Exercise Guide Video Instructions - Incline Barbell Bench Press

Muscles Targeted: The incline barbell bench press targets the upper portion of the chest as the primary muscle group and also works the deltoids and triceps as secondary muscles. This is the king of all chest exercises if your goal is to pack on muscle mass in your upper pecs. This a multi-joint free weight exercise and it gives you the ability to really add a lot of weight to the bar and provides a great overall range of motion. Along with the pecs, this exercise really works the deltoids also since you are seated in an incline position. By using the incline bench, the front area of the deltoids come into play when your pressing the weight up during the exercise. Your triceps also get targeted on the concentric portion of the movement since you're pushing the weight. The majority of upper body exercises use either a push or pull motion, so when you're pushing a weight, you will be using your triceps as the secondary muscle group. On pulling type exercises, you will be using your biceps as the secondary muscle group.

Exercise Advice: Begin by positioning yourself on an incline bench and make sure your entire back is touching the bench along with your head. Firmly plant your feet onto the ground for stability. You want to make sure your back is flat and fixed onto the bench when your performing this exercise. If you're lower back arches and comes off the bench, then your technique is incorrect and the weight is probably too heavy for you. Using strict form is very important on this exercise since you want to avoid injury and also get the most out of the movement. You also want to use a very light weight when first warming up to get blood into the muscles and warm up the chest. Its also important to have a spotter assist you if you will be using very heavy weight and low reps. The spotter will be able to give you a lift off which is beneficial when first getting the bar off the rack and into the starting position. Grip position is also important, since changing it from narrow to wide effects which muscles are targeted. Position your grip on the bar at about shoulder width and use a closed hand grip (thumb wrapped around bar). You want to use a closed grip since you want to avoid any risk of the bar slipping during the exercise and all the weight crashing down on your chest. Begin the exercise by lifting the bar off the rack and position it directly over your face. Slowly lower the bar down so that it touches your upper chest and then slowly push the bar back up to the starting position to complete a full repetition. If you have any shoulder issues, you don't want to lower the bar all the way down and touch your chest. You want to only lower the bar down so that your elbows are at about 90 degrees. This will help take some of the stress off of your shoulders and rotator cuffs. Your elbow position is also important during the movement. You don't want to tuck your elbows into your body too closely or this will work your triceps too much. Keep your elbows in a natural position which will focus the tension on your upper pecs.

Things To Avoid: The most important thing you want to avoid with this exercise is using too much weight and allowing your technique to suffer. This is usually apparent when your back comes off the bench and you arch your lower back in order to get the weight up to the top. If this happens, decrease the weight and focus on keeping your back completely flat on the bench during the entire range of motion. Also, make sure to keep your feet planted on the ground which will give you stability during the exercise. Avoid taking too narrow of a grip position on the bar since this will place more of the tension on the triceps muscles instead of the intended upper chest muscles. Really try to focus on how your shoulders feel during the exercise as well. If you feel pain or discomfort in your shoulders when you lower the bar all the way down to touch your chest, then simply don't go down that far and stop at about 3-4 inches from your chest when your elbows are at about 90 degrees. This will still place maximum tension on your chest muscles but you will be avoiding any potential issues of injury to your shoulders and rotator cuffs which is something you definitely want to avoid! If you decide to do some heavy sets of lower reps (3-5 reps), make sure to always have a friend give you a spot to assist you throughout the exercise. A spotter is great for helping you get the bar off the rack and also allows you to do a few forced reps where you can go past failure and really push your muscles to the max.

Reps and Sets: For overall muscle building, you want to focus on a repetition range of about 8-12 reps per set for this exercise. Sets should be in the range of 2-3 and your overall chest workout sets should be in the range of 8-10 since this is a larger muscle group. Always make sure to only train your chest once per week to allow maximum recovery time for your muscles to repair and grow from your workout. If you train a muscle group more than once per week, you risk the possibility of overtraining which will cause your body to quickly plateau since it has too much stimulus and not enough rest. Also, focus on completing your entire chest workout within 45 minutes (not including warming up). The reason why you want to use short and intense workouts is because your body's primary muscle building hormone (testosterone) starts to decline after about 45 minutes. A good rule of thumb is to hit it hard and intense and then get out of the gym so you can rest, recover and grow!

Other Exercises To Use: Some great exercises to add to the incline barbell bench press in your overall chest workout routine are the Barbell Bench Press and the Flat Bench Dumbbell Flyes. By combining different exercises, you are able to hit the muscles with different angles and stimuli which will shock them into growth. You want to avoid doing the same exercises and workouts day in and day out since your body will quickly adapt to the same stimuli and stop growing and getting stronger. A good workout is to do 3 sets of each of these three exercises for your overall chest workout. This will give you a total of 9 sets for your workout and you can really blast your pecs!

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