Guillotine Press

What the guillotine press actually trains

The guillotine press is a barbell bench press with two modifications. The grip is wider than normal, and the bar is lowered towards the base of the neck rather than the lower chest, with the elbows flared out to the sides.

The name is not subtle and it is not accidental. It describes the bar path.

What it does, mechanically, is put the pectoralis major into a far greater stretch than a conventional bench press. The wide grip lengthens the fibres, the flared elbows abduct the arm to close to ninety degrees, and the high bar path emphasises the upper fibres. Anyone who tries it feels the difference immediately, usually at a weight that seems embarrassingly light.

There is a legitimate rationale behind it. Research on range of motion consistently favours training through a full range, and Pedrosa and colleagues found that training at longer muscle lengths produced greater growth than training at shorter ones. The guillotine press is an attempt to bench press at a longer muscle length.

The problem is the position it uses to get there. Kolber and colleagues, reviewing shoulder injuries associated with resistance training, identify the wide flared arm position under load as among those most often implicated. The guillotine press is that position, deliberately maximised, with a barbell descending towards your throat.

So this is a genuinely useful stimulus delivered through the least forgiving setup in the gym. That combination is the whole story of the exercise, and it dictates how to programme it: light, careful, in a rack with pins, and never as a main lift.

Setting up and executing

Set safety pins in a rack at a height that will catch the bar above your neck. This is not optional and it is not a suggestion for beginners. Do it every set.

Load a light bar. Genuinely light, a fraction of your normal bench press. The position is mechanically weak and the load should reflect that.

Lie on the bench with the feet planted and the shoulder blades set down and back. Take a grip wider than your usual bench press grip.

Unrack and bring the bar over the base of your neck rather than your chest. Lower slowly, letting the elbows flare out to the sides.

Stop when you feel a strong stretch across the upper chest, with the bar in the air above you and above the pins. The bar should never touch your neck or throat.

Press back up along the same line without letting it drift towards your chest, and rack it with a spotter's help or onto the pins.

The mistakes that cost you the most

Doing it without safeties is the one that matters most. Every other exercise in this library has failure modes that cost you a set. This one has a failure mode that involves a loaded barbell and your windpipe. Pins, or a spotter, or do not do it.

Using bench press weights is the next most common error and it feeds directly into the first. The wide flared position is mechanically weak and the loads should be a fraction of what you normally press.

Touching the neck is a control failure. The bar stops in the air, always. If you cannot control where it stops, the weight is too heavy.

Doing it with a history of shoulder problems is a poor judgement call. This is the most demanding position for the front of the shoulder in any common press, and if yours already complain, dumbbell flyes give you the stretch without it.

And making it a main lift is a misreading of the exercise. It is a specialised, stretch focused accessory. Loading it heavily takes the one thing it does well and adds all of the risk.

Sets, reps and rest by goal

For muscle gain, two to three sets of ten to fifteen with about ninety seconds of rest. For strength work, two to three sets of eight to twelve, though this is not a strength exercise and treating it as one is exactly the wrong approach. In a fat loss phase, two to three sets of twelve to twenty.

Notice that the rep ranges are higher than for any other barbell press in this library. That is deliberate. Higher reps require lighter loads, and lighter loads are what make this exercise defensible.

Control the eccentric. Roig and colleagues found eccentric training produced greater strength gains than concentric, and here a slow descent is also what keeps you in control of a bar path that does not tolerate surprises.

Schoenfeld and colleagues found a dose response between weekly hard sets and hypertrophy, so count these towards chest volume. Refalo and colleagues found stopping short of failure produces comparable growth to training to failure, and that finding is worth applying strictly here. Do not fail a guillotine press. Leave two or three reps in reserve on every set.

Where it fits in your split

Late in a chest or push session, after the heavy pressing is done.

On push, pull and legs it goes at the end of push day. On a bro split it is towards the end of chest day. On an upper and lower split it is an optional accessory. On a full body programme it does not really belong, being too specialised for the time available.

The honest position on programming this exercise is that most people should not. The stimulus it provides, a chest press at a long muscle length, is available from dumbbell flyes, cable flyes and deep ring push-ups without a barbell above your throat and without the most aggressive shoulder position in the gym.

If you want it anyway, once a week at most, two or three light sets, with pins set.

There is a case for the Smith machine version instead. The rails fix the path and the hooks let you bail with a wrist turn, which removes most of what makes the barbell version questionable while keeping the stretch.

Variations worth knowing

The standard barbell bench press, with the bar to the lower chest and the elbows tucked, is the exercise this one departs from and the one worth building.

A wide grip bench press keeps the wide hand position and the resulting chest stretch but lowers the bar to the chest rather than the neck. It is most of the benefit at a fraction of the risk, and is the sensible compromise for anyone drawn to the guillotine.

The Smith machine version puts the same path on rails with rotating hooks, which is the safest way to do this movement and the version worth choosing if it is available.

The incline barbell bench press achieves the upper chest emphasis through bench angle instead of bar path, which is the conventional and far more practical route.

Dumbbell flyes give a strong chest stretch with nothing above your throat and are the better choice for almost everyone.

And a deep ring push-up gets you a long muscle length at bodyweight with no external load at all.

What the evidence says

Pedrosa and colleagues found that training at longer muscle lengths produced greater hypertrophy than training at shorter lengths, and Pallares and colleagues found full range training beat partial range training. Together these are the legitimate basis for wanting a bench press variation that reaches a longer chest position.

Kolber and colleagues reviewed shoulder injuries associated with resistance training and identified the loaded wide flared arm position among those most often implicated. That is precisely the position this exercise uses, which is the case against it.

Saeterbakken and colleagues examined bench press variations in competitive athletes and found differences in strength and muscle activity across variations, supporting the idea that grip and path changes produce genuinely different exercises rather than trivial ones.

Roig and colleagues found eccentric training produced greater strength gains than concentric training, which supports the slow controlled descent.

Schoenfeld and colleagues on volume and Refalo and colleagues on proximity to failure supply the programming, and the latter is why leaving reps in reserve is a firm recommendation here rather than a preference.

Common questions

Is the guillotine press dangerous?

The bar path itself is manageable if you set safety pins and use light weight. What makes it risky is doing it heavy, without pins, and with the flared shoulder position under load. The shoulder position is the more common source of problems; the throat is the more dramatic one. Both are avoidable and both are why this stays a light accessory.

Should I do it at all?

Probably not, if you have alternatives. Dumbbell flyes, cable flyes and wide grip bench pressing give you a long chest position without a barbell above your neck. If you want the exercise specifically, do the Smith machine version, which keeps the stretch and removes most of the danger.

How much weight should I use?

A fraction of your normal bench press, and less than you expect. The wide flared position is mechanically weak, so the numbers are naturally low and that is not a problem to solve. If you find yourself creeping the weight up week on week, you have misunderstood what the exercise is for.

Does it really build upper chest better?

It puts the upper chest into a longer stretch, and training at longer muscle lengths does appear to favour growth. Whether that beats simply doing incline pressing, which achieves a similar emphasis far more safely, is not established. The incline press is the more sensible default.

Can I do it on a Smith machine?

Yes, and this is the version worth choosing. The rails fix the path so the bar cannot wander, and the rotating hooks mean a failed rep costs a wrist turn rather than anything worse. You keep the stretch and lose most of the reason to be cautious.