If you compete in a federation that requires a paused bench, train the pause regularly. If you lift for general strength or size, touch-and-go is a reasonable default, provided you control the lowering and do not bounce the bar off your chest. No trial we could find has compared the strength or muscle gains of the two styles, so that advice rests on mechanics and competition rules, not on a head-to-head result.
Below, we set out what the research does show about the pause, how much load it costs, and how to log both styles so they do not muddy your bench history.
What is the difference between a paused and a touch-and-go bench press?
In a touch-and-go bench press you lower the bar to your chest and press straight back up. In a paused bench press you hold the bar still on your chest before pressing. The pause is the only change, but it alters how the first part of the press feels.
Lowering the bar stretches the working muscles and tendons, and that stretch can add force to the start of the press. This is the stretch-shortening cycle. A pause gives that benefit time to fade. A related idea is how fast you lower the bar, which our guide on tempo training vs normal tempo covers, since a tempo such as 3-1-1 includes a one-second pause at the bottom.
| Touch-and-go | Paused | |
|---|---|---|
| Bottom of the rep | Bar touches the chest and reverses | Bar held motionless on the chest |
| Stretch-shortening benefit | Mostly kept | Largely lost as the pause lengthens |
| Typical load | Higher | Lower for the same effort |
| Allowed in IPF competition | No | Yes, required |
| Best use | General strength and size work | Competition preparation, technique and sticking-point work |
The typical-load row is the main practical point. A paused set and a touch-and-go set at the same weight are not the same effort, so you should not read them as the same result.
How long does the stretch-shortening boost last in a pause?
The boost fades quickly. Wilson, Elliott and Wood (1991) had 12 experienced male lifters bench press at 95% of their maximum, with no pause and with pauses of different lengths. The extra performance from the prior stretch decayed along a negative exponential curve with a half-life of 0.85 seconds.
A half-life means that about half the benefit is gone after 0.85 seconds. If the fitted curve holds beyond the pauses they tested, then:
- After about 1 second, roughly 44% of the benefit remains.
- After about 1.7 seconds, 25% remains.
- After about 3 seconds, under 10% remains.
These figures come from our own arithmetic on the published half-life. The study did not report them, and it used 12 men at one intensity, so treat them as a rough guide. Still, the direction is clear: even a short pause removes much of the rebound, and a long one removes nearly all of it.
How much weight does the pause cost you?
The studies we found do not measure a competition pause directly, but they give a useful size for the effect. García-Ramos, Janicijevic and Jukic (2021) tested 113 adults, 87 men and 26 women, on a concentric-only bench press and a touch-and-go bench press. In the concentric-only version you start from a stop and press, with no lowering phase carrying into the lift.
| Measure | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|
| Touch-and-go 1RM higher, direct 1RM test | 7.80% | 7.62% |
| Touch-and-go 1RM higher, reps-to-failure estimate | 8.29% | 7.49% |
Two cautions apply. First, a concentric-only lift is a dead stop, not a competition pause, so it is a rough stand-in. Second, the gap was an average, and individuals will differ. If you plan to use a paused bench for testing or for percentage-based training, find your own gap by logging both.
A second study looked at where in the press the stretch-shortening cycle helps. Pérez-Castilla and colleagues (2020) tested 21 men at 80% of 1RM. The eccentric-concentric bench had higher maximum force and higher mean velocity and power than concentric-only. However, the stretch-shortening cycle mainly raised force early in the concentric phase, and this effect faded in the later part of the press. Force was higher for the concentric-only version during 49% of the concentric phase.
In plain terms, the rebound helps you off the chest, and the rest of the press depends on your muscles. That fits a common lifter experience that a pause makes the bottom feel harder, though the study did not test a pause directly.
What does the competition rulebook say about the pause?
The IPF rulebook requires a pause on the chest. Under the Technical Rulebook effective 1 March 2026, after the "Start" signal the lifter must lower the bar to the chest or abdominal area, hold it motionless, and wait for the Chief Referee's "Press" command. The lifter then presses to straight arms with elbows locked.
Two of the listed causes for disqualification are directly relevant to how you train:
- Heaving or sinking the bar into the chest or abdominal area after it is motionless, in a way that makes the lift easier.
- Using upper-body thrust to start the upward movement from the chest.
The rulebook does not give a fixed number of seconds. The referee signals once the bar is still, so the pause length is decided in the moment. Other federations have their own rules, so check the one you plan to enter. If you lift only for yourself, none of this applies, but it explains why competitive lifters spend training time on paused reps.
Is a paused or touch-and-go bench better for strength and muscle?
We did not find a controlled trial that answers this. Europe PMC searches for paused bench press training turned up studies on the acute effects of a stretch and on 1RM testing, not on strength or muscle gains after weeks of paused or touch-and-go training. The studies above are short-term measurements, not training trials.
