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Women Bench Press
How much weight should a women be able to bench press?
The bench press is a great way to increase your upper body strength for men and women and it is also a great way to test upper body strength as a result. Form or technique when doing the bench press is vitally important in order to avoid injury or just bad habits.
The American College of Sports Medicine have created a standard list of 1RM (maximum weight lifted once) for both men and women. The results are classified according to age and weight and are indicated by the percentage of bodyweight that one can lift.
What they have also done is separated the different percentages into average, above average and well above average. For example a female in her 30's weighing 140lbs should have a 1RM of around 57% of her bodyweight. This is something that will give any woman a good guide on upper body strength.
The College released advanced and very advanced as well. Without going into all the specific details of the study the results were that the definition of above average would be a woman who can lift 70% of her bodyweight for 1RM. The well above average definition was 90% of bodyweight.
It should be kept in mind that all the above percentiles are specifically for women in their 30"s. The age of a person will make a big difference in defining the average so for example a woman in their 50's the percentage would go down to 52% of their bodyweight for 1RM.
In order to test your own 1RM or maximum weight that you can lift once when you are bench pressing you should first do a warm-up with a light weight. Then do a few sets of 10 reps with about 50% to 70% of what you think is your maximum.
After you have done that then load up the bar to what you think would be your maximum weight that you can bench press. It is strongly advised that you ask an experienced spotter to watch you as you don't want to land up with the weight stuck on your chest.
One can also use the 1RM calculator which you can easily access online which will give you the indication according to your age and weight. But the calculator will obviously not be able to take into account your years of training that you may or may not have done before the test.
The advantage of knowing your 1RM is that you can plan the amount of weight that you should use when doing sets of 6 to 10 reps. This should be around 70% to 80% of your 1RM when doing sets and reps that are less than 8 if you want to increase your upper body strength.
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Women Bench Press