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What Muscles Grow from Bench Press Training? What the Research Shows

Written by:

Atlas Team

What Muscles Grow from Bench Press Training? What the Research Shows

When most people think about the bench press, they think about the chest. And while the pectorals are certainly a primary mover in the exercise, the bench press involves several other upper-body muscles working together to move the weight. But do those other muscles actually grow from bench press training — or do they just assist without adapting?

A recent study set out to answer exactly that question by measuring muscle hypertrophy across multiple muscles involved in the bench press after a structured training program. The findings offer a more complete picture of what bench press training actually does to your upper body — and they may change how you think about programming this classic lift.

What This Study Examined

The central question of this research was straightforward but meaningful: when someone trains the bench press consistently over time, which muscles actually grow?

Most discussions around the bench press focus on the pectorals as the target muscle, but the exercise also requires significant contributions from the triceps and the anterior (front) deltoids, among others. Researchers wanted to know whether hypertrophy — the increase in muscle size — would occur across all the major muscles involved, or whether growth would be concentrated in specific areas.

By examining multiple muscles rather than just one, the study aimed to give a more complete understanding of how bench press training shapes the upper body.

How the Study Was Conducted

The researchers designed a randomized training intervention lasting ten weeks, with participants following a bench-press-focused training program. The study was structured to specifically observe muscle size changes across the key muscles recruited during the bench press movement.

Muscle hypertrophy was measured across four muscles involved in the exercise. The focus was on tracking changes in muscle size before and after the ten-week period to determine which muscles responded to the training and to what degree.

The use of a randomized design helps reduce bias in how participants were assigned to conditions, which strengthens the reliability of the results. The ten-week timeframe is a relatively common window used in hypertrophy research, as it is long enough for meaningful muscular adaptation to occur while remaining practical for a controlled study.

While the full details of participant demographics, exact training variables such as sets, reps, and load, and the specific measurement tools used are contained within the full published paper, the core design centered on bench-press-focused training as the intervention and muscle size as the primary outcome.

Key Findings

The study found that bench-press-focused training produced muscle hypertrophy across several of the upper-body muscles involved in the movement — not just the pectorals.

Key takeaways from the findings include:

  • Multiple muscles grew, not just the chest, suggesting that the bench press stimulates hypertrophy across a broader range of upper-body musculature than is often assumed

  • The results suggest that muscles beyond the pectorals — including supporting muscles involved in the pressing movement — responded meaningfully to the training intervention

  • Bench-press-focused training over ten weeks was sufficient to drive measurable increases in muscle size across the muscles studied

  • The pattern of hypertrophy observed across muscles provides insight into how compound pressing movements distribute training stimulus throughout the upper body

Researchers observed that the growth response was not limited to one primary muscle, which reinforces the idea that the bench press functions as a true multi-muscle exercise rather than an isolation movement.

What This Means for Training

Taken together, these findings suggest that the bench press may be doing more hypertrophic work across your upper body than you realize. If your training goal includes building the chest, shoulders, and triceps, bench press training appears to contribute to growth in all of these areas — not just one of them.

This has practical implications for how you structure a program. Coaches and trainees who rely heavily on the bench press as a foundational upper-body lift may be getting more out of it than they would expect if they only thought of it as a "chest exercise." The results suggest that the triceps and anterior deltoids, for example, are not merely assisting — they are also adapting and growing in response to the training.

That said, these findings do not suggest the bench press should replace targeted isolation work entirely. Depending on individual goals and any muscular imbalances someone may have, supplementing bench press training with accessory exercises may still be appropriate. A structured, evidence-informed approach to programming — such as working with a qualified personal trainer — can help determine the right balance for your specific goals.

For those in the Reno area looking to optimize their training around research like this, Atlas Personal Training connects clients with vetted coaches who can apply findings like these to personalized programming. You can browse available coaches here.

Limitations of the Study

As with any research, there are important limitations to consider before drawing broad conclusions.

  • Study duration: Ten weeks is a reasonable window for observing early hypertrophic adaptations, but it may not capture the full long-term pattern of how muscles respond to continued bench press training over months or years.

  • Specificity of training: Because the program was bench-press-focused, it is difficult to know whether these results would generalize to programs that include a wider variety of pressing movements or training styles.

  • Population factors: Without knowing the full characteristics of the participant group — such as training experience level, age, or sex distribution — it is hard to say how broadly these findings apply to all types of trainees. Results may differ for beginners compared to experienced lifters, for example.

  • Sample size: Many exercise science studies involve relatively small groups of participants, which can affect the generalizability of the findings.

These limitations do not undermine the value of the study, but they are worth keeping in mind when applying the results to real-world training decisions.

Conclusion

This study adds useful nuance to how we understand one of the most common exercises in strength training. Rather than treating the bench press as a simple chest exercise, the research suggests it produces meaningful muscle growth across several upper-body muscles involved in the movement.

For anyone designing a training program, this is a helpful reminder that compound movements can deliver broader muscular adaptation than their reputation sometimes implies. Research like this helps inform how coaches structure resistance training programs — and underscores the value of evidence-based decision-making in the gym.

Whether you are training for aesthetics, strength, or general fitness, understanding what your exercises are actually doing gives you a better foundation for making smart choices about your program.

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Source

Muscle hypertrophy response across four muscles involved in the bench press exercise: Randomized 10 weeks training intervention. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies. 2024. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1360859224003899