Incline Bench Press: Angle, Form and Muscles Worked

The incline bench press is a bench press done on a bench tilted up, and it exists for one reason: the clavicular head of your chest, the section running from your collarbone down and across, does not get much work from flat pressing. If your chest looks full at the bottom and hollow at the top, this is the fix. The catch is that almost everyone sets the bench too steep and turns it into a shoulder press, which is why so many lifters say incline pressing "does nothing" for their chest.

The angle is the whole exercise

Thirty degrees. Not 45, and definitely not the near-vertical setting a lot of gym benches default to.

Researchers measured EMG activity in the upper, middle and lower pectoralis major, the anterior deltoid and the triceps across five bench inclinations at 0, 15, 30, 45 and 60 degrees. Upper pec activity peaked at 30 degrees. Above 45, the anterior deltoid took over and pec performance dropped (study on five bench inclinations). The middle and lower portions of the pec were most active flat, which is the other half of the argument: incline pressing supplements flat bench, it does not replace it.

If your bench only offers 45 as its shallowest incline, prop the flat bench on a low step or a couple of plates instead. A homemade 25 to 30 degrees beats a factory 45.

How to do it

1. Set the bench to 30 degrees. Count the notches from flat, do not eyeball it. Sit down and check that your eyes end up roughly under the bar, not behind it.
2. Plant and arch. Feet flat on the floor, wide enough to feel stable. Squeeze your glutes, keep your hips on the bench and set a small arch in your upper back. Big powerlifting arches make less sense on an incline because they flatten the effective angle you just chose.
3. Set the shoulders. Pull your shoulder blades down and together and hold them there. This is the difference between pressing with your chest and pressing with your shoulder joint.
4. Grip and unrack. Slightly narrower than your flat bench grip, roughly 1.5 times shoulder width. Take the bar out and bring it over your upper chest, arms locked.
5. Lower to the top of the chest. Aim for just below your collarbones, around the top of the sternum. Elbows at about 45 degrees from your torso, not flared to 90. Touch lightly; do not bounce.
6. Press up and slightly back. The bar path is a shallow arc, finishing over your shoulders rather than straight up from where it touched. Two to three seconds down, drive up under control.

Muscles worked

• Pectoralis major, clavicular head. The target. It runs from the collarbone across to the upper arm, and pressing on an incline lines the movement up with those fibres. This is the section that fills out the space below the collarbone.
• Anterior deltoid. Heavily involved at any incline, and increasingly dominant as the angle steepens. Some deltoid work is unavoidable and fine; the whole point of choosing 30 degrees is to keep it from taking over.
• Triceps. Extend the elbow through the top half of the press, and become the limiting factor on heavy sets with a narrower grip. Our close grip bench press guide covers the variation that targets them.
• Serratus anterior and upper back. Stabilise the shoulder blade throughout. Weak scapular control here is a common reason the lift feels unstable at heavier loads.

A pair of adjustable dumbbells and an adjustable bench are enough to run this properly at home, and the bench is the part worth spending on because a wobbly incline setting is both unpleasant and unsafe.

Common mistakes

The bench is too steep. Already covered, and still the number one problem. Forty-five degrees feels harder, which people mistake for more effective. It is harder because your front delts are doing a shoulder press.

Elbows flared to 90 degrees. This stresses the front of the shoulder joint and contributes nothing extra to the chest. Keep them at roughly 45 degrees from your ribs.

Bar touching too low. Bringing the bar down to mid-chest, where a flat bench press touches, undoes the angle you set up. On an incline it belongs at the very top of the chest.

Hips lifting off the bench. If your backside comes up to help, the weight is too heavy and you have just converted an incline press into a bad flat press. Glutes stay down.

Half reps at the top. Locking out is fine and normal, but stopping four inches short to keep "constant tension" mostly just shortens your range. Press to full extension without slamming the joint.

Only ever doing incline. The mid and lower pec are most active on a flat bench, so dropping flat pressing entirely leaves most of your chest undertrained. Run both. Our chest exercises guide sets out a balanced week.

Variations

• Incline dumbbell press. More range at the bottom, independent arms, and a wrist path you choose. The best option if barbell incline aggravates a shoulder, and covered fully in our incline dumbbell press guide.
• Incline dumbbell fly. Takes the triceps out and loads the pec in adduction. Lighter weight than you think, and see dumbbell fly for the technique.
• Low incline press at 15 to 20 degrees. A middle ground if 30 degrees still puts too much into your shoulders. Less upper pec emphasis, more comfort.
• Smith machine incline press. Fixed bar path, so you can push closer to failure without a spotter. Useful for the last set of a session when training alone.
• Paused incline press. Two seconds resting on the chest, no bounce, then drive. Brutal, honest, and it exposes any part of the lift you were cheating.

Sets and reps

For building the upper chest, three to four sets of 6 to 10 reps, twice a week, is the reliable range. Rest two to three minutes between heavy sets; anything less and the later sets are limited by breathing rather than the muscle.

If you are adding it to an existing chest day, put it first for eight to twelve weeks. The lift you do when you are fresh is the lift that grows, and most people have given flat bench that privilege for years. Add 1.25kg or 2.5kg to the bar when you can hit the top of the rep range on every set with clean form, which usually means every second or third week rather than every session.

Beginners should start lighter than they expect, around 40 percent of their flat bench working weight, and spend the first fortnight on the touch point and the elbow angle rather than the number.

Recommended reads

1. Bench press: form, muscles worked and programming
2. Incline dumbbell press
3. The best chest exercises
4. The best adjustable dumbbells in the UK
5. The best weight bench in the UK