What does the incline bench press do?

Question

I use the regular bench press (flat on your back), and I just recently noticed my gym has two kinds of incline bench presses: one tilted up and another tilted down.

What do these versions do? Do they work out a certain part of the chest?

Answer 1

They also work the triceps and anterior deltoids.

Answer 2

incline works upper chest  and the other is a decline bench works the lower part. decline gets u that nice cut at the bottom of ur chest

Answer 3

Incline Bench hits your shoulders and chest harder than flat does.  Decline bench hits your triceps much harder, and takes a lot of the stress off your shoulders.  All three of them hit your chest shoulders and triceps but the different variations make them hit some muscles harder than others.

Answer 4

The incline bench isolates the top portion of your chest muscles and the front of the shoulders.  Flat bench presses kinda work the whole chest muscle, mostly in the center.  Decline bench is tricky and dangerous.  It works the bottom of the chest muscles.  You may find that you can only lift about a third of the weight you lift on a flat bench.  It's tough.  Have a spotter and go light.

Answer 5

They are variations of the flat version and are good basic exercises in themselves. The upward incline puts a greater emphasis on the upper pectorals and the top of the deltoids. The lower incline throws the emphasis on the lower pecs. and lower anterior deltoid muscles. These variations are useful when fine tuning the development of different aspects of these muscles. Also they can be useful as variations when one is feeling stale on the current routine or to kick start from a sticking point.(ie progress has stopped on the current routine). I also found such variants useful if injury or strain was limiting movement at a particular angle. In such situations it was at times possible to continue with the exercise by varying the angle.

Answer 6

incline, decline and flat bench all work the same exact muscle groups.  changing the angle at which an exercise is performed only changes the pattern of muscle fiber recruitment.

Answer 7

incline equals upper chest!