3 reasons your butt comes off the bench during bench press and how to fix it

Keeping your butt down during the bench press is VITAL.

For powerlifters specifically, it is essential to keep your butt down so your lift counts at meets. Beyond the “rules” keeping your butt down promotes stability that is necessary to allow for a safe, strong and powerful bench press.

Doing so allows you to maintain your back arch and body position to properly train your pressing muscles to grow and get stronger. Most notably, the stability that keeping your butt down provides, adds pounds to your bench press, simply from having great technique! 

Here are the 3 most common reasons your butt comes off during your bench press and how we can help you fix it:

1.) Stance

Your stance during any exercise is important - but most people consider this only in the compound movements of a squat or a deadlift. However, one’s stance during the bench press is just as important to performing an efficient lift.

It becomes extremely important when the focus of the bench press involves more and more weight - the stance helps us find stability and consistency in our setup to allow for effective lifts. 

When setting up your bench stance, bounce your legs a few times to find a comfortable position. Then be sure that the level of your knees is below the level of your hips (you can tell this by looking from a side angle).

This puts your hips into a more extended position, which will make it harder for your butt to come off the bench when you leg drive. 

To achieve this position in your bench stance → you can either go on your toes or flat feet. From there, the most important thing is to ensure knees are lower than the hips.

If you bench on your toes, keeping your feet tucked back towards your hips will allow you to achieve this position and find tension in your thighs for your leg drive. 

If you bench with flat feet, the previously mentioned positioning is possible if you have good mobility to keep your heels down. If not, move your feet outwards, away from your hips, to find that same tension.

2.) The direction of your leg drive 

Pushing straight down into the floor with your legs will almost always cause the butt to come off the bench. This nearly simulates a hip thrust - an exercise where you intentionally raise your hips up and down. We DON’T want this.

To correct that → think about the direction of your leg drive as mimicking a leg extension aka kicking a soccer ball.

Think about it like this - your legs are driving into the ground to try to slide yourself up the bench, toward the head. But you don’t actually want to move.

OR if that doesn’t work → once you are on the bench, imagine you are kicking someone away from you. 

Either of these allows you to maintain butt contact, an arch, and most importantly, stability in the bench press. 

3.) Timing your leg drive during the lift

Timing is HUGE - to support strong positioning and avoid ta butt lift during your bench, maintain your leg drive for the entire duration of the lift. You will feel the weight of the bar push into your legs and with the leg drive as a constant, you will feel stable as you push the bar UP and bring it back down.

Two big errors that we see that lead to a butt lift → aka losing tension and therefore strength…

No leg drive as they lower the bar, then initiate all of their leg drive when they press up. 

More leg drive on the way up than on the way down.

To visualize this, picture yourself initiating the bench press. 

As the bar is coming down towards your chest, it wants to move your body downwards towards your feet. If this happens, our arch softens and we lose positioning. We counteract this by utilizing our legs to drive in the opposite direction, forcing a strong bench position throughout the ENTIRE lift. 

Learn how we create a consistent set up for our bench technique:

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