have benched 315.

NOVINTADVELITEWC
Men who bench 13561+
97%
most lifters · details
Men who bench 18584+
90%
most lifters · details
Men who bench 225102+
78%
most lifters · details
Men who bench 275125+
55%
1 in 2 · details

By age

Bench press by age

The teenage years are where the number changes fastest. Nobody has measured a representative teen average, so we show the median among boys who compete in our data instead: 121 lb55 kg at 13, 248 lb112 kg at 18, a competition benchmark for each age. Each age has its own page, with its own standards by bodyweight.

Every age, 13 to 70+
  1. 13121558338
  2. 14154709242
  3. 15187859945
  4. 162099510849
  5. 1723110511653
  6. 1824811212155

boys, median competitor girls, median competitorage · lbkg · among lifters of that age who compete in our data

Milestones

The plates, and who gets there

Bench milestones are counted in 45s. One plate a side is 135; two is 225. Here is what each rung means for a 180 lb82 kg man, and how many men in the data have reached it.

  1. 13561Novice97% of men have lifted it · most lifters
  2. 18584Intermediate90% of men have lifted it · most lifters
  3. 225102Advanced78% of men have lifted it · most lifters
  4. 275125Elite55% of men have lifted it · 1 in 2
  5. 315143Elite33% of men have lifted it · 1 in 3
  6. 405184World Class7% of men have lifted it · 1 in 14

How we calculate

Where these numbers come from

Percentiles are built from 1,668,369 verified bench press attempts by 556,880 lifters, updated September 2026. We show the method so you can judge it.

The distribution. Our percentiles come from competition results in the OpenPowerlifting open dataset: each lifter's best successful raw bench, with sex, bodyweight and age recorded at the meet. These numbers describe competitive powerlifters, people who entered a sanctioned meet and trained for it. They are stronger than the general gym population, and far stronger than the general public. We say so wherever a percentile appears. Drug-tested divisions bench less at the median than untested ones (men: 276 lb vs 305 lb); the headline numbers pool both.

The levels. Six bands, the same six Stronger uses to score every lift in the app, and read the same way. Each cutoff is the floor of its band for that bodyweight, and crossing it puts you in. We do not redraw the scale from the competition data; we put the competition percentile beside every floor so you can see how rare each level is among people who compete.

Testing a one-rep max. Warm up to it in jumps that get smaller as the bar gets heavier, take three to five minutes between the last attempts, and use a spotter or safeties. If you would rather not max out, take a set of two to six clean reps and let the calculator estimate it; the Epley formula we use is accurate to within a few percent under ten reps.

Beginner
Can perform the movement with the empty bar or light weight; strength is still mostly a skill and nervous-system story.
Novice
Ahead of most people who do not train. Typically a few months of consistent, progressive work.
Intermediate
Ahead of the majority of regular gym-goers. Usually one to two years of structured training.
Advanced
Rare in a commercial gym. Years of programming, technique and bodyweight management.
Elite
The second-highest band on Stronger’s scale. Competition rankings are shown separately.
World Class
The highest band on Stronger’s scale, not a claim of a federation record or qualification.

Sources

All 196 cited sources

How our scale compares

Our six levels are Stronger's own scale, and the percentages beside them come from competition results. The published tables below are the ones people actually copy; we keep them here word for word, and say whose numbers they are, so you can see how a “good” bench on this page compares to what other sources call good. None of them measures the general population either.

