Most bench press problems are not strength problems. They are setup problems that repeat themselves every session, and they quietly cap how much you can load over a training block.
1. Setting up without tension
If you lie down, unrack and start pressing, you are pressing from a soft base. Pull your shoulder blades together and down before you touch the bar, plant your feet, and hold that position through the whole set.
A useful check: your upper back should feel like it is gripping the bench. If you can slide around freely, you have not set up yet.
2. Letting the bar path drift
The bar does not travel straight up and down. It comes down to roughly mid-chest and presses back slightly over the shoulders. Forcing a vertical path puts the load where your shoulders are weakest.
3. Flaring the elbows to ninety degrees
Elbows straight out to the side is the most common cause of front-shoulder pain in pressing. Somewhere around forty-five to sixty degrees from the torso is a better starting point for most lifters, then adjust based on how your shoulders feel the next day.
4. Changing the grip every session
Grip width changes which muscles do the work. That is fine as a deliberate variation, but if it drifts a couple of centimetres each session by accident, your numbers stop being comparable and you cannot tell whether you are progressing.
Mark your grip against the knurling and keep it until you decide to change it.
5. Not recording what you actually did
Two sets of eight at 80 kg can feel completely different depending on how close to failure you were. Logging weight and reps alone hides that.
This is what RPE and RIR are for: one number that records how much was left in the tank. In Frog Fitness you log it per set, next to your previous performance on the same exercise, so the comparison is in front of you while you decide what to load.
Where to start
Pick one of these, not all five. Setup tension is usually the one that changes the most for the least effort. Give it three or four sessions before you judge it.