You unrack the bar, lower it, drive it off your chest, and then it slows, stalls, and stops halfway up. The lockout is where a huge number of benches die. The good news is that a weak lockout is one of the most fixable problems in powerlifting once you know what drives it.
The Lockout Is Triceps Country
The top half of the bench press is driven mostly by your triceps. If your bench stalls at lockout, weak triceps are usually the culprit. That means building serious triceps strength is the first move. Close grip bench, dips, and heavy triceps extensions all feed the lockout directly. Train them hard, not as an afterthought at the end of the session.
Overload the Top Range
The other piece is training the lockout range with heavier weight than a full bench allows. Board presses and pin presses let you overload the top half so your triceps and your nervous system learn to handle bigger loads at the point where you fail. Set the boards or pins right at your sticking height and press hard from the dead stop.
Tie It Back to the Full Lift
Building triceps strength and overloading the top only matter if it shows up in your competition bench. Keep the full press in your program alongside the supplemental work, and practice grinding. Some of the lockout is mental. Learning to keep driving when the bar slows, instead of giving up, wins you lifts you would otherwise miss.
Strong triceps, overloaded top-end work, and the will to grind. Put those together over a training block and the lockout that has been killing your bench turns into the part you trust.