Missing through the midrange
The midrange doesn’t have a crystal clear definition. It’s sort of like the US Supreme Court’s definition of porn: you know it when you see it. It’s the period between the sticking point (3-4 inches off the chest) to the point where you’re clearly pretty damn close to locking out the lift.

This is the most common range to miss a bench press. Since the bar should be roughly over your upper chest or shoulders at this point, your shoulders shouldn’t be the limiting factor. Additionally, your pecs and shoulders are in a much safer range of motion by this point, so the issues that can cause instability in the bottom of the lift are much less likely to play a major role. As such, there are really only two major factors that cause a miss through the midrange:


Improper bar path.

If the bar shoots straight up off your chest instead of up and slightly back, you’re just making the lift unnecessarily difficult – especially for your shoulders. Correcting your bar path will probably help you bench more right away.


You just need to get stronger:

pecs and triceps specifically. This is most likely your issue. This is just the weakest point in the lift. The summed joint moments for horizontal flexion and elbow extension are at peak levels or near peak levels, the stretch reflex has dissipated, and since your muscles aren’t stretched quite as much anymore, you’ll be getting less help from your muscles passive contractile properties (you’re in the dip of the green “total tension” line on the length/tension graph above). If you have a solid bar path and you miss through the midrange, that’s a “good” thing; it lets you know you probably don’t have any specific glaring weaknesses, and that you just need to keep training your bench hard and getting stronger overall.