  • Strength Level Limited · 18 tables (lb, ratio, kg)Male and female Strength Level usersOriginally based on fixed Kilgore/ExRx tables in 2007. Publisher says July 2015 replaced that model with community-data regressions; May 2016 incorporated joint lift/bodyweight modelling. Current table belongs to the 2026 refresh. These are not independent probability estimates for all adults.
  • StrengthLog · 12 tables (kg, lb)Men and women who use StrengthLogStrengthLog says the standards are calculated from user training logs; no Kilgore derivation is claimed. Sample date, age distribution, lift-verification protocol and detailed statistical construction are not supplied on the inspected page.
  • Lon Kilgore / Kilgore Academy · 1 table (kg)Men and women, ages 15–89Author combines scientific literature, published drug-tested classic/raw lifting results and coaching observation. The author resource page explicitly says the 2023 revision supersedes prior tables. No cell-level dataset or reproducible estimation code is provided.
  • The Aasgaard Company · 2 tables (lb)Adult Men / Adult WomenSource specifies Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training, 3rd edition techniques. Every bench numeric cell matches the inspected 2007 ExRx table, but level names differ. This is documented numerical identity, not proof of an unpublished licensing or authorship history.
  • ExRx.net · 1 table (lb)Adult men and womenExplanatory source credits Dr. Lon Kilgore, the training definitions in Practical Programming (Kilgore, Rippetoe, Pendlay), Starting Strength exercise technique and published lifting-performance standards. Numeric identity with the publisher-hosted 2012 Starting Strength sheet is directly established. Kilgore now says…
  • Gravitus, Inc. · 5 tables (lb)Male / Female Gravitus usersPublisher-owned app logs; best estimated 1RM per lifter, Brzycki formula, extreme outliers excluded. Asterisks designate weight points with fewer than 50 lifters, estimated by the publisher through allometric scaling. These estimated rows are retained as explicitly modelled published standards, not recomputed or repre…
  • Strength Origins · 2 tables (lb)Men / Women; raw, drug-tested, sanctioned full-power competitors, ages 16–65Publisher, not this inventory, processed OpenPowerlifting using Power Query; best-total performance per lifter-year, valid nonzero full SBD results, raw and drug-tested, weight classes rebinned to IPF style. No underlying data were downloaded or recomputed for this job.
  • BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation / Springer Nature · 2 tables (kg, ratio)47 male Australian elite police officersPrimary retrospective cohort measurements; barbell touches chest, full extension, bench contact maintained. Same lead coach across tests.
  • Quincy Police Department / Board of Fire and Police Commission · 2 tables (ratio)MALE / FEMALE police-officer applicantsOfficial agency publication attributes POWER minimums to national norms and an approximately equivalent percentile standard across age/sex groups; underlying normative dataset and edition are not named.
  • BrianMac Sports Coach · 1 table (ratio)men / womenAuthor-published coaching judgment; no cell-level dataset or derivation is given. A separate McArdle citation is used by the page’s assessment machinery, but the source does not prove these two good thresholds are that table.
  • Topend Sports / Robert Wood · 1 table (ratio)adults; both sexes as stated by the publisherThe author explicitly attributes the scores to personal experience, not a federation, research sample or ACSM norm.
  • Healthline · 1 table (lb)Men / Women, ages 18–59; page explains sex as assigned at birthThe page links ExRx for these standards. Unlike the fixed numerical 2007 ExRx/2012 Starting Strength cells, this page prints ranges. No inspected evidence establishes how those range endpoints were constructed.
  • 100% RAW Powerlifting Federation · 1 table (lb)Women competing in 100% RAW; ranking-informed performance classes, not population normsFAQ identifies PowerliftingWatch rankings, primarily 2008–2010, as the backbone of Elite standards, with formulas, federation input and judgment. Other classes are related to Elite. The female FAQ explicitly discusses limited participation and hypothetical stronger fields. No uniform male×factor derivation is stated.
  • TriageMethod · 1 table (ratio)Women using the publisher’s health-targets assessment; no sampled population disclosedPublisher explicitly sets female standards at approximately 60–75% of male standards, varying by movement. This is a stated coaching method; no fixed 0.6 factor is applied or inferred here.

What apps publish about their own users

  • Strength Level: average bench of 212 lb among male Strength Level cohort; no fixed bodyweightMethod: Self-submitted lifts feed fitted strength/bodyweight distributions. Rep sets can be converted to estimated 1RM. FAQ describes removal of implausible, duplicate, bot-like and unusually frequent entrie…. Not a general-population figure.
  • Strength Level: average bench of 112 lb among female Strength Level cohort; no fixed bodyweightMethod: Self-submitted lifts feed fitted strength/bodyweight distributions. Rep sets can be converted to estimated 1RM. FAQ describes removal of implausible, duplicate, bot-like and unusually frequent entrie…. Not a general-population figure.
  • StrengthLog / Styrkelabbet: median bench of 100 kg among male users in the 24,408-user bench standards cohortMethod: Public standards cite users’ training logs, but do not fully disclose selection, deduplication or fitting. The separate 2019 Swedish report analyzes logged single repetitions, not a stated rep-max co…. Not a general-population figure.
  • StrengthLog / Styrkelabbet: median bench of 47 kg among female users in the 24,408-user bench standards cohortMethod: Public standards cite users’ training logs, but do not fully disclose selection, deduplication or fitting. The separate 2019 Swedish report analyzes logged single repetitions, not a stated rep-max co…. Not a general-population figure.

Our own figure, for comparison: the median competitor in the data benches 281 lb127 kg (men) and 127 lb58 kg (women).

What moves the number

Why your bench is where it is

Four things explain most of the gap between any two lifters. In order of how much they matter.

Bodyweight

The single biggest predictor. Read the table again. The Advanced line for men runs from 165 lb75 kg at 132 lb60 kg to 276 lb125 kg at 292 lb132 kg+. More mass means more muscle, shorter range of motion and a steadier base on the bench. It is why powerlifting has weight classes and why a raw number without a bodyweight next to it tells you very little.

