Are Bench presses overrated?

dumb bell presses are the ideal chest workout if you got to to do only one exercise for the chest.

but however the bench press is certainly not overrated. some places that is all you have for chest and it is adequate enough to give you a thorough chest exercise if you do it correctly.

although it is ideal to mix it with dumb bell press

Dumbells become a bit unwieldy above 100 lbs. Just getting them into place is a pain.

I can go much heavier and feel like my shoulder joints are safer when using the barbell.

However, I would be inclined to argue that barbell incline press may be a superior exercise.

No, any compound exercise like that is not overrated.

I put my pinkies on the small ring gaps, but it's different for everyone. I always touch my chest on Flat/Decline, and if I went wider I think it would stress my shoulders too much. Wider = less triceps, more chest, closer = less chest, more triceps. Somewhere between those two is the perfect range which will allow you to lift the most weight depending on where your strengths lie, it's different for everyone.

An excellent exercise, but often overated in the hierarchy of of a typical workout. Few people have "time" for squats or deadlifts, but everybody seems to head straight to the bench. While I've seen lots of strong benchers be very weak in squats/deadlifts; I've yet to see a strong squatter/deadlifter who wasn't pretty damn respectable in the bench too.

+1.

This is absolutely quoted for the truth.

While bench press is a pretty important exercise, I definitely place dead lifts and squats higher in importance, but the "IN" thing to do apparently is to not work out your legs and just do curls and bench press.

Some other good compound exercises is military press and wide grip chin ups.

A couple of years ago, I was on a program which focused on those five exercises plus a bent over row, and thats all you did for 8 weeks, squatting three times a week was killer, however I gained a immense amount of strength during that summer, bench went up 35 lbs, squats 100 lbs, and deads about 100 lbs.

The only problems I had with the program, was it didn't really affect the size of my arms as much as the rest of my body, but the way it affects everyone is always different.

I agree they're harder to handle when above 100 lbs. But of course you're going to be able to lift heavier weights with a barbell. With dumbbells you also have to balance them, which requires more work. Whether you use dumbbells or barbells, your joints should be equally safe unless you overload yourself.

Also, you should mix up the inclines. Do both a regular bench press and inclined bench press.

I would advise to use dumbbells over barbells, especially since you can twist your arms as you push the dumbbells up. This recruits different muscles providing a better workout.

As for the distance between each dumbbell, that varies as well.

Wider grips tend to stress the shoulders more, not the pectorals. Either way, gripping differently to focus on one particular muscle group is kinda dumb unless you understand which muscles work at which points during the lift and your goal is to increase your bench press. Wider grips open the acromion process as well. The same problem with dumbbells is the same problem as benching across the shoulders -- the glenohumeral joint (shoulder for the laymen) is superior to the sternocostal head of the pectorals (aka. the part of it that makes your chest look big), and since the exercise occurs in the coronal plane (pushed upward, basically) with quite a bit of weight, benching with the elbows outward forces the resistance to be situated on top of the humerus in order to remain upright. By bending the elbows inward slightly (ie. benching with the bar coming into contact with the bottom of the ribcage), the center of gravity is instead loaded onto the elbows and transverse flexion is limited. The problem with most people benching is that they don't limit transverse flexion -- this not only opens the acromion process and can cause injury, but it's a weak joint angle because it uses an inferior amount of force generated from the sternocostal pectorals. Any time more muscles are at stronger angle more weight is moved. It occurs rows as well -- the farther out the hands, the more musculature of the upper back is used in proportion to the lats. Guess what happens when the same thing is done in reverse...

uhh...yeah...that's what I thought you said

Just to make sure I understand, are you saying that keeping the elbows in and perhaps using a narrower grip is safer and likely to yield a stronger bench over the long term?

That's what I said.

Prone grip, dumbbells work best, but it's somewhat radical for most to implement it.