Smith machine incline press

Why it's here

Tilting the bench moves the press toward the top of the chest. In an eight-week trial in untrained men, all pressing on a Smith machine, the incline press grew the uppermost of three measured parts of the chest more than the flat press or a mix of both, and built strength just as well ^[1].

The evidence

• Training study Forty-seven untrained men trained once a week for eight weeks with a flat press, an incline press at 44°, or both, all on a Smith machine and with the same number of sets. Muscle thickness, measured in 30 of them, grew more with the incline press at the highest of three sites — between the second and third ribs, below the middle of the collarbone; at the other two sites the groups did not differ. Bench press strength, tested isometrically, rose similarly in every group. The trial did not test free-bar or dumbbell incline presses ^[1].

How to do it

1. Set an adjustable bench to about 45° under the Smith machine, so the bar comes down onto your upper chest. The trial above used 44° ^[1].
2. Set the safety stops so the bar stops just below the point where it touches your chest.
3. Unhook the bar, lower it under control until it touches your upper chest, then press until your arms are straight. In the trial, every rep touched the chest and finished with the elbows fully straight ^[1].
4. Re-hook the bar at the top of your last rep.

Stop an exercise that causes significant or unusual pain and have it assessed. This page describes the movement; it is not rehabilitation advice.

Making it harder over time

This is a moderate compound exercise in the Progressive Overload Calculator, which adds weight in steps of 2.5%–5% once every set reaches the top of your rep range, and adds reps until then.

Alternatives

• Barbell bench press — The standard upper-body press. In men who had benched for at least a year, ten weeks of it thickened the chest by about 17%.
• Dumbbell bench press — A bench press with a dumbbell in each hand. In trained men it built pressing strength over ten weeks, most of all in the dumbbell press itself.