Why is my bench press so bad?

If you are worried about weak bench pressing, jump on a quick 5x5 routine. Push/pull/legs is the best split IMO for newbies. Either that or full body every day. You don't need to kill your body to progress.

I agree about the ROM issue and abduction, sorta tempted to dig out my Starting Strength book to check the other point out. Not that I do close grip bench pressing or anything.

edit: and nah mate, full body everyday is seriously over training. mix in some cardiovascular days for sure. but strength training (if not pro on gear!) will over train you and make you weaker. it will f.uck your hormones up, big time.

By full body every day I mean on days you train. I do full body 3x per week. I mostly just do what's fun. I tend to do minimal work and a fair amount of low/medium intensity cardio because that's what I enjoy doing and it gives me the results I want. I also definitely agree with your statement about callisthenics. Closed chain exercises are much better for overall strength IMO. I spend a lot of time at home squatting and doing pushups/pullups without weight so I can stretch and remain flexible (working on being able to do the splits atm).

Not that any of this is relevant but how does a narrower grip = more abduction?

So many questions, is this shoulder press using a machine. Is this benching on a smith machine? How heavy are you? Video of form needed

The questions go on

Why are you not squatting or deadlifting?

In relation to what I said above, it's impossible to even determine that your bench is lagging behind because there is no squat or deadlifting baseline with which to compare it, secondly it's blatantly obvious your bench form is appalling, tell me, how far apart are your hands on the bar when you grip it, also tell me your height.

5'8 feet and around 15 inches apart.

So, I started weight training around 3 months ago. I train 4 days a week so: back, chest, arms & Shoulders. I use freeweights for my training.

I am not doing amazing weights but I am making some progress. For example, at the moment I am lifting 70kg on Seated Row, 50kg shoulder press etc.

My Bench Press though is terrible. I started around 25kg and have moved up but i've stalled and can't get any further. At the moment I am doing 45kg for 8 reps, sometimes I can get this up to 50kg. It depends on the day though, sometimes I will have to move it down to 40kg.It is not consistent for me and I generally find bench pressing to be taxing and draining - I definitely need to put a lot of effort into it. So, why am I not making improvements? Am I doing bench press correctly? When I compare my body weight 80kg to my bench press my results are mortifying.

Surely I should be up around 60kg/70kg by now? What do I need to do to improve this?

When you're locked out, your humerus has abducted more. Try it. Put your arm out in a wide grip, then bring it in while feeling your chest with your other arm. That's the difference between grips.

OK but that's not abduction.

You're chest is lagging because you don't train legs.

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Enginerd nailed it. Your chest pecs, whatever tri's, delts, arn't growing because you are doing f~ing isolation movements before you've spent at least 5 years building a foundation.

Squat !!! Deadlift !!! Build mass bulk !!!!

I think you can do isolation exercises in your first 5 years training.

You can do. But I wouldn't recommend it. It'll invariably lead to problems of differences in muscle mass distribution in the future. Imbalances of ratio. Rookie error like doing 30 sets of pecs and bi's every training day