reckonerIncline barbell press
The bench press with the angle as the variable. Tilting the bench moves work up toward the collarbone end of the chest, and tilting it too far hands the lift to the front of your shoulder instead. The angle is the decision. Everything else is the flat press again.
Bar to the upper chest, elbows tucked.
- Pattern
- Horizontal push
- Trains
- Chest, front delts, triceps
- Kit
- Barbell, incline bench, rack
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Bar
- 20 kg
- Skill
- Technical
- Recovery cost
- High
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder, wrist, elbow
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the bench angle first
Around thirty degrees is where the upper chest works hardest, and past forty five degrees the front of the shoulder takes over and the chest does less1. Most adjustable benches have a notch near thirty. Use it and stop guessing.
Set the back before you unrack
Shoulder blades pulled together and down into the pad, feet flat on the floor and pushing. The backrest will hold you up whether or not you are set, which is exactly why people forget this step on an incline and never forget it lying flat.
Lower to the upper chest
With your arms straight the bar sits over the shoulders. Bring it down to the top of the chest, just below the collarbone, elbows at roughly sixty degrees to your body. The touch point is higher than on a flat bench, and it moves as the bench angle moves.
Press back over the shoulder
Drive up and slightly back so the bar finishes over the shoulder joint rather than out over your face. On an incline gravity is already pulling the bar toward your chin, so this one has to be deliberate.
What goes wrong
Setting the bench too steep
It feels harder, so it reads as more work. What it actually does is move the load onto the front of the shoulder and take it off the chest1. If the weight has dropped a long way from your flat press, check the notch before you check yourself.
Sliding down the bench during the set
Your feet stop pushing, your hips creep down and the touch point walks up your chest toward your throat. Keep driving the floor away, and if you are still sliding, the bench is too steep for the shoes you are in.
Bringing the bar to the sternum out of habit
That is the flat press touch point and on an incline it puts the bar behind your shoulders and the elbows a long way back. Touch high on the chest, where the bar is directly under the joint doing the work.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 50 kg, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 x 6 at 50 kg | More reps 6 → 7 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 4 x 7 at 50 kg | More reps 7 → 8 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 4 x 8 at 50 kg | More reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 4 x 9 at 50 kg | More reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 4 x 10 at 50 kg | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 10 at 50 kg | Load up 50 kg → 52.5 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 2.5 kg to 52.5 kg and reps reset to six. The lighter week is over, so this is back to four sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Do I need this if I already flat bench?
It is worth having. Eight weeks of incline pressing produced more growth at the upper chest measurement site than the same volume of flat pressing, while both raised strength by about the same amount2. That is a small study, so read it as a reason to include the incline rather than a reason to drop the flat press.
What angle should the bench be at?
Around thirty degrees, and no more than forty five. Above that the front of the shoulder takes more of the load and the chest measurably does less1. If your bench only has a steep setting, the incline dumbbell press is easier to run at a sensible angle.
Why is my incline so much weaker than my flat bench?
Because the angle moves work off the middle and lower chest, which is where the flat press is strongest, and onto the upper chest and the front of the shoulder1. It is a different lift with its own history, so Reckoner tracks its weight separately and never scales one off the other.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Rodríguez-Ridao and colleagues, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020. Effect of Five Bench Inclinations on the Electromyographic Activity of the Pectoralis Major, Anterior Deltoid, and Triceps Brachii during the Bench Press Exercise peak activation of the upper pectoralis major at a thirty degree bench inclination, and inclinations above forty five degrees producing significantly higher anterior deltoid activation while reducing pectoralis major performance
- Chaves and colleagues, International Journal of Exercise Science, 2020. Effects of Horizontal and Incline Bench Press on Neuromuscular Adaptations in Untrained Young Men greater muscle thickness change at the second intercostal space of the pectoralis major in the incline group after eight weeks, with no group difference in isometric strength change