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By age · boys and girls, men and women

Average Bench Press by Age: 13 to 70+ (Chart)

Nobody has measured an average bench for every age, so we show the honest number instead. It is the median among lifters of each age who compete in our data. Boys go from 121 lb55 kg at 13 to 248 lb112 kg at 18; girls from 83 lb38 kg to 121 lb55 kg. Competition benchmarks for each age, not general-population averages. Every teen point below is a page with its own standards by bodyweight.

  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

The full table

Median bench press for every age

The median best bench among lifters of that age who compete in our data, 13 to 70+. Competitors are the strong end of every age, so read each row as a competition benchmark; the age pages put the six-level scale beside it.

Median competition bench by age · lbkg · among lifters of that age who compete in our data
AgeBoys / menGirls / womenStandards
13 years old121558338Standards at 13
14 years old154709242Standards at 14
15 years old187859945Standards at 15
16 years old2099510849Standards at 16
17 years old23110511653Standards at 17
18 years old24811212155Standards at 18
19 years old26512012758
20–2428713013260
25–2930914013863
30–3432014513863
35–3932514713863
40–4432014513863
45–4931414213260
50–5429813512758
55–5927612511954
60–6425411510849
65–692311059945
70+193888840

Find your rank

Where does your bench sit?

Against adults your size. On each age page the same module scores you against your own age.

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.

Age and strength

How the bench changes with age

13 to 18. This is the steepest part of the curve and the least predictable. Two 15-year-olds can be years apart in growth, so the teen pages give standards by bodyweight, which tracks maturity far better than a birthday does. The rate of gain is also where we would spend the attention. In our data the median competitor's bench climbs by more per year from 13 to 17 than at any later age, and the way to waste that window is to chase a max before the technique is there.

20s and 30s. Peak territory. Bodyweight, training age and technique explain almost everything; the calendar explains almost nothing. The adult standards on the main page are built for this range.

40 and up. Strength declines slowly for people who keep training, on the order of a few percent per decade, and faster for people who stop. Recovery takes longer; volume needs managing; the shoulders need more pulling to stay happy under a bar. None of that stops a 50-year-old from benching a number that is Advanced for a 25-year-old. Masters powerlifting is full of them.

Women, at every age. The shape of the curve is the same, the numbers are lower, and the women's standards are their own table for that reason. A woman who benches her bodyweight at 40 is doing something very few women of any age do.

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).

Questions people ask

Bench press by age, answered

What is the average bench press by age?

Nobody has measured it for the general population, so we show the next best thing. It is the median best bench among lifters of each age who compete in our data, from 121 lb55 kg for 13-year-old boys to 325 lb147 kg at 35–39 for men, and from 83 lb38 kg to 138 lb63 kg for women. Those are competition benchmarks, not general-population averages. People who enter a meet are the strong end of their age. Bodyweight explains more of the number than age does, which is why every age page is a table by bodyweight.

At what age is bench press strength highest?

In our data the median competitor bench is highest at 35–39 for men and 25–29 through 40–44, a plateau for women. The research on powerlifters points the same way. A study of world-class lifters put peak performance at about 35, and a model of classic powerlifting totals put it at about 27. After that, strength declines slowly for people who keep training and much faster for people who stop. The teenage years are where the number moves fastest.

Sources: Peak Age and Performance Progression in World-Class Weightlifting and Powerlifting Athletes (International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 2019) · Long-term performance trajectories in classic powerlifting: an exploratory analysis of 6,524 lifters with sustained competitive engagement (BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation, 2026)

What is a good bench press for a teenager?

It depends on the year and, more than that, on bodyweight. Among teenagers who compete in our data, the median bench for boys goes from 121 lb55 kg at 13 to 248 lb112 kg at 18; for girls from 83 lb38 kg to 121 lb55 kg. Those are competitors, so treat them as competition benchmarks. Each age has its own page with the six-level scale by bodyweight, which is the honest way to call a teenager's bench good.

How much should a 40, 50 or 60 year old bench?

The table above gives the median competitor bench for each age band, which is what the strong end of each decade lifts, not what everyone should. Bodyweight still matters more than age until the sixties, so the adult standards apply at any age; use the age-band row here to see how rare your number is among people your age who compete.

Can I still improve my bench after 40, 50 or 60?

Yes. Masters powerlifting is full of lifters whose bench is Advanced on the adult scale, and the decline in the data is slow for people who keep training. What changes is the recovery: fewer heavy sessions, more warm-up, more pulling work to keep the shoulders happy under the bar, and smaller jumps. The Find-your-rank module above scores you against adults your size; Stronger keeps the log as the years go by.

Is there a bench press chart for teenagers?

Yes: the chart at the top of this page covers 13 to 18, and each of those ages has its own page with a six-level table by bodyweight for boys and girls, a responsible-training block built on the NSCA and AAP guidance, and a Find-your-rank module scored against lifters of that age. 13 · 14 · 15 · 16 · 17 · 18

Stronger · Strength Score

Score every set against lifters your age and size.

Stronger adjusts its Strength Score for your bodyweight and sex, keeps the log as the years go by, and shows you which muscle is holding the bench back. The chart above is one snapshot; the app is the whole curve.

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Median bench press by age among competitors in our data: 13 years old: men 121 lb, women 83 lb; 14 years old: men 154 lb, women 92 lb; 15 years old: men 187 lb, women 99 lb; 16 years old: men 209 lb, women 108 lb; 17 years old: men 231 lb, women 116 lb; 18 years old: men 248 lb, women 121 lb; 19 years old: men 265 lb, women 127 lb; 20–24: men 287 lb, women 132 lb; 25–29: men 309 lb, women 138 lb; 30–34: men 320 lb, women 138 lb; 35–39: men 325 lb, women 138 lb; 40–44: men 320 lb, women 138 lb; 45–49: men 314 lb, women 132 lb; 50–54: men 298 lb, women 127 lb; 55–59: men 276 lb, women 119 lb; 60–64: men 254 lb, women 108 lb; 65–69: men 231 lb, women 99 lb; 70+: men 193 lb, women 88 lb. Reference lifter 180 lb82 kg.