It took me 3 years to hit a 225 bench press. Ryan did it in 1, and his method changed everything for me.

Reaching a 225 bench press is a sign you've made it in the gym.

But only 2% of new lifters can do it, and even among regulars, barely 1 in 5 ever get there.

It took me 3 years to hit a 225 bench press. But it took Ryan, a record-breaking lifter and pro bodybuilder, just 1. Now he goes way beyond a 225 bench press, now benching over 400 lbs easily — a feat so rare you have better odds of becoming a billionaire.

All using a system I’ve never heard of ... and he says he's natural?

So, after breaking Ryan's method down with the latest research, I turned it into a plan that could help you and me add up to 30 lbs to your bench in just 6 weeks (and finally hit that elusive 225 bench press milestone).

#1: Bench Press 225 Starts With Technique And Proper Form

Ryan:

"After I made that switch, it was a year's worth of progress in 3 months."

The switch? His grip.

Research shows that widening your grip just an inch or two can boost your bench instantly — often by 5-10% — and get you closer to your 225 bench press goal just by shortening the range of motion.

But it’s not one-size-fits-all.

Ryan:

"The rule of thumb is the wider you go, the more pec engagement you'll experience, and the more narrow you go, the more tricep engagement you'll experience. 

And you kind of want to do play to your strengths to a certain extent, if you do have very strong triceps, that might be to your benefit to going narrow. But it really does come down to experimentation and trying a lot of different bench strips and using how they feel to kind of guide you.”

But grip is actually not where Ryan starts.

His setup begins before his hands even touch the bar.

Ryan's Bench Press Setup

Ryan uses a big, “scary-I’m-going-to-break-my-back” arch when he lifts.

Similar to how a wider grip can instantly boost your strength, using a bigger arch can do the same thing.

Powerlifters do this on the barbell bench press because it shortens the distance between the top and bottom of the press. Some argue this leads to less range of motion for the chest and potentially less growth.

But later, we’ll show how Ryan balances this out with exercises focused on growth rather than just strength.

And now, here's Ryan explaining how he unracks the bar:

“So it's like you're using your shoulder blades as a pivot to unwrap the bar, just trying to not use much of your pressing muscles, if at all, on that unrack”

Trying Ryan’s bench press setup — the grip, the arch, the leg drive — it felt completely foreign. I cramped in muscles I didn’t even know were involved.

And just like that, I couldn’t even hit 235 even though I did this years back when bench press was still part of my training.

Here's the truth.

Bench has always been my weakest lift, so I’d stopped benching a long time ago, switching to dumbbells and machines instead.

My chest still grew. My physique improved. And I told myself it didn’t matter — why chase a number I’d probably never hit, especially if I already looked the way I wanted?

But seeing Ryan’s incredible feats of strength, for the first time in years, I felt an urge to chase strength. Not for size. Not for aesthetics. Just to prove I could do it and overcome my mental limitations. 

We’ll see if, using Ryan’s advice, I can break my old PR. 

But first, I needed Ryan to answer the question everyone’s been thinking...

Is Ryan Really A Natty?

Ryan:

"I am natural. I am. I have been competing in drug-tested federations for 8 years now.”

Jeremy:

“I have heard, like usually, they have a bit more OCD, especially when it comes to picking weights. Like plates. You know what I mean? So that’s the only red flag.”

But that obsessive attention to detail is exactly what separates elite lifters from the rest of us, and Ryan brings it into every part of his training, even his warm-ups, where he spends up to 30 minutes just working his way up to 400 lbs.

Your Warmups Matter If You Want To Hit A 225 Bench Press

Ryan:

"Ideally, you have a top set in mind, around like a range you'd like to hit with your heaviest weight and for a set of reps.

And the closer you get to that with your warmups, the fewer reps you should be doing.

So when we start with the bar, doing 15 or 10 reps, that's fine. And as we slowly work our way up, we solely want to decrease the amount of reps, but we still want to apply the same focus and intensity because our warmup sets are also where we practice technique.”

But even with the right form, if you just keep focusing on “benching harder, eventually you’ll get stuck and fail to reach your goal of a 225 bench press.

What Ryan shows me next?

It’s the key to breaking through plateaus and hitting that 225 bench press. 