Training age

Not your age, your years of consistent, progressive pressing. The first year of real training moves most men from Beginner to Intermediate. The jump from Intermediate to Advanced usually takes longer than everything before it, and Elite is measured in years of programming, not months.

Technique

A bench press is a full-body lift that happens to end at the chest. Leg drive, an arched and braced upper back, shoulder blades pinned, a bar path that touches low and presses back toward the rack. Each one is worth pounds, and together they are often the difference between two levels. Our bench press guide walks through the setup.

Frequency

The bench responds to practice. Lifters who press twice a week progress faster than lifters who press once, at the same weekly volume, because the skill part of the lift gets rehearsed. Once a week is enough to maintain. It is rarely enough to climb.

Men and women

Bench press standards for women

The gap between men's and women's bench numbers is the largest of the three powerlifts, because the bench leans hardest on upper-body muscle mass. At the same bodyweight, the women's Intermediate line sits at roughly the men's Novice line; the women's Elite line is close to the men's Intermediate. That is not a comment on effort or training. It is why the women's table is its own table and why we never score a woman's lift against the men's standards.

For a 140 lb64 kg woman: Novice from 55 lb25 kg, Intermediate from 77 lb35 kg, Advanced from 110 lb50 kg, Elite from 143 lb65 kg. A bodyweight bench is a genuinely strong lift for a woman; a 135 lb bench puts her in territory very few women reach.

The full women's standards, by age and weight

Women · all tested lifts

NOVINTADVELITEWC

The questions everyone asks

Is 135, 185, 225 or 315 a good bench?

Short answers, for the reference lifter. Each number has its own page with the answer by bodyweight and age.

Is 135 lb61 kg a good bench?

Novice for a 180 lb82 kg man

97% of men in the data have lifted it, which is most lifters.

Full answer

Is 185 lb84 kg a good bench?

Intermediate for a 180 lb82 kg man

90% of men in the data have lifted it, which is most lifters.

Full answer

Is 225 lb102 kg a good bench?

Advanced for a 180 lb82 kg man

78% of men in the data have lifted it, which is most lifters.

Full answer

Is 315 lb143 kg a good bench?

Elite for a 180 lb82 kg man

33% of men in the data have lifted it, about 1 in 3.

Full answer

One-rep max

How to estimate your bench max

You do not need to max out to know your max. Take a set you are sure of, somewhere between two and six reps, and multiply the weight by one plus the reps over thirty. That is Epley's formula, and under ten reps it is accurate to within a few percent for the bench. Five reps at 185 lb predicts 216 lb; three reps at 225 predicts 248.

The estimate drifts as reps climb, because a twelve-rep set tests endurance as much as strength, so we cap the Find-your-rank module at twelve. Test the estimate every couple of months with a heavy single if you like; most lifters find the formula slightly generous on the bench and slightly conservative on the deadlift.

Epley estimates that equal a 225 lb one-rep max
RepsWeightPredicted max
1225 lb102 kg225 lb102 kg
2210 lb95 kg224 lb102 kg
3205 lb93 kg226 lb103 kg
5195 lb88 kg228 lb103 kg
8180 lb82 kg228 lb103 kg
10170 lb77 kg227 lb103 kg

Open the one-rep max calculator

Getting stronger

How to add twenty pounds to your bench

If you are below the line you want to be on, this is the order we would fix things in.

Press twice a week

One heavy day (sets of three to five) and one lighter day (sets of six to ten) beats one big day. The second session is where the technique gets rehearsed and the volume accumulates.

Own the setup

Feet planted, upper back arched and pinned, shoulder blades pulled down and together, grip just outside shoulder width. The bar should touch the same spot on your sternum every rep. Most stalled benches are setup problems wearing a strength costume.

Train the lockout

If the bar stalls a few inches off the chest, you need chest and shoulders: pause reps and dumbbell presses. If it stalls near the top, you need triceps: close-grip bench, dips, board presses. Diagnose the sticking point before you add assistance work.

Eat and sleep like you mean it

The bench is the lift most sensitive to bodyweight. A lifter who gains five pounds of muscle over a training block almost always benches more at the end of it. Protein around 0.7 to 1 g per pound, and sleep that is not negotiable.

In competition

Powerlifting bench standards

A competition bench is stricter than a gym bench: a pause on the chest until the referee's press command, no bouncing, no lifting the hips, and a full lockout. A touch-and-go gym lift is not directly interchangeable with a paused competition result. Our percentiles describe competition results; the six strength levels belong to Stronger’s scale.

