Just wondering if anyone doesn’t do flat bench presses. I was thinking of doing them only once in a great while and do mostly incline and overhead work and heavy dips. I can dip a lot more than I can flat press and usually don’t go up in flat pressing unless my dip or incline also goes up. My dip form is elbows in and leaning forward a little. Does this sound like something I will regret in a few months?
What are you trying to accomplish?
What are your goals?
Eric I go weeks even months at a time where I don’t bo flat bench, I think in away it has hurt me in terms of my lbs on flat bench. When doing incline I use 275 as my working set weight but if I do flat I can only use about 245 as working set.
My goals are building strength and power for grappling and thai boxing that I do as a hobby, not for competition. I was thinking of doing CT’s HTT program which doesn’t have a seperate bench and overhead day like I’m used to from Ian King. Increasing my flat bench isn’t a major goal but I don’t want to be totally ineffective in that plane of movment. Grappling beats the hell out of me so to many days in the gym is hard for me to recover from which is why the HTT program looks perfect. But it combines horizontal and verticle push days into one. My overhead pressing is really weak so more overhead and incline moves sound like a good idea and dips just feel like they help my chest strength more than flat benching. Looking back at older threads though starts making me over analyze since everyone has different thoughts. Some like dips or declines, some incline but most like seem to like flat benching.
Like everything else it’ll work for a while and then stall.
Incline Presses stress mostly the upper fibers of the pec major - the clavicular head. These are the fibers that ar recruited the most heavily and will gain the most strength as well as hypertrophy the most.
In order to gain poundages on the flat bench you cant incline bench and hope itll transfer to a different angle very effectively.
Also, if you box, and you punch in a horizontal movement similar to a flat pressing motion, then the flat bench will transfer very nicely over to your sport. Unless you punch at an incline angle with your arm, I dont see how the incline bench would be your first choice, aside from aesthetics goals.
The movements with the best transfer to a specific sport are the ones that follow a similar progression and use similar angles, where the synergy between different muscles is the same. If you use a different angle, there will be a different synergy, and the movement will only transfer to a certain degree.
As for dips, it seems to me they target mainly the lower fibers of the pec major. Again, I dont think youll be punching straight down - not in the ring in front of people at least - which dims it in comparison to a flat bench press.
In conclusion - do it for 4-6 weeks, and then do something else. It’ll work but only for a very short while, and considering your sport, you dont wanna stretch it any longer than just that - a very short while.
I haven’t flat benched in over two years. No regrets here. My shoulders feel much better and my chest responds just fine to incline machine work and flyes.
diesel:
This is a incorrect statement. A punch is not a press. It is a explosive movement that begins at the hip and does not follow the same plane of movement as a bench press. Unless when you bench you turn at the hips…
And I would suspect you don’t. A bench press will not improve your punching power; only working on your punching technique will improve you punching power.
The beauty of the bench press is that it is a compound movement; therefore incorporates several muscles to complete the movement. There are some benefits that will enhance a athlete’s development in other sports. But the athlete’s world won’t end if they don’t bench.
I would say to enhance explosiveness, try snatches and power cleans. Those (snatches, especially) have excellent carry-over to other sports. When I was training in karate/kickboxing I trained with only the big three compounds three days a week (bench, dead, squat) and built a very solid base.
Maybe that’s why the plates keep falling off to one side when I bench press.
All joking aside you are absolutely right Patricia.