When it comes to building muscle and strength in your chest the bench press is typically the first place that we all look.
However, with many variations of the great barbell exercise you may be wondering whether it’s better to do incline or flat bench press first.
There are certain factors that you’ll need to take into consideration, so I’d like to reveal these and answer the bench pressing conundrum.
If you want to focus more on your upper chest and anterior deltoid development then you should do incline bench press before flat. However, if you simply want to strengthen your pressing muscles, it makes more sense to do flat bench before incline. Flat bench typically allows you to press more weight, whereas incline bench is the harder of the two exercises.
Which Muscular Development is More Important to You?
Realistically, which exercise you should do first comes down to personal preference, as well as if you wish to focus on one particular area of muscular development.
The flat bench press generally allows you to lift more weight.
So, if your aim is to simply increase your pressing strength and have more of an overall chest workout then it makes sense to do the flat bench press first.
However, if you wish to focus more on your upper chest development, while strengthening your anterior deltoids, then the incline bench press is the way forward.
With that being said, whichever way round you prefer to do the exercises, you should be aware that you’ll be fairly fatigued by the time you hit the second exercise.
This is why it makes sense to initially decide which area of chest development you want to focus more on before choosing the exercise you’re going to start with.
It’s interesting to note that many bodybuilders choose to do incline first, as their bench press training is more geared towards hypertrophy (as is all their training).
But, most powerlifters specifically focus on just the flat bench press, as they want to get as strong as possible in their pressing muscles.
So, as I’ve mentioned, decide which form of muscular development is more important to you.
Why Not Alternate Between Incline & Flat?
If you’re simply looking to regularly perform both exercises then I would say that it makes sense to alternate between the two.
So, you’d perform the flat bench press first one week, and then do incline first the following week.
The body adapts fairly quickly to training stimulus, which is why we all typically train with progressive overload in mind.
Therefore, you’d look to add weight, sets, or reps to your workouts on a regular basis.
However, simply swapping exercises around within your workout could also count as progressive overload.
As I’ve mentioned, you will usually be stronger on the exercise you perform first.
So, by the time you get to the second exercise your pressing muscles will already be fairly fatigued.
This obviously means that if you’re always doing both exercises in the exact same order then the exercise you perform first will always be your “stronger” lift.
For me, it makes much more sense to perform one exercise first one week and the other exercise first the following week.
This will also give you a good idea of progression with both exercises, regardless of when you choose to do them within your workout.
Why Perform Two Similar Pressing Movements in the Same Workout?
Something else to consider is whether you should be doing two main pressing movements in the same workout.
Once again, it does very much come down to your overall goals.
However, a varied chest workout where you hit a number of exercises could potentially produce the best results.
Yes, I agree that the pressing movements will hit the chest really well, but that’s not to say that there aren’t other exercises you could perform too.
So, as an example, you could have two separate regular chest workouts that could look something like this:
Workout A
- Flat Bench Press
- Weighted Bar Dips
- Incline Dumbbell Flyes
- Push Ups
Workout B
- Incline Bench Press
- Machine Hammer Chest Press
- Standing Cable Chest Flyes
- One-Arm Medicine Ball Push Ups
Once more, this completely separates the two exercises, but you still get to perform other exercises so that you can hit your chest from a variety of angles.
For me, by using a number of different exercises you’re likely to achieve better all-round chest development than simply performing the same two pressing movements all the time.
Vary Your Use of Equipment
In much the same way as you can use numerous exercises, you can also vary your use of equipment.
So, rather than sticking to both barbell flat and incline bench press, you can substitute either exercise with dumbbells.
When perf