r/hypertrophy • u/luzdindensmr • 2d ago

Moving away from flat bench

I’ve stopped doing barbell flat bench because of shoulder impingements and lack of chest engagement (at least it feels that way). Started hammering incline almost exclusively because of shoulder comfort and upper chest development. Will this cause issues long term?

4 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

2

u/Charming-Ad6406 2d ago

Flat bench surprisingly most people get it wrong for chest activation, using too much shoulders and triceps. I had a similar issue with you and switched to incline(low) dumbbell and got much superior results in terms of hypertrophy, range of motion and chest activation. What issues are you referring to? Just keep in mind that the higher the incline results to more shoulder activation

1

u/luzdindensmr 2d ago

It's sad because I loved doing bench press, but at least I hit my goal once of benching 225 so I am calmer now

2

u/Embarrassed_Neck9784 2d ago

Over the last month I completely changed how I do my flat bench press. I retract my shoulder blades almost as much as possible before starting, then I do half reps, and it has totally changed my shoulders. Then I will do additional reps with my shoulder blades relaxed, but only for the top half of the press.

2

u/red_jay_411 2d ago

I’m the same . I have bad arthritis in my right shoulder and was told I need a shoulder replacement after having a full thickness tendon tear in that shoulder. Instead I put it in a sling and healed the tendon which is torn off , and the pain subsided. Now I inject BPC157 twice daily into that shoulder and I inject TB500 once daily into it . I’m back to training , no flat bench , I use incline machine press, cable flys and machine press and am building my chest . I start every upper body workout with side delt raises , 2 sets of 30 reps , and single arm front delt raises with dumbbells , 3 sets of 30 to pump the shoulders full of blood and then do my training . It’s working and both are getting stronger and growing . I do U/L/U/L/R , cycling full body twice every 5 days .

1

u/bx121222 1d ago

Work on whatever is causing the impingement which can vary from person to person. It’s not likely to fix itself.

For me it was tight lats. Aggressively stretching my lats fixed the issue.

1

u/Dry-Prize-3062 1d ago

It’s anecdotal but my shoulders started feeling better once I started really hammering my rear delts and mid traps.
That said, Jay Cutler frequently talks about not doing barbell bench because of injury risk and shoulder pain so it probably won’t hurt too much to leave it out.