Barbell Floor Press

What the floor press actually trains

The floor press is a bench press with the floor acting as a depth limit. You lie on the ground, lower the bar until the backs of your upper arms touch, pause, and press.

The chest, triceps and front delts do the work, as in any press. What changes is the range. Because the floor stops your arms roughly where the upper arm reaches horizontal, you never enter the deepest part of a bench press descent.

That has two consequences. The first is that the triceps work harder relative to the chest, because the top two thirds of a press is where elbow extension dominates and that is now the whole lift. Floor presses are a long-standing lockout builder for that reason.

The second is that the shoulder never reaches the position it likes least. Kolber and colleagues, reviewing resistance training shoulder injuries, describe deep, loaded pressing positions as among those most often implicated. Removing the bottom of the range removes that position, which is why floor pressing shows up so often in the training of people whose shoulders complain about benching.

The trade-off is honest: you give up the loaded stretch at the bottom, and Pallares and colleagues found full range training generally beats partial training. This is a variation with a purpose, not a better bench press.

Setting up and executing

Set a barbell in a rack at a low height, or have a partner hand it to you. Getting a heavy bar into position on the floor alone is the genuinely awkward part of this lift and it is worth solving before you load it.

Lie on your back beneath the bar with the knees bent and the feet flat, or the legs straight if you prefer. Take a grip slightly wider than shoulder width.

Unrack and bring the bar over your chest with the arms extended. Set the shoulder blades down and back into the floor.

Lower with the elbows at around forty five degrees to your torso until the backs of your upper arms rest lightly on the floor. Pause for a full beat, keeping the weight supported by your arms rather than dumping it.

Press back up in a straight line without bouncing, and stop just short of locking the elbows hard.

The mistakes that cost you the most

Bouncing off the floor is the fault that removes the point of the exercise. The pause at the bottom is what makes a floor press a floor press: it kills the stretch reflex and forces you to start the press from a dead position. Crash the arms down and rebound and you have simply given yourself free momentum on a shortened bench press.

Flaring the elbows to ninety degrees puts the shoulder into the position this variation exists to avoid, which is a particular waste. Around forty five degrees.

Unsafe setup deserves its place on this list because a floor press is one of the more awkward lifts to bail out of. Rolling a heavy bar into position alone is how people get hurt. Use a low rack or a partner, and never load more than you could press for a clean single from a dead stop.

Treating it as a full bench press is the mental error. The range is shorter so the numbers are higher, and comparing them to your bench press tells you nothing.

And arching hard off the floor achieves nothing here. A big arch on a bench shortens the range and sets the shoulders. On the floor it just lifts your hips off the ground. Stay reasonably flat.

Sets, reps and rest by goal

For muscle gain, three to four sets of six to ten with two minutes of rest. For strength work, three to five sets of three to six with two to three minutes. In a fat loss phase, three sets of eight to twelve with ninety seconds.

Lower rep ranges suit this lift, partly because the shortened range makes heavy loads manageable and partly because the setup is awkward enough that long high-rep sets are unpleasant.

Schoenfeld and colleagues found a dose response between weekly hard sets and hypertrophy. Count floor presses towards your chest and triceps pressing volume rather than as extra work.

Refalo and colleagues found stopping a rep or two short of failure produces comparable hypertrophy to going to failure, and that advice is worth taking seriously here. Failing a floor press with a barbell across your chest, alone, is a genuinely bad situation. Leave reps in reserve or use dumbbells.

If your goal is lockout strength for a bench press, the close-grip version at three to six reps is the specific tool.

Where it fits in your split

Early in a push or chest session, as a pressing variation, and generally in a block rather than permanently.

On push, pull and legs it goes on push day. On an upper and lower split it can serve as the main press for a training block. On a bro split it belongs on chest day among the heavy pressing.

There are three good reasons to programme it. If your shoulders are unhappy with full range benching and you want to keep pressing heavy. If your bench press stalls at lockout rather than off the chest. Or if you train somewhere with a rack and no bench, which is more common than it sounds.

If none of those applies, a bench press is the more complete exercise and there is no need to rotate this in for its own sake.

Once a week is plenty, and not in the same session as heavy full range pressing.

Variations worth knowing

The dumbbell floor press is the practical version for most people, because getting into position alone is trivial and each arm works independently. If the barbell setup is putting you off, start here.

The close-grip floor press shifts even more work to the triceps and is the specific choice for lockout strength.

A deliberate two or three second pause on the floor removes every trace of momentum and makes the lift considerably harder at the same weight.

Kettlebell floor presses add a wrist and grip demand from the offset load, which some people find more comfortable and others find distracting.

The flat bench press remains the full range comparison and should stay in the programme unless your shoulders say otherwise.

And the board press, using boards on the chest to limit depth, is the same idea with an adjustable stopping point, which lets you target a specific sticking point more precisely.

What the evidence says

Saeterbakken and colleagues examined bench press variations in competitive athletes and found differences in strength and muscle activity across variations. Range-limited presses are a long-established part of that family, used to bias the lockout portion.

Kolber and colleagues reviewed shoulder injuries associated with resistance training and identified deep loaded pressing among the practices most often implicated. That is the basis for the floor press being a reasonable option for lifters with irritable shoulders, though it is a training adjustment rather than a treatment.

Pallares and colleagues found full range training generally produced better adaptations than partial range training, which is the honest counterweight. A floor press deliberately shortens the range, so it is a supplement or a temporary substitute rather than an upgrade on the bench press.

Brandao and colleagues examined the triceps heads and how different exercises load them, which supports using close-grip and lockout-biased pressing when triceps development is the target.

Schoenfeld and colleagues on volume and Refalo and colleagues on proximity to failure supply the programming, and the latter matters here because failure with a barbell on the floor is a poor outcome.

Common questions

Why press from the floor instead of a bench?

Three reasons. It limits the range so the shoulder never reaches the deep position many people find irritating. It biases the lift towards the triceps and the lockout. And it needs no bench, only a rack or a partner. If none of those apply to you, bench press instead.

Should the bar touch my chest?

No. The floor stops your upper arms before the bar reaches your chest, and that is the point. Lower until the backs of your upper arms rest lightly on the ground, pause, and press. Trying to force the bar lower defeats the purpose and puts you in an awkward position.

Is it safe to do alone?

With a barbell, only if you have a rack set at the right height and you stay well away from failure. Getting pinned on the floor is worse than getting pinned on a bench, because there is nowhere to roll the bar. Dumbbells solve this completely and are the better choice for solo training.

Will it improve my bench press?

It can, if your sticking point is at the lockout rather than off the chest. Training the range you are weakest in is a reasonable strategy, and the close-grip version is the sharpest tool for it. If you fail at the bottom of your bench instead, paused bench presses are the better answer.

Why can I lift more than on a bench press?

Because the range is shorter and you never pass through the weakest part of the movement. That extra weight is a property of the exercise, not evidence of new strength, and comparing the two numbers is not useful. Track them separately.