bench press,should i feel my chest muscles working?

[Gerard1990]

Im sorry if im in the wrong category, im still new at this and dont know where to post, i was just wondering if when doing the bench press, should you feel your chest muscles working, because i dont.. I made this ghetto bench out of cinder blocks and a old peice of a broken bench, (its the same piece as a normal bench press bench just without the legs,) it gives me full motion to bring the barcto my chest and back up again, im using wide grip so im not sure if my grip has to do with not feeling and chest movements, as for weight i have about 50 pounds, could that be the reason not enough weight, i feel my arms more then chest, agian i know wrong category so you don'y have to answer just please kindly directed me to witch category i should be in, thank you
for your time

[DJAuto]

Yes, the target musculature should be pumped and fatigued.

[Virucyde]

The bench press is a compound lift. As a result, you will work a variety of muscles, namely your triceps(back of arm), front deltoids(shoulders), and pectorals(chest). Now, with virtually every compound exercise, a key role in which muscle you feel the most depends on your mind-muscle connection. In other words, with a compound exercise, typically any of the muscles is able to overcompensate for the other muscles. As a result, this muscle will likely be the first one to exhaust, since it is doing the most work, and the other muscles will not feel as exhausted.

Bench press is a particularly bad offender, since it is touted as "the king of chest exercises" when the reality is that the pecs pull your elbows toward the center of your body, a motion which is only barely performed during the bench press. Many people primarily feel bench press in their shoulders(front deltoids) and arms(triceps), and only feel their pecs burning along the outsides near their shoulders. This is because the bench press only uses the outer pecs, and fails to hit the inner pecs, since the elbows never go all the way to touching each other, and as the movement reaches the top, the difficulty decreases as the weight rests on the fulcrum.

While experienced lifters(and a few lucky ones) are capable of using the bench press to work their pecs, this is because they have a strong mind-muscle connection with their pecs, which allows them to focus on using the pecs to move the weight. That being said, regardless of how good your mind-muscle connection is, the bench press is still an unbalanced chest exercise. If your emphasis is on chest, you'd be better off doing a dumbbell bench press(the elbows can come further in), or some form of flyes(preferably cable flyes, to maintain difficulty throughout the motion, even in the center). If you want colloquial proof, I have friends who have been bench pressing religiously for years(10 years+), who gained two inches on their chests soon after beginning to use Pec Dec.

Now, you're not going to hear this advice from most other people, since saying bench isn't the chest exercise from God is blasphemy in many bodybuilding circles(particularly this website), but I've given you the logic behind my reasoning, ask them for theirs.

[Concat]

It's likely a mind muscle connection issue. If I just push the bar up, I don't really feel it either. But when I make the effort to really squeeze my pecs, it becomes apparent that you need to more than just push the bar up.

And are we talking 50lbs DB or BB? I can't imagine 50lbs on BB is going to do much but get you used to the movement and help nail your form down.

[Engineer_Guy]

Bench press is a particularly bad offender, since it is touted as "the king of chest exercises" when the reality is that the pecs pull your elbows toward the center of your body, a motion which is only barely performed during the bench press. Many people primarily feel bench press in their shoulders(front deltoids) and arms(triceps), and only feel their pecs burning along the outsides near their shoulders. This is because the bench press only uses the outer pecs, and fails to hit the inner pecs, since the elbows never go all the way to touching each other, and as the movement reaches the top, the difficulty decreases as the weight rests on the fulcrum.

You are correct in how the pectorals function however that motion is a key part of a properly performed bench press. People who don't feel bench press in the chest are not performing it correctly.

If all you are doing is trying to push the bar straight up and down you are probably not doing it right.

[Virucyde]

You are correct in how the pectorals function however that motion is a key part of a properly performed bench press. People who don't feel bench press in the chest are not performing it correctly.

If all you are doing is trying to push the bar straight up and down you are probably not doing it right.

Yes yes, for the first section of the bench(below and just above 90 degrees), but I think there's no denying that the bench fails to hit the pec's full ROM, which was my entire argument. Now, if you believe hitting a full ROM is unnecessary, then by all means, done correctly the bench can be a good pec exercise.

He's right though that the emphasis should not be on moving the weight up, but rather, on moving your elbows together.

[MoeGainz]

The bench press is a compound lift. As a result, you will work a variety of muscles, namely your triceps(back of arm), front deltoids(shoulders), and pectorals(chest). Now, with virtually every compound exercise, a key role in which muscle you feel the most depends on your mind-muscle connection. In other words, with a compound exercise, typically any of the muscles is able to overcompensate for the other muscles. As a result, this muscle will likely be the first one to exhaust, since it is doing the most work, and the other muscles will not feel as exhausted.

