Bench press

[doubletake11]

Hey, I have a question about my chest exercises. My goal is primarily size but I’d also like to focus on adding strength to my bench. on mondays I start with flat bench in a lower rep range then move on to incline DB for a moderate rep range, and finish with a flat fly movement. On thursdays I do the opposite. I begin with incline bb for a lower rep range then flat Db for a more moderate rep range, and finish with incline fly’s for a higher rep range. I’m wondering if swapping the Dumbell presses for incline bb on Monday’s and flat bb on Thursday’s to add more barbell work would help my bench. Since my main goal is size I think I should keep the Dumbell presses in my routine, but I’m just curious what you all think

[BeginnerGainz]

If you’re main goal is hypertrophy then yes, keep the low rep main work and higher rep secondary rep work with dumbbells. As always, flyes are great (but crossovers are better IMO, high to low for lower chest, low to high for upper chest).

Consider adding pauses to your main barbell lifts if you aren’t already.

Edit:WR7 brings up a good point, that after the main barbell lifts you could also do wide or close grip or feet up benches as hypertrophy work. That and/or dumbbells are good for muscle building. Ideally you want to have exercises that you swap out every now and again.

[tallbro]

IMO, if you want to greatly increase bench press strength than doing bench press twice a week is important, so I would replace flat db's for barbell, maybe even do that as primary exercise on thursday, probably don't do same (heavy) rep range as on monday but focus more on form/volume or do paused presses as BeginnerGainz said or pin presses if lock out is your weak point.

[WolfRose7]

Incline bench does very little for flat bench.
Pause, pin, tempo, feet up, wide/close grips are all far better assistance work.

I would have at least 1 good assistance bench slot a week, but by all means keep the hypertrophy work slots.

[ezra76]

I'd stick with the one doing flat first then incline db's. Stretch is better on incline db's than incline bar.