My flat bench is great, but my incline sucks...

[Prime Rib]

Although I understand that inclines recruit different muscles, I just don't understand why there is such a difference in poundage. On flat, I am right around 300 lbs max, but had trouble doing 4 light sets of 10 with 155 on the incline bench today. Granted, I have NEVER done incline until today, but ego has still been kicked in the balls. Time to get to work...


Josh

 

[Tubby]

Same here

I do 10 x 225/10 x 185/10 x 155 twice and people look at me funny because i can only do 4 sets of 10 of 115 and can barely finish //////

 

[erowana]

I concentrate on Incline benches and have no difficulty doing flats, albeit with a little bit less pounds.

 

[IJ26]

I have the opposite problem if Im repping 225 on flat for 17 I can incline 225 for around 13, its very weird. When I was training WSB style I could incline close grip 275 for 1 but on flat I could only close grip 300 for 1. I feel way stronger on incline. Just do incline first sometimes. 1 chest workout begin with incline the next with flat.

 

[from zero]

My incline and flat aren't too far off.

Flat I can do 245 for 10, incline I can get 225 for 8.

Flat max is 300, maybe a bit higher. Incline is 285.

Work on your inclines. Great exercise. Your body probably was not used to the movement.

 

[Backlash]

Prime: Could be much weaker shoulders if your incline is lagging that much.

IJ26: Um, it sounds like you are stronger on flat? But yeah they are very close.

 

[Becoming]

Prime-

Mine used to have a pretty big differential, but I have worked on it steadily. For me, I have found it works best if I switch off specializing between the two (do incline for 4-8 weeks, then flat for same and so on) I approach it exactly as I would flat bench, Usually the first week is adjusting back to form etc, but then I make gains on the lift I am working on specifically. Now I almost as comfortable with it as I am with flat. When I switch back the other lift it I have found that it usually has maintained its max or even gone up a little.

Both are up to well over 4 plates now and counting with only about a 10-15 pound difference.

I started using a shallower incline on my most recent block, but this system worked well for me at a traditional incline angle which I always used until just recently (though I put the bench in the power rack for obvious safety reasons and bad spotting angle of the regular incline bench)

 

[Mike_Rojas]

Just work on them. I was much weaker on inclines, but once I did them regularly they went right up. Today I did 225x5 on incline and 257.5x5 on flat.

 

[Lord_Suston]

first off how much of an incline are you working with, I feel that any more than 40dgress is too much straing on the old rotator cuffs. next off you need to work shoulders to get the incline better and especially triceps. in the long run when your incline goes up so does your flat.

 

[PolishHammer1977]

Before I met Lord Suston I used to flat bench before incline ALWAYS. My flat max was 350 and incline 260. When I began incorporating inclines first and flat second I notice a couple things.
1 - my chest was filling up.
2 - my #'s were skyrocketing

and after three months of this I got these results

Flat - 405
Incline - 345

I think it worked I have since ceased working on flat when I hit 4 plates. I am now trying to get 4 plates on the incline press. In due time.