reckonerSmith machine incline press
The incline press with the bar on rails. The bench tips you back so the upper chest does more, and the machine fixes the path and gives you stops to press against. It is a way to press an incline hard on your own.
Bar to the upper chest, elbows tucked.
- Pattern
- Horizontal push
- Trains
- Chest, front delts, triceps
- Kit
- Smith machine, incline bench
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Moderate
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Shoulder, wrist, elbow
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the bench to a moderate incline
Somewhere between thirty and forty five degrees. Both studies found an incline worked the upper chest harder than a flat bench12, and past forty five the front of the shoulder takes over2.
Place the bench so the bar lands high
Slide the bench until the bar comes down a little below your collarbones. On rails the bench decides where the bar touches, so lie down and check before you add weight.
Set the stops and unhook
Set the safety stops a little below where your upper chest sits, so they stay clear of the bar when it touches and catch it if a rep fails. Then rotate the bar off the hooks with your arms straight.
Lower to the upper chest and press
Lower with your elbows tucked a little, touch the top of your chest, and press back up. Rotate the bar onto the hooks after the last rep.
What goes wrong
Running the bench too steep
A steeper bench feels like more upper chest. It turns into a shoulder press: past forty five degrees the front delts were measured working hardest and the chest less2. Keep the angle moderate.
A bar that lands on your neck or mid chest
It feels like an arm problem, so people steer the bar. On rails the bench position decides where the bar touches. Too far back and it comes toward your throat, too far forward and it lands like a flat press. Fix the bench, not your arms.
Lifting the hips to finish
Bridging the hips feels like getting under a heavy rep. It flattens the incline you set. Keep your seat down and your feet planted.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 40 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 | 3 x 8 at 40 kg | More reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 9 at 40 kg | More reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 10 at 40 kg | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 11 at 40 kg | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 at 40 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 12 at 40 kg | Load up 40 kg → 42.5 kgYou hit the top of the range with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7), so the bar goes up 2.5 kg to 42.5 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to eight. You are now working 8 to 12. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three 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
What angle is best for the upper chest?
A moderate one. One study found the upper chest worked hardest at thirty degrees2. Another, on a Smith machine, found more at forty four than at twenty eight1. Pick an angle in that range and keep it.
Is the Smith machine incline as good as a barbell incline?
For muscle and strength, machines and free weights came out alike across trials, with strength specific to the version you train3. It is a fair swap for the barbell incline when you train alone.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
Not by itself. A lifter alone already has the free weight and machine incline presses, so the engine never chooses it. Choose it in the lift picker or as a swap for your incline press. Shoulder, wrist and elbow are recorded against it.
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
- Trebs, Brandenburg and Pitney, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2010. An electromyography analysis of 3 muscles surrounding the shoulder joint during the performance of a chest press exercise at several angles fifteen men pressing on a Smith machine at 0, 28, 44 and 56 degrees, with clavicular pectoralis activity greater at 44 than at 0 or 28 degrees and anterior deltoid activity greater on every incline than flat. Over five years old, and the Smith machine study
- 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 thirty trained adults with a free barbell at five angles, upper pectoralis activity peaking at thirty degrees and inclinations above forty five degrees producing higher anterior deltoid activity and reduced pectoralis performance
- Haugen and colleagues, BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation, 2023. Effect of free-weight vs. machine-based strength training on maximal strength, hypertrophy and jump performance: a systematic review and meta-analysis thirteen studies and 1016 participants, with no difference between free weight and machine training in direct comparisons of strength or hypertrophy, and strength gains specific to the trained modality