the balance of incline, decline and flat bench press

[ad]

As many of you know there a three main types of weight excercises to build up the pectorial muscle, being the incline, decline and flat bench press. I primarily only used flat bench press in the past 2 years, and noticed and increase in the lower and outward part of the pectorial muscle. Recently i started to combine all three and notice that the considerable increase devloped from the flat press was reduced and now a more flat rounded shape all over my pecs has developed. My query is that is it recommended that all types of bench press should be included in a weight work out?, im only really using the excercises for toning and martial art practacality, so therefore i am not using heavy weights. But isnt just simple flat bench press good enough?

[bigpopparob2000]

It's good to shock your muscles every once in a while. You don't have to do bench press, incline press, and decline press in every chest work out. It's better to do otherwise. Use bench press until you hit a plateau, get bored with the exercise, or both. Then switch over to incline press and do that for a while. Then switch to decline...well...you get the idea. It's a good way to keep your workouts fresh and at the same time stimulate muscle growth by hitting the same muscles from different angles.

[Tibby]

Agreed. You don’t need to do every one every time. Every time you change up your program, change the different ones. Some schools of Weight Training Though don’t even bother with the flat any more. Can’t say I’m a member for that school, but hey, you might consider it.

 

Plus, I wouldn’t suggest just don’t barbell presses. Try flies, cable flies, dumbbell presses, push-ups, dips, and more flies.

[ad]

dont get me wrong, i dont just do incline, decline and flat bench.

 

I do a variety of press ups at different routines, but in terms of access to other types of weight pecotrial excercies, i am not able to those since i do not have the access to a gym.

 

So you are saying that i shouldnt just focus on simply doing all three at one workout?

[Tibby]

No point. You don't need to just to barbell pressing. Though it is a GREATexercise, it isn't the primal way to work your fighting muscles. You can do something like this:

 

Flat bench flies

 

Incline Barbell press

 

Decline dumbell press

[ad]

how come flat bench press isnt rated highly anymore?

[Tombstone]

how come flat bench press isnt rated highly anymore?

 

It is, but its just one excercise. Mix things up to get a better workout.

[Tibby]

how come flat bench press isnt rated highly anymore?

 

The Bench press isn’t likes as much now mostly because the gym rats spend to much time reading Muscle and Fiction and to little time training.

 

Some feel the flat bench is at the top of a long list of archaic exercises that do more harm then good. This school of thought has pretty much stopped all use of squats and bench press. Now they use lesser exercise like leg presses and machine presses, claiming they work just as good, but cause less damage. Most people aren’t as HARDCORE into this to fully give up the bench press AND Squat AND the other so-called “useless“ exercises, but bits and pieces of this line of thinking has infested the minds of many young lifters and gym rats. Some give up the squats, other give up the bench.

 

Others just feel there are better ways to work the chest. This isn’t entirely wrong. The Bench press is a great exercise, but there are plenty of other great exercises that are overlooked by the Dinosaur trainers and westsiders.

[ad]

heck tibby, these new excercises come at a cost in terms of buying the so called advanced formula machinery, im going to stick with my bench.

[Tibby]

No joke. The gyms spend way to much money on this crap when free weights can do most of it!