Misconceptions?

T

THBench

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First new thread in a long time for me guys, so excuse me if you have already been over this.
I want to clarify the differences between flat, incline, decline bench.
First of all, I've been told to believe that the pectoralis major is a single muscle and therefore it does not matter in what way you stress the muscle, just as long as it gets stressed. Therefore, doing incline does not hit the "upper" part of the chest so to speak, and decline does not do the "lower" part. Just what anatomy and talk has taught me.

Is this true, or false?

Now, I do know that doing incline may be beneficial for anterior delts compared to flat or decline, and that decline can be more beneficial to the lats more so than incline and flat. True or false?

I dont do incline or decline bench. Should it be incorporated into my workout? If so, on what day? A little recap to those who I have spoken to before, I do 4 days/week: squat, deadlift, and 2 bench (flat) days. Is it suggested to throw in an incline or decline on the same day as bench, or just completely replace the flat bench with an incline or decline bench for one of my bench days?

I dont look big, and dont have a big chest, but I usually do my reps with 205. It looks odd. I am considering a 6 week hypertrophy (muscle mass) period for my whole body, along with bulking of course. If this occurs, in order to get a fuller chest, should I do incline and decline bench?



Thats all for Incline/Decline Bench, but I also have another quick question...
I don't do military press. On my bench days I usually throw in a few sets of seated dumbell press, basiclly military press with dumbells. Is this enough, or not enough and if so what should I do to change it? Should I be foing shoulders on the same day as my bench like so, or should I throw them in on my deadlift or squat days?
 
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well if you saw all 3 bench presses overlayed onto each other you would see that the direction of the press remains the same, while the angle of your body changes. Changing angle changes everything as it will active different muscles if you are pushing up, straight, or down, relative to your chest. I won't comment on any specific muscles, but to me it is common sense that different muscles would be activated, or at least, the same muscle groups, but activated to a different extent in each position. Common sense also dictates that they are not the same because incline is much harder (I don't do decline, so can't comment on that). If they were the exact same exercise, there is no reason why there would be any difference in difficulty.

And while the pectoralis major is one muscle, the pec in totality is not 1 muscle; it is made up of 2 connected parts, the pectoralis major and the pectoralis minor. The pectoralis major is the upper part that connects to your front delt. It's the part that bulges upward when you flex. (and the part that you can make 'dance') The minor is the lower part of your pec that you don't see much of. It connects to your pectoralis major. I'm not quite sure about much else, but they are both activated on any chest exercise any may be activated differently based on angle.
 
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well in my explanation i did say pectoralis major, not just "pec". So I do understand that there are to parts of the "pec", and i also understand that both parts are hit during each exercise.
 
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I'd make the assumption that the incline hits the major more, and the decline hits the minor more, but that's just a guess.
 
If I am correct, the major and minor on the same x-axis if looking at the pectoralis as a coordinate. Therefore, changing the Y coordinate (Incline, more positive y, decline more negative y) should not effect the pectoralis major more than the minor and vise versa.
 
Google pec minor, I don't think it is what you think it is.

The pec major has two heads (3 in some cases), I think it's these two heads that gets referred to as "upper" and "lower"
 
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