Can you bench press your own body weight?

[iggie]

The bench press / body weight test is a pretty good one.

Any healthy adult male should be able to.

If you can't it means you're either too fat or too weak.

I weigh 180 and can bench 240 lb for my 1 rep max (133%)

I've been dilligently weight training for 3 years though.

Really? Thats it for THREE years?

[Strakha]

Benching body weight is easy, now doing 10 reps, maybe not

But I prefer low weight high rep

[Oniax]

I weigh 83 kg, 183 pounds and I bench 140 kg, 309 pounds..
But that's after 5-6 years of training. 21 Years old.

I think your body weight should be quite easy to 1 rep.
With a fat % of under 10 and a few years of training one should be able to bench 1,5 times his body weight.

[Malcho]

Can you do chin-ups?
Can you do dips?

Even a few?

You can bench yourself.

The "average" being unable(and if a considerable sample size) indicates humanity in a terrible state today. Kids used to be able to get this kind of upper body strength easily with recess in school. How sad.

[boogie]

I'd say your average guy is 20-30 pounds overweight, and maybe used to sort of lift for a week a few years ago and then quit, and now maybe he walks or jogs once or twice a week if that.

With no training? Nope. Three months of putting effort in? Easy.

[hythos]

Something I ponder regularly, is about how average guys survived (not that they did, just how they did) 50, 500, or 1000 years ago.
Aside of their forms of entertainment, I'd say it's safe to say that anyone less than nobility had to work the majority of their day/lives. I'd imagine that those that worked the fields and other forms of manual labor probably could have been able to lift their own body-weight, and may have had decent enough stamina to run a 6-minute mile.
Post-industrialization (and even more pronounced, post-computer-age), the amount of real work needing to be done was what made the average-Joe soft (so, if you happen to be one, don't feel bad - it's not //entirely// your fault).

I'm not happy with where I'm at now strength-wise, but am happy with how I've gotten here - because I know I can get back to where I was, and maybe, get back to my original goal of 500lb on flat-bench. The most I've ever weighed was 198lb (and 6'3"), when I was able to bench 225lb @ 38 reps, 365 @ 3, and 425lb 1+; My incline strength was lower, but decline I could max 465+. For ever and always, natural... just lots of food, no drugs, no alcohol, no smoking, and for the past 16 years, no caffeine or pain-killers.

[Kellth]

yessir i can.

[ralphie]

Nah. 170cm, 65kg, currently I can do 45kgs.

[aashish98]

i think no one can bench press their body weight without a training.

[Velaniz]

i think no one can bench press their body weight without a training.

Genetics. Many can do it without any real training, many need to train only for a short period, and there's people that can take up to a year.

[Mongo42]

I can. But after having a rough week, using weight I normally did, and then stapling myself to the bench in an empty city gym, I no longer bench. There was an article on Tnation about isometric exercises. Many people who are strong in a given lift can't do a 1-handed pushup or a 1-legged squat with bodyweight. Those little balancer muscles dealing with "core strength" and "core mobility" can have a huge impact on limiting overall strength. It's like those big red emergency shutdown buttons on heavy machinery. Your brain hits one of those when it thinks you're about to rip your spine in half.

[Iyarashii]

I don't even lift and I can bench press easily my weight, but given that I am 120lbs I guess that makes it a lot easier for me

[Deleted]

I'm only 160, so it's not too hard to bench my own body weight.

[Deleted]

I'd be really disappointed if I couldn't. The most I've done is 85kg but that was a year or so ago.

I usually bench around 65kg (143 lbs) and my record of reps is 200 (yes, stupid but it was a challenge..), I'm 16 and weigh 83kg (182.6 lbs).

[Dillmanfit]

I'm about 165lbs I can do 205 for 1 clean rep the second rep is a bit sloppy but we will se where I'm at in a couple months.

[dwightyo39]

At age 21, yes. I could bench about 80lbs over my bodyweight.

At age 40, no. I've only been going to the gym for a little over a month. Not even trying for max weight for some time, if ever. Then again I don't have a spotter, as the gym is usually a ghost town when I'm there before a day shift or after a graveyard shift. Also, I am concerned my right shoulder might go "pop" under heavy (for me) weight.

[Loosecannon]

It's amazing how you lose sight of these things. I train at a pretty serious gym, the average guy *in my gym* can probably bench press bodyweight for 10 reps, with some monsters who could probably do c.2x bw for 10.

Then I think about normal people and the folks I work with, I think in my team if 24 people, that myself, one guy who does crossfit and another who is a rugby player could probably bench BW. The rest would struggle. Therefore based on my anecdotal experience, even though my first instinct was 'Well duh of course they can' that the answer is no

[Akka]

I'm rather wiry, so I've always been able to benchpress my body weight (60 Kg when I was a teen, 75 Kg now).
I've been trying to reach one and a half my body weight, but I don't think I'll ever be able to - that would require to push 112 Kg, the best I ever could reach is 107, and I'm at an age when you just keep yourself from slipping, you don't really progress anymore.

[alexa01]

This would be considered above average, depending on how many reps you can do. If you have been working out consistently for a year and can’t bench your bodyweight then surely you’re doing something wrong.

[Crispin]

Yes but I work out. The average person wont be able to bench their own weight, far from it.