Elite and World Class are labels on Stronger's scale, not federation qualifications or record predictions. The competition percentiles show how those thresholds compare with measured lifts.

Safety

Bench press safely

Use correctly adjusted safeties or a competent spotter for heavy bench presses. Learn the setup with a qualified coach and follow your gym’s equipment instructions.

Stop the exercise if it hurts. Persistent or sudden pain needs assessment rather than a technique diagnosis from a benchmark page. Young lifters should train with qualified supervision; see the AAP’s strength-training guidance.

Questions people ask

Bench press standards, answered

What is the average bench press?

In our data the average man benches about 281 lb127 kg for one rep and the average woman about 127 lb58 kg. Those are one-rep maxes among people who train and test the lift, not the general population, and they move a lot with bodyweight. The tables above give the number for your weight.

What is a good bench press?

For a 180 lb82 kg man, Intermediate starts at 165 lb75 kg and Advanced at 209 lb95 kg; for a 140 lb64 kg woman, Intermediate starts at 77 lb35 kg and Advanced at 110 lb50 kg. We would call anything Intermediate or above a good bench. It is stronger than most people who lift.

How many people can bench 225?

About 78% of the men in our data have benched 225 lb, which is most lifters. Among men who do not train it is far rarer. The 225 page has the number by bodyweight and age.

Should I be able to bench my bodyweight?

For men, a bodyweight bench lands around the Intermediate line in our tables and most consistent lifters reach it within their first year or two. For women it sits closer to Advanced and takes longer. It is a good first milestone, not a requirement. How rare a bodyweight bench is.

What are the bench press standards in kg?

Every number on this page switches to kilograms with the lb/kg toggle. For a 82 kg man the cutoffs are Novice 55 kg, Intermediate 75 kg, Advanced 95 kg, Elite 120 kg and World Class 150 kg.

How does age change the standards?

Bench strength rises through the teens, peaks in the late twenties to thirties and declines slowly after forty. Nobody has measured a representative teen average, so we do not print one; among 15-year-old boys who compete in our data the median is 187 lb85 kg, a competition benchmark for that age. The by-age page has the median for every age from 13 up, and each teen age has its own scale by bodyweight.

How do I find my one-rep max without maxing out?

Take a set of two to six clean reps with a weight you are sure of and use the Epley estimate: weight × (1 + reps ÷ 30). Five reps at 185 lb predicts about 216 lb. Our 1RM calculator does the arithmetic, and the Find-your-rank module above accepts a set instead of a max.

Does the bench press weight include the bar?

Yes. Every number on this page is the total on the bar, bar included, which is how a lift is recorded at a meet and how Stronger logs it. A standard barbell weighs 45 lb20 kg, so a 45 lb plate on each side is 135 lb61 kg, the “one plate” bench, and two plates a side is 225 lb102 kg. If your gym's bar is lighter or a machine adds its own resistance, the number is not comparable.

Are these numbers averages of everyone, gym members or powerlifters?

Competitors. The percentiles come from 1,668,369 verified bench attempts by 556,880 lifters in the OpenPowerlifting open dataset, so every “% of men” on this page means men who entered a powerlifting meet. These numbers describe competitive powerlifters, people who entered a sanctioned meet and trained for it. They are stronger than the general gym population, and far stronger than the general public. The six levels are a different thing. They are Stronger's scale, the same one the app scores every lift on, and we put the competition percentile beside each level so the two never blur.

Why do different strength-standard sites give different answers?

Because they measure different people in different ways. Strength Level's tables are built from lifts its users log; ours are competition results with a judge watching; some older charts trace back to a machine test, not a barbell. None of them is wrong about its own population, and none of them is the average of everyone. The Methodology section on this page lists every published table we cross-checked against, so you can see where each number comes from.

Sources: Strength Level bench press standards (Strength Level)

How often should I train to improve my bench?

The ACSM's 2026 resistance-training guidelines put the floor for healthy adults at every major muscle group at least twice a week. For the bench specifically we would program two to three sessions a week, one heavy and one lighter, with the pressing volume spread across them; once a week is usually enough to hold a number and rarely enough to move one. Add the rows and rear-delt work that keep the shoulders healthy under the bar.

Sources: ACSM Unveils Landmark 2026 Resistance Training Guidelines — First Update in 17 Years (American College of Sports Medicine, 2026)

Stronger · Strength Score

Track your strength level, every lift, every workout.

The tables above are a snapshot. Stronger scores every set you log on its strength scale, adjusted for your bodyweight and sex, and shows you which muscle is holding your bench back. This is the Strength Score, and it is the reason the app exists.

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Levels: Beginner, Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, Elite, World Class. Average man 281 lb.