#2: Identify Your Sticking Point

Ryan structures his workouts into three parts, starting with strength. 

A few focused sets of heavy bench, lower reps, and high effort.

But after the heavy sets, Ryan looks for data.

If you actually watch where you fail, you’ll see exactly what’s limiting you from hitting a 225 bench press.

And once you know that? You can target the weak links with accessories that actually fix them to progress to a 225 bench press, instead of wasting time training muscles that aren’t the problem.

There are 3 common sticking points.

Right Off The Chest

For me, it was clear: I was failing right off the chest, where your pecs need to fire hard.

Jeremy:

"If you're failing off your chest, what accessories would you do after your main bench press?"

Ryan:

"So I would really focus on dips to really just focus on like strength overall. Yeah. And a speed bench of some sort where you're just applying a lot of explosiveness to the bar.” 

In The Middle

But let’s say you get stuck at the second sticking point, in the middle of the bench instead of the bottom. What should you focus on then in your journey to reaching a 225 bench press? 

Ryan:

“You're going to be assisted by exercises kind of like the shoulder press, the overhead press, like strict military press.

I think everything really plays a part.

So the shoulders are definitely something you want to address kind of in that mid-range, sticky fun and a good accessory which will allow you to address that.

You can also do a pause bench where you stop off your chest, you stop on the way up, and then you fully lock out, and that will help you just kind of build strength through that initial sticking point.”

And if you’re failing at the very top? What accessory movements would help you reach a 225 bench press?

At The Top

Ryan:

“And then a final sticking point is the lockout. That's the one I personally struggle with.

And in that case, we want to isolate our elbows or triceps with a close grip press that helps us build a lot more strength with the longer range motion, or when there's a variation called like the Spoto Press, where you kind of go down halfway and you just kind of isolate like a half bro pro rep bench press, exercise."

At the end of this article, I’ll give you a full bench program that adapts to your sticking point so you can finally hit that 225 bench press.

But after working on weak points, Ryan moves on to what he thinks played a massive role in building his superhuman strength. 

Bodybuilding exercises that prioritize size, rather than pure strength.  

Now you might be thinking: isn’t training for strength and size pretty similar?

Not quite.

#3: Train For Size

Strength is all about efficiency and moving as much weight as possible.

That’s why Ryan uses a wide grip and a big arch — to shorten the range of motion.

It’s also a skill that you get better at with practice, like riding your bike. Which explains how you can get really strong on an exercise without your muscles getting bigger. And also explains why, even though my chest has grown in the past few years, I couldn’t just show up and beat my old bench PR. 

Heavy weight and practice are what drive strength gains. 

But for size?

You don’t even need heavy weights.

If your max bench is 150 pounds, multiple studies show you can build just as much muscle pressing 50 pounds, as long as you do higher reps and train close to failure.

Trust me, I was skeptical too.

That’s why I’ve been training one side of my body with light weights and the other with heavy weights to put this research to the test. I’ll release that article soon.

But here’s where things get interesting. 

Why Train For Size?

Research shows that muscle size is one of the biggest predictors of strength, and that relationship becomes even more important as you gain experience and master the “skill” of benching.

Ryan takes full advantage of this.

He uses bodybuilding-style work — incline dumbbell presses, cable flyes, dips — to grow parts of his chest that the bench press doesn’t hit directly.

Then, he practices the bench press itself as a skill (heavy weights, low reps) so his nervous system learns how to use that added muscle for strength.

That size is what he believes helped him blast past that 225 bench press mark and continue staying ahead of lifters with shorter limbs and better leverage.

And just to show you how well this works in practice ...

As impressive as that lift is, Ryan’s goal is to hit 5 plates on each side, a 500 lb bench. 

How long will that take him?

Well, at this level of strength, he’s happy if he adds just 1 lb to his bench press every month. 

That kind of slow progress would frustrate most lifters.

Motivation Tips For Reaching A 225 Bench Press

So, how does he stay motivated?

He gamifies everything.

Even if he doesn’t hit a PR on bench that day, he looks for PRs on something — dips, presses, flyes to keep him progressing.

That’s why I’m a big advocate for tracking your training.

It reveals if you’re actually improving, and gives you a target to beat every week.

Even if you miss one lift, you’ve got a dozen other chances to “level up.”

