How does your bench press really compare?

Personal record, or PB for personal best in the UK and Australia: the heaviest weight you've lifted on an exercise, or the most reps at a given weight. A 1RM PR is your best ever single. Whether your PRs are moving is the plainest sign that progressive overload is working, and progressive overload is the whole engine of getting stronger.

A men's Olympic bar is 45 lbs (20 kg) and 7.2 feet long; a women's Olympic bar is 33 lbs (15 kg) and a little shorter. Smith machine bars are counterbalanced and usually weigh 15 to 25 lbs in effect, and EZ-curl bars weigh 15 to 25 lbs. Check what your gym's bar actually weighs, because the difference goes straight into your 1RM.

None of them wins outright. Epley, Brzycki and Lombardi all do well for sets of 1 to 10 reps, with errors of about 5 to 10%; Brzycki runs a little conservative and Epley a little generous. Reynolds and colleagues found in 2006 that averaging several formulas predicts best for most people, which is why this calculator averages Epley and Brzycki by default.

Yes, and better than most lifters think. Pressing 1.0x bodyweight is the Intermediate standard for men, which puts you ahead of most people who train recreationally, and it's the Advanced standard for women, which puts you well clear of nearly everyone. It's a more honest milestone than 225 lbs because it scales with the person: a 150 lb man benching 150 has done something a 250 lb man benching 225 hasn't. The body fat percentage calculator covers the composition side of the same question, and the standards by training level and bodyweight class are compiled on the body statistics page. Source: ExRx.net strength standards.

Rate of Perceived Exertion, borrowed for lifting by Mike Tuchscherer and validated by Zourdos and colleagues in 2016. It's a 1 to 10 scale built on reps in reserve: RPE 10 means you couldn't have done another rep, and RPE 8 means you had about two left. Most good programmes live at RPE 7 to 9, stopping one to three reps short of failure, because grinding to RPE 10 every set raises the injury risk without adding much strength. It also lets you self-regulate, lifting more on a good day and less after a bad night while keeping the effort the same. Source: Zourdos et al. 2016, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.

For most untrained men on a structured programme, three or four sessions a week, 6 to 18 months. Men under 30 with average body composition often get there in 6 to 12 months, while those over 40, or starting with more body fat, are nearer 12 to 18. For women, bodyweight is an Advanced-tier lift and usually takes 2 to 4 years of serious training. Beginner gains come fast and then the curve flattens hard after the first year. Where your bodyweight itself sits among people your age is on the weight percentile calculator. Source: Kilgore, Rippetoe and Pendlay, Practical Programming for Strength Training.

Always. The bar is part of the load. A men's Olympic bar is 45 lbs (20 kg), so two 45 lb plates a side plus the bar is 225, and every strength standard, competition result and 1RM formula assumes the bar is counted. The only exception is a machine where the maker quotes plate weight alone and the lever system changes the real resistance. Source: IPF rules, NSCA testing protocols.

For comparing people, the ratio. A 150 lb lifter benching 225 (1.5x bodyweight) is stronger for his size than a 250 lb lifter benching the same 225 (0.9x), which is why the standards are written as ratios in the first place. Absolute weight still matters when you're moving furniture, playing a contact sport or lifting inside a powerlifting weight class, so most coaches track both, and competitive powerlifting uses Wilks and DOTS scores to compare lifters across classes more precisely. Source: IPF scoring systems.

Raw, 355 kg (782.6 lbs), by Julius Maddox of the USA in 2020. In a bench shirt, which stores elastic energy on the way down, 501 kg (1,104.5 lbs) by Jimmy Kolb of the USA in 2023. The women's raw record is about 207.5 kg (457.5 lbs) by April Mathis. These are the far edge of what a human chest can do after decades of specialised work and mean nothing as targets for anyone else; the average competitive male powerlifter across all weight classes benches about 130 to 150 kg (285 to 330 lbs). Raw records are ratified by the International Powerlifting Federation. Source: OpenPowerlifting.org, IPF records database.

It's a good measure of upper-body pushing and a poor measure of everything else. A full picture needs a squat for the legs, a deadlift for the back and hips, an overhead press for vertical pushing and a row or pull-up for pulling, which is why powerlifting scores the Big Three together, and a big bench on top of a weak squat and deadlift is an imbalance, not strength. The bench also rewards short arms and good technique, so as a single test it's useful and incomplete. Source: NSCA Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning; Rippetoe, Starting Strength.