When doing this exercise, what is the best incline to set the bench at. Historically, I have always set it at a 15% incline, but yesterday I decided to try at 30% and found it seemed to hit the tops of my arms and shoulders alot more than my chest.

Perhaps I wasn't engaging my chest as much as I should have done, but has anyone got any suggestions which incline is best?

Anyone got any ideas?

Cheers

Vary the incline of the bench, work at various inclines from 40 to 60 degrees.It's up to you to find out which degree from 30-60 will hit your upper chest. Always observe your arms together, position of arms is very important. Don't place your arms too close, it will target the other muscle such as triceps and shouder area. Try to widen your arms in holding the bar while doing the incline barbell and remember to squeeze your chest as hard as you can at the top of each rep. Dont fully lock out your elbows, but really feel the contraction. You will get a great pump as well. And you should be doing 3 or 4 sets of 8-12 reps per exercise with as much weight as you can handle with proper form.

Scott, Daniel, John, Kostas and Nathan just gave me a good tips/advice before, you can try this if you want. VERY EFFECTIVE!!

1.Start with the incline barbell press

2.Do the incline dumbbell fly

3.Then flat dumbbell press

4.End out with a nice fly movement such as the high cable crossover.

REMEMBER! do that exercises for 3 to 4 set of 8-12 reps per exercise with the weight you can lift. Hope this will help you.

Michael has given you some amazing advice.

Scientifically speaking, 30 degrees is the best angle to stimulate the upper chest fibers. Anything lower such as 15 will be too similar to flat bench press and will stimulate a lot more of the lower pecs and anything above 30, like 45 or 60 will focus a lot on your front delts. As Michael said you should vary the angles so that you hit your chest differently from time to time. If you are having trouble feeling your upper chest working with 30 degree bench press, try a set of decline pushups first ( feet higher than hands). It is a similar movement and you will probably feel the activation of the fibers a lot more.

Thank You Sir KOstas!

Hey Tim! as KOstas said 30 degrees is the best angle to hit your upper chest. As what you said lately that you already tried the 30 degrees angle but it hits your arms and shoulder more than your chest. I think your problem is in your arms position. As I said,holding the bar too close with your arms will definitely hit your triceps and some shoulder area more than your chest. Using a longer bar and hold it in wider position and by squeezing your chest while lifting will definitely have a great impact to your upper chest.

I know the feeling, the other guyz here covered it fairly well so all i am gonna say is warm up your rotator cuffs.

Lovely. Thanks for the advice everybody. Will sure be putting this into practise next time I hit Chest. I could possibly have been holding the bar too narrow so will make sure i hold it wider next time.

Thanks everyone :-)

I'm in agreement with the rest of these guys. Anywhere between a 30-60 degree angle is best for the upper pecs. Be sure that if you are using dumbbells that you get a deep stretch on the upper pecs at the bottom and that you contract your chest at the top by bringing the dumbbells slightly in. The dumbbells don't have to touch though. Be sure that you're lowering the dumbbells over the chest and not the front delts.

The boys handled this very well!

Just make sure you have FULL ROM. This video will help you! #HTH Happy New Year!

I didn't read everybody's post (I read SOME though, sorry for my impatience! I been training 2 hours a day and working overnights so not much free time with all the eating I have to do as well!), but I just wanted to add the fact that incline bench works out 90% of the chest if done with correct form. Since it's less of a compound movement than a level bench press, you should lighten the weight slightly and focus on the ROM like Scott said! If I want to hit shoulders more, I lower the weights to about slightly above nipple level...and to target the upper part of the chest I go to nipple level. I've made incline bench one of my staples to both chest and shoulders (again, depending on how I use the ROM). Also if you use narrow grip, you're targeting your triceps more too (I did get to read that at least!).