Bench press is a particularly bad offender, since it is touted as "the king of chest exercises" when the reality is that the pecs pull your elbows toward the center of your body, a motion which is only barely performed during the bench press. Many people primarily feel bench press in their shoulders(front deltoids) and arms(triceps), and only feel their pecs burning along the outsides near their shoulders. This is because the bench press only uses the outer pecs, and fails to hit the inner pecs, since the elbows never go all the way to touching each other, and as the movement reaches the top, the difficulty decreases as the weight rests on the fulcrum.

While experienced lifters(and a few lucky ones) are capable of using the bench press to work their pecs, this is because they have a strong mind-muscle connection with their pecs, which allows them to focus on using the pecs to move the weight. That being said, regardless of how good your mind-muscle connection is, the bench press is still an unbalanced chest exercise. If your emphasis is on chest, you'd be better off doing a dumbbell bench press(the elbows can come further in), or some form of flyes(preferably cable flyes, to maintain difficulty throughout the motion, even in the center). If you want colloquial proof, I have friends who have been bench pressing religiously for years(10 years+), who gained two inches on their chests soon after beginning to use Pec Dec.

Now, you're not going to hear this advice from most other people, since saying bench isn't the chest exercise from God is blasphemy in many bodybuilding circles(particularly this website), but I've given you the logic behind my reasoning, ask them for theirs.

what kind of cable flys ? pulling from the bottom up...or from the top downards

[Virucyde]

what kind of cable flys ? pulling from the bottom up...or from the top downards

From outside in, they're not incredibly common machines. To hit upper and lower pecs you can lower or raise your elbows. But again, no matter what exercise it is, if you're focusing on moving the weights/cables, rather than focusing on moving your elbows toward eachother, you're not going to work your chest ideally.

[Virucyde]

Now, rereading the original post, it looks like you don't really have access to gym equipment. In that case, I'd recommend trying to get access to it, but if not, here's how you can try to fix your bench form:

1. Focus on pulling your elbows together, rather than moving the weight up and down.
2. Go below 90 degrees with your arms. In other words, your elbows should go below a right(square) angle.
3. Incline bench hits your pecs more, if you can pull it off.
4. Use more weight once you've made the mind-muscle connection.

At 50 lbs, you may be better off just going with pushups though.

[Quadzillas]

Many people primarily feel bench press in their shoulders(front deltoids) and arms(triceps), and only feel their pecs burning along the outsides near their shoulders. This is because the bench press only uses the outer pecs, and fails to hit the inner pecs, since the elbows never go all the way to touching each other, and as the movement reaches the top, the difficulty decreases as the weight rests on the fulcrum.

Inner and outer chest? lulwut?
You have an upper chest and a lower chest, due to the clavicular and sternal insertions of the pec major. No such thing applies to the 'inner' and 'outer' chest. The only way to build the inner chest, is to build the rest of it too.

[Rasputin4]

I'm wondering what the logic is to saying that incline bench hits your chest more, since it incorporates more shoulders into the movement.

IME, benching with a very slight decline hits the chest best, especially when done with DBs.

[sadiq100]

If you want an aesthetic chest stick to gullotine and incline

[IDrinkBloodLOL]

The answer is technically "it depends," but generally yeah, you should.

I mean, if you're benching to build muscle, it better hit the target muscle or it's a waste of time for you. If you're benching just to get a big bench, it doesn't really matter what muscles it's working so long as you're benching bigger and bigger weights, but let's be honest, you're simply gonna need big chesticles if you want a big bench.

This business of not feeling bench in the chest is very common. I'm one of those guys too, a lot of people here are.

The solution is very simple: try to adjust your form so it hits your chest about 5 times.

If that doesn't work, you now have two options:

If you're an idiot, you can keep banging your head against the wall thinking that tiny minutiae of your form will cause the move to hit your chest even when you've exhausted all of the obvious options (wide/narrow grip, high/low bar placement, incline/flat/decline) but still don't feel it in your chest.

If you're really an idiot, when that inevitably fails you can start trying to "visualize" the chest squeezing or trying to build a "mind muscle connection" or other metaphysical voodoo. These comprise the majority of this board.

If you're smart, once it becomes obvious that all of the normal versions of benching (wide/narrow grip, high/low bar placement, incline/flat/decline) are simply failing to hit your chest, you start throwing in chest isolations: DB fly, cable crossovers etc. Then you're able to just start building your chest and get it DONE while the short bus crowd spends years trying to cast voodoo incantations to make the bench hit their chest.

The same logic applies to squats and really any muscle you're trying to hit. Don't feel squats in your quads? Try all of the major kinds of squat (high bar oly ATG/low bar parallel/sumo/front squat) and if you still don't feel it in your quads do something else until you finally get a good quad workout.

For some reason there is a strong resistance to recommending use of bodybuilding exercises as supplements to your bodybuilding routine on this bodybuilding forum, but if you want to actually move forward that's what will help.