Close-Grip Bench Press.
The close-grip bench press is the primary barbell triceps exercise. A shoulder-width or slightly narrower grip shifts load from the chest to the triceps while elbows track close to the torso, lowering the bar to the lower chest before pressing back up.
Step by step.
Lie back on the bench with your eyes under the bar and your feet planted. Grip the bar about shoulder width, narrow enough that your forearms will sit vertical at the bottom but not so narrow that your wrists bend.
Set your shoulder blades down and back into the bench and keep a small natural arch. Unrack the bar and hold it over your chest with straight arms and braced wrists.
Lower the bar under control toward your lower chest while tucking your elbows to roughly 30-35 degrees from your torso. Keep your forearms vertical so the load stays on your triceps.
Touch the bar lightly to your lower chest with your elbows still tucked inside your wrist line. Do not flare your elbows out, since that turns it back into a regular bench press.
Press the bar back up and slightly toward your face until your arms lock out, driving with the triceps. Reset your tuck and breathing, then lower again for the next rep.
Grip width is where people make a mistake immediately. "Close grip" does not mean hands touching in the middle of the bar. A truly narrow grip (thumbs 6-8 inches apart) creates extreme wrist deviation as the bar descends, and the forearms can't stay vertical at the bottom. That puts the load into the wrist joints rather than the triceps. Shoulder-width grip is close grip for this exercise. Your forearms should be vertical (or within a few degrees) when the bar is at the bottom, just as in a regular bench press. That's your check.
The elbow tuck is the other half. At roughly 30-35 degrees from the torso (not 90 degrees flared, not pressed fully to the ribs), the triceps takes over as the primary mover. If the elbows flare out to 45-60 degrees, the pec major dominates and you've changed exercises back to a regular bench press with a narrower grip. The elbows don't need to touch the sides. They just need to stay inside the wrist line.
Wrist comfort is a real limiting factor here. The neutral wrist position from a regular bench press becomes harder to maintain because the narrower grip creates more ulnar deviation stress as the bar descends. Some lifters wrap their wrists at heavier loads for support. This is fine and not cheating. If the wrists are aching at 70% of your regular bench weight, either the grip is genuinely too narrow or the wrists need more direct mobility work.
One programming note: close-grip bench press and regular bench press are not substitutes for each other. They're complementary. If both are in the program on the same day, do regular bench first when you're fresh, close-grip after. The triceps are a synergist on the regular bench. Pre-fatiguing them limits how much you can move on the compound.
Pressing trains the triceps from a shortened position, so the long head stays undertrained on this lift alone. Pair the close grip bench with a skullcrusher to load that long head stretched, with the elbow up and overhead. For more triceps pressing, the board press overloads the lockout, the dumbbell floor press is easier on the shoulders, and the tate press adds a dumbbell option.
Common questions.
Shoulder-width, or a finger or two inside shoulder-width. The grip should create vertical forearms at the bottom position. That's the real measurement, not a specific inch distance. For most people that ends up with hands between 14 and 18 inches apart (inside grip measurement). Going narrower than vertical forearms allows is not more effective for the triceps; it just distributes stress to the wrists and makes the movement unstable under heavier loads.
Close-grip bench press lets you move substantially more load than any cable exercise, which drives more mechanical tension on the triceps overall. Pushdowns isolate the triceps in a stretched position through a different range of motion and are better for pump, detail work, and protecting the elbows on high-volume days. For strength and mass, close-grip bench is the more productive movement. Most serious programs include both: heavy pressing for tricep strength, cables for volume and recovery work.
Yes, to the lower chest. The bar touches around the sternum's lower third, which with tucked elbows produces the vertical forearm position that makes the triceps the prime mover. Stopping an inch short to 'protect the joints' on this exercise usually just means the weight is heavier than the lifter can control honestly. If the bar can't touch the chest with controlled form, reduce the weight.
Partially. Both are compound-to-isolation tricep exercises, but they load the triceps at different joint angles. Close-grip bench presses the triceps from a shortened position (elbows relatively extended at the bottom). Skullcrushers load the triceps with the elbow bent and the long head stretched over the shoulder, which is a different stimulus. The long head of the triceps responds particularly well to overhead or stretched-position loading. A program that only does pressing will have a weak long head over time. Including both, or at least one stretched-position exercise, covers the triceps more completely.
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