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How much weight should a beginner bench press?

The question of “How much weight should a beginner bench press?” is one that many people (including myself) have asked about for centuries. How much should one be able to bench press exactly when they’re first starting out? Well, this question isn’t really an easy one only because everyone is different. According to research the average beginner lifter (as variables such as lean body mass go up) bench presses: 

Men: 48 to 73 percent of their body mass

To 

Female: 25 to 31 percent of their body mass 

A powerlifter’s bench press numbers can vary with (according to a study done by several people who you’ll find in the link): 

I won’t get into the mathematics behind it but this is basically discussing the correlation between the variables have with a person’s bench press. And the above numbers give a range of correlation between the variables. 

What are the variables that affect the bench press? 

Above is a brief overview of the variables that affect a person’s bench press (or the variables the study says affects a person’s bench press) below is a brief explanation of what each of those variables are and how they may or may not affect the bench press. 

What are structural variables? 

The term “structural” refers  to things that relate to / form part of the structure of an item (the body). So, structural variables are variables that make up parts of the body. For example, lean body mass refers to the parts of the body that aren’t fat such as bones, organs, muscles etc.

What is lean body mass? 

Lean body mass is a part of the body’s composition that’s calculated by taking the body’s total fat away from the person’s total body weight. In other words, lean body mass is calculated as follows LBM = BW (body weight) - BF (body fat) and vise versa to calculate body weight. 

There are a few ways to calculate lean body mass (but since that’s outside of the scope of this article we won’t go into depth on each of them. 

Formulas for calculating lean body mass are: Boer, Hume, James, Peters method.

What is brachial index? 

There’s such a thing as the ankle-brachial index and this is a test that refers to or compares the blood pressure in both the upper and lower extremities (limbs). The brachial itself refers to something that either is or is a part of the arm. 

What is arm circumference? 

Arm circumference (or in this case upper arm circumference) is used to measure muscle area for the arm (or in this case, as I said, the upper arm). The upper arm circumference is corrected for subcutaneous fat tissue by simply taking skinfold thickness of the tricep into account during measurement. 

What is cross-sectional area? 

Cross-sectional area (in muscle physiology) refers to the area of the cross-section of a particular muscle perpendicular to the actual muscle fiber. It’s typically used to describe the contraction properties of pennate muscles. 

The physiological cross-sectional area is a method of determining the number of muscle fibers in a muscle. I won’t go into detail on this (primarily because it wouldn’t make sense for me to,  this article wouldn’t require that type of research, and I don’t really want to) but this method is determined as so: 

PCSA = muscle fiber / fiber length = muscle mass / p * fiber length

Gender 

The only reason I mention this is because of the fact that gender affects strength levels, muscle activation, muscle fiber size etc. 

A study done by Miller et al. states that there are differences in physical capabilities for men and women and that from a study of eight men and women women were 52% and 66% as strong as men physically in their upper and lower bodies, respectively. The study also stated that women had smaller muscle cross sectional areas in their elbow flexors, biceps brachii, vastus lateralis, and knee flexors. 

There were also other examples to demonstrate the differences between gender strength and muscle characteristics.

The reason I mentioned this data is because there are several factors that come into play with bench press strength (and strength in general). Two guys can be the same size and benching for the first time and one of the guys can bench more than the other. The numbers below are averages and shouldn’t be seen as numbers that every person (of a certain gender) should be bound by. 

What’s the average beginner men’s bench press? 

The average male beginner bench press are stated below: 

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What’s the average beginner women's bench press? 

The average male beginner bench press are stated below: 

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Conclusion

If we’re going by the average bench press numbers then a fresh or beginner male should be able to bench press, if they weigh 110 lbs, 53 lbs or 24.09kg. A beginner female who weighs 90 lbs should be able to bench press 19 lbs or 8.63 lbs. However, we should also understand that there are other variables that come into play such as those mentioned above and that everyone is different. You never know, a man may be able to (at the 110 lbs bodyweight) bench upwards of 70 lbs and that may be due to their having a different physical makeup. The same thing goes for a female with the body weight mentioned above.