Heh. My analogies tend to get out of hand, it’s why I don’t often do them. My point was basically people get so caught up in what other people are doing, or something shiny in their peripherals (be it a new exercise or new bit of data) that they miss the obvious bigger more important things right in front of them.
There are dudes who refuse to OHP because of EMG data, and there are people that will read this article and think that they’ve wasted time incline pressing. It’s good information, I just think it’s important to point out that this kind of thing shouldn’t be homed in on too much without the scope of the whole program, or individual.
If it’s any consolation, I wouldn’t have understood a chess analogy even if it only involved one board. I do appreciate you using a chess analogy in a chest discussion - I believe it fits the topic to a… dare I say… “t”?
After reading the article, I tried this variation for the first time in my life. A completely new feeling of the work of the pecs, undoubtedly they were involved in the work much more fully than in the other two traditional versions of the bench press.
I still prefer the banded squeeze the bar bench press with a football bar. I have long limbs and therefore a large range of motion. And in the bench press dumbbells, in my opinion, there is not enough squeeze force
I’m sorry for my English, I’m writing through a Google translator. I was referring to the effort as when performing squeeze dumbbell press, which helps to use the important function of the pectoral muscles to bring the arm to the center of the body
Decline also makes more weight easier to push. Never even read this info about decline until now, I just legit used the decline to see how it felt once and(after a few times and seeing how easy I got stuff up) it got me to do 3 plates(I was sandbagging myself with 295 forever), and now I can do 3 plates for 5 pretty swiftly even after all my warm up and build up(125: 2sets of ~20reps, 225: 2sets of ~10-15 then on to 315) a whole lot easier than incline and way easier than flat. I feel my chest working more/efficiently, I don’t feel any pressure on shoulders or my upper back, just straight up moves easy for me on decline over incline and way more than flat which is almost 50% a back exercise.
I almost always only do decline, incline second(used to be my #1) then flat bench very rarely.
Pick up a lightish dumbbell and do incline press with it and feel your pec with your other hand. Then do the same thing for decline and you should be amazed at how much more muscle involvement there is
Do you have to have a decline bench to get the benefit or can you put your feet up on the bench in the top of the hip thrust position and get the same benefit?
You can do that. Not as safe/stable. I just prop a bumper plate under the foot end of the bench=slight decline press. Better than the 45 degree torture board in most gyms.
I personally found your writing on the matter very refreshing and I thank you.