That leaves us with reasoning from the mechanics, which is a weaker kind of evidence. The suggestions below are practical, not findings:
- Competing in a paused federation: train the pause, so the hold, the press from a still bar and the load you can handle all feel familiar by meet day.
- Training for general strength or size: touch-and-go is a sound default. You can use more load, and the lowering phase still matters if you keep it controlled.
- Stuck off the chest: adding paused sets is a reasonable experiment, since the pause removes the rebound from that part of the rep.
- Both goals: mix them, for example paused sets as your first lift of the day and touch-and-go for back-off work. Our guide on top sets and back-off sets shows how to structure that split.
Whichever you choose, the control point is the same. Bouncing the bar off your chest cuts the work your muscles do and is also the very thing the IPF rule bans. A smooth lowering and a firm touch is better than a rebound in both styles.
How do you set a paused bench in a programme?
Treat paused benching as a separate lift with its own loads, and pick the load by effort rather than by your touch-and-go numbers. Because the pause costs load, a touch-and-go percentage will overshoot on paused sets.
A practical way to set it up:
- Start lighter. Use a weight you could press for several more reps than you plan to do, and add load across sessions.
- Use effort, not percentages. Rate each set with RPE or RIR so the load follows how it felt. Our guide to logging RPE in a workout tracker explains how to rate effort consistently.
- Keep the pause the same. A consistent one- or two-second hold makes sessions comparable. A rushed pause on one day and a long one on the next will change the load you can handle.
- Give it a job. Use it for technique, for working off the chest, or for competition preparation, then drop it when it has done that job. For where bench variations sit in a longer block, see our guide on powerlifting programme design.
If you want to see how a load maps to a maximum, the bench press calculator gives a starting estimate, but it assumes one style of rep. Your own logged paused sets are a better guide to your paused numbers.
How do you log paused and touch-and-go sets in IronLedger?
Keep paused and touch-and-go bench sets distinguishable in your history, and note the pause on every paused set. IronLedger is a free strength training app for iOS that records each set with load, reps and effort. It does not have a dedicated pause or tempo field, so a note is the way to mark the style.
On the product page, the features that help here are:
- Per-set notes. Each set has an optional free-text note that stays in your history. Writing "paused 1s" on every paused set means you can tell the two styles apart later.
- RPE in half steps or RIR. Effort recorded per set lets you compare a paused set and a touch-and-go set by how hard they were, not only by weight.
- Estimated 1RM and personal records. IronLedger estimates 1RM with the Epley formula and records PRs from what you log. A paused set will estimate lower than a touch-and-go set at the same effort, so do not read that as lost strength. Our guide to the estimated one-rep max explains how far to trust the number.
- Per-lift trends. The progress page shows estimated 1RM trends, PR history and tonnage per lift, with no cutoff on your history.
Because there is no separate field, the discipline is yours. Pick one note format, such as "paused 1s" or "TnG", and use it every time. A paused bench top set should not be compared blindly with your touch-and-go history, which is also the warning in our top-set guide.
What mistakes should you avoid with paused benching?
Most mistakes come from comparing the two styles as if they were equal, or from a pause that is not really a pause. Watch for these:
- Comparing paused and touch-and-go numbers directly. The same weight is a harder rep with a pause, so a lower paused number is not lost strength.
- Sinking the bar into the chest. If the bar relaxes into your chest during the pause, you are not holding it. The IPF rulebook lists heaving or sinking the bar as a disqualifying fault.
- Pressing off a tight bounce. Dropping the bar and rebounding it defeats the purpose of both styles.
- Changing the pause length every session. The half-life figure shows that small changes in pause length change the rebound you lose.
- Skipping the notes. Without a label on the set, a lower number later looks like a plateau. If you are stalling for real, our guide to strength plateaus covers what to check.
- Treating one style as superior. The evidence we found does not support a winner for long-term gains.
For related bench choices, our comparisons of incline vs flat bench press and close-grip vs wide-grip bench press cover other ways to vary the lift.
Frequently asked questions
Do paused reps if you compete under rules that require a pause. For general strength and size, touch-and-go with a controlled lowering is a sound default. We found no trial comparing long-term gains, so the choice rests on your goal.
Sources and references
- Wilson, Elliott and Wood, The effect on performance of imposing a delay during a stretch-shorten cycle movement: benefit from prior stretch decays with pause, half-life 0.85 s (Med Sci Sports Exerc, 1991).
- García-Ramos, Janicijevic and Jukic, Concentric-only versus touch-and-go bench press one-repetition maximum in men and women: touch-and-go 1RM 7.49% to 8.29% higher (Sports Health, 2021).
- Pérez-Castilla et al., Comparison of the force-, velocity- and power-time curves between the concentric-only and eccentric-concentric bench press exercises: stretch-shortening benefit concentrated early in the press (J Strength Cond Res, 2020).
- IPF Technical Rulebook, effective 1 March 2026: bench press pause, "Press" command and disqualification causes.
- IronLedger product page: per-set notes, RPE and RIR, estimated 1RM and personal records.
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