Having an app that handles all that for you — tracking, progress, and targets — makes it way easier to stay consistent.

I’ll talk more about that later, but first, we need to break down one of the most surprising parts of Ryan’s routine:

Broga.

#4: Broga

The biggest challenge for Ryan when chasing 500 isn't some special program or technique — it's staying healthy along the way. 

So he’s combined “bro” exercises with “yoga”.

Broga isn’t for adding mass or chasing PRs. 

They're designed to keep your joints bulletproof, so you can keep pressing hard, week after week, and stay on track to hitting your 225 bench press goal.

And they're what's kept Ryan injury-free.

Ryan:

“We’re doing a typical tricep extension but behind our back … we’re forced into internal rotation and we’re extending while also internally rotating at the same time.”

But here's where things get weird. 

You'd think that with a 440-pound bench, Ryan would be practicing it constantly.

But when I asked him how often he actually benches, his answer completely flipped everything I thought I knew about getting stronger. 

Just once per week.

#5: Manage Recovery And Account For Individualization

And the crazy part? That’s what actually allowed him to start progressing faster.

Now this might sound strange at first. 

In fact, as a beginner, research shows that going from benching just once per week to 2 or 3 times per week can literally double your strength gains.

But as you get stronger and stronger, things change. 

Think about it — recovering from bench pressing 185 pounds every 48 hours is one thing, but when you're throwing around 225, 315, or even over 400 lbs like Ryan? 

That's a completely different level of stress on your body.

It’s why, although research shows for beginner lifters, higher frequency training leads to faster strength gains, when you look at advanced lifters it doesn’t tell the same story.

But even though Ryan’s low-frequency approach works for him, some people will still see better results by benching more often. 

The only way to find out which approach would help you get to a 225 bench press quicker?

Try them.

That’s why, with Ryan’s advice and using the latest science, I’ve created a low-frequency bench program and a higher-frequency bench program designed to get you to a 225 bench press (and beyond).

Try one of them, track your strength gains, and then try the other and see which one you seem to recover and progress faster with.

Before I tell you where to access these programs, let’s see if I can apply what Ryan taught me and beat my 235.

After breaking my PR, I wondered if I could go even heavier with 250.

I’m still not quite there yet. But looking back at my 245 bench, I noticed something. I slow down the most at the sticking point 2, signifying shoulder weakness.

Since I've been training purely for size, I only do lateral raises for wider shoulders and ditched overhead presses a couple of years ago, which Ryan suggested are key to breaking through this sticking point. So I think I have a lot of untapped potential. 

In a few weeks, after I wrap up the light vs heavy experiment I mentioned earlier, is when I'll shift my focus towards strength — and hopefully break through what I've always thought was impossible for me: a 315 bench.

TL;DR

• The 225 bench press is a major milestone in the gym, but less than 20% of regular lifters ever achieve it. It took me 3 years to get there, but Ryan hit it in just 1 by mastering form, programming, and recovery.
• Improving your setup — such as adjusting grip width and adding a back arch — can instantly boost your strength and bring you closer to a 225 bench press, even without adding muscle.
• To break through plateaus on your journey to a 225 bench press, you need to identify your sticking point (off the chest, mid-range, or lockout) and use the right accessory exercises to fix it.
• Building muscle through size-focused training (like incline dumbbell presses and flyes) can help unlock strength and push you past a 225 bench press, especially when paired with heavy, low-rep skill work on the bench.
• Whether you follow a low- or high-frequency bench program, staying consistent, tracking progress, and managing recovery are key to hitting (and going beyond) a 225 bench press.

Programs For A 225 Bench Press (And Beyond)

For now, here are the 2 programs that'll help you get to a 225 bench press (and beyond).

But if you want these personalized to your body, and weekly coaching to tell you exactly how much weight to lift, then you can try our Built With Science + app free for 2 weeks. Thousands of members have quickly transformed their bodies by following the weekly workouts and nutrition plan we give them, and I guarantee you can too.

Click the button below to try the BWS+ app for 2 weeks, for free, no strings attached:

↓

But while benching and achieving a 225 bench press are great for chest strength, I've found the best growth with 2 exercises that together can fully round out your chest. Give this article a read to discover what they are.

Thanks for sticking to the end, and I’ll see ya next time!