What is the purpose of doing incline/Decline Bench Presses?? After I'm finished my regular bench, I'm too weak to do an incline or a decline. Does that exercise serve the same purpose as a regular bench?

incline and decline work your chest from diffrent angles. its mainly for bodybuilders trying to develop diffrent parts of there chest.

just stick with the flat bench press. If your too weak after that then your doing it right.

with your bench press do 5sets of 5reps, then next time do 3 sets of 10reps then change every workout.

if your arms weaken 1st then widen your grip, this will use more of the chest.

if your chest weakens 1st then bring your hands together, so that your chest and arms weaken at the same time.

Man of Kent, you give good advice. What I do is I have different days for the three bench presses and switch each day. Every chest work out, i do a different bench press and dumbell flys.

MoK is dead on. Flat bench is all you need. No need to get fancy until you are ready to do 4+ different exercises.

After 8-10 weeks of flat bench, try throwing in 3 weeks of incline only to trick your pecs and help them to grow more than switch back to flat. I think that is what HB is saying. Mixing up the muscles will help them to improve, strengthen and hypertrophy.

Yeah untill you really really know what your doing then stick to the flat, untill you have a reason to change, like rip said.

Im currently working decline bench...
This is because I want to keep the resistance away from my anterior deltiod as I am doing heavy shoulder pressing the day after with the deadlift, clean and press.
Next month I'll be focusing mainly on my Lats. so I'll do incline bench as decline bench works your lats.

you see?

Uhh...little thing, after I do flat bench, I always can go onto the incline and decline benches...
.
...am i not doing enough weight?

I think so... heh shouldnt be able to jump right into it..I have to take a break and do 2 other excercises then i hit db bench then 2 more excersises then incline/decline

if your doing 5x5 or 10x3 you should only be able to manage one pressing exercise. try starting off lighter and adding a little bit of weight each time.

there is no need to do all three, if you really want to do incline and decline then dont bother with flat. But personally I wouldnt do incline If I was then gonna work shoulders.

I should add that the pectoralis major is broken into two muscles: clavicular and sternal.

The clavicular head is smaller and usually called your upper chest. This muscle is not hit with the decline bench (even though it is a stabilizer).

However, your sternal muscle is hit when doing all three (flat, incline and decline).

Read what you want from this.

-Rip

when doing benchpress is it better to start off very very light? like say you have 100lbs (in 20's) is it better to start with 20 each week then move your self up.. or can you just start from 90 then 100? in other words which is a better way to work out and get your chest in better shape?

Make sure you do a good warm-up with ~35% of your max. From there, lift as much weight as you can to acheive ~10 reps with good form.

can anyone tell me what a DECLINE bench is? I've seen an incline bench... you turn the bench up 45 degrees up so you can sit on it and bench press. Flat benchpress is when you lie down on the bench and do it. I dont' get what a decline is... Do you turn the bench down 45 degrees so you bench press while you're 45 degrees upside down? That would be hard because all the blood goes to your head.

Yeah, your head is sloping down to the floor. Its will have 2 bars to wrap your legs round.
Dont worry about sliding off the bench, the weight will pin you down to the bench.

Jay 99 - as rip said, you want to use the heaviest weight you can that gives you 10 good reps. start off light and work you way up.
just say your max bench for 10 reps was about 200lbs.

lift 120lbs for your 1st set
then 170lbs
190lbs
200lbs


so you are building up to one set of your max.

Wow, thats for the advice you all. I'll just stick with the flat bench since I only started weight lifting in mid-January. Thank You.!