The most complete upper body single exercise

[lockdownd7]

Ok for the point of this discussion, you should eliminate certain exercises from the argument. Yea, exercises like deadlifts, squats, cleans, etc. have a tremendous effect on overall development of the entire body. But let's be honest....those are not upper body lifts.

I agree with the OP. Granted, that is slightly due to my bias towards training for performance enhancement as opposed to true bodybuilding. The bench press doesn't build functional strength. You develop strength in the bench press....and all you've got is a strong bench press. And the rate of shoulder problems among bench fanatics is astronomical. The OHP promotes balanced development of the shoulder girdle. For a bodybuilder, you can get away with a lot more as aesthetics is the only priority....i.e., you don't care what the muscle can do, just what it looks like. But for an athlete, there are actually very few scenarios where the bench press would be necessary.

 

[bblazer]

LMFAO bro!!!



Good thread.


It really may depend on what your physique is lacking. If you have blasting delts and a weak chest, I'd put prority on the chest press as being the "best". If you have a thick chest, and puney delts, i'd go with the OHP as being the "best" for you. Also, the context of your goals makes a difference. If you are a powerlifter, maybe a certain lift of the 2 weakens your overall score too much. And BBing, well same thing.



Make yor case first too bro. You said what you think, now tell us why. THat's what gets the debate going.

If you say something is better than something else, nobody has anything to debate if you don't present your reasoning.

OK here goes...

The Standing Overhead Press (SOP) requires the entire kinetic chain of the human body. It starts at the feet where they touch the floor and moves all the way up. Because it is done while standing a seated version will not convert because you must also stabilize the force against the floor activating all core groups (I really hate that term as it makes me think of a buch of soccer moms balancing on swiss ball day). As opposed to the BP, you have nearly all back muscles involved in the lift as well. Additionally, the primary muscles of the upper trunk, arms and back are being taxed in both the extension and contraction phases of their movements.

I wish I had not loaned out my Mark Rippetoe strength book out right now. I would love to be able to quote him for a little more "ammo".

B-

 

[bblazer]

will you be sitting in a squat rack while doing these curls?

With or without the pins in place??

B-

 

[FunFun]

Of course to stay healthy and injury free we must balance out the strength of opposing muscle groups so this is hypothetical in the extreme.

Let's say we're only concerned with muscle hypertophy and nothing else. Which upper body exercise done to the exclusion of all others would build the most amount of muscle on the upper body?

I would say the BB bent over row would build more than the overhead press or bench press considering the volume of the back muscles in comparison to the pecs and delts.

For musle mass exclusively I'd go 1st: Bent over row, 2nd Bench press, 3rd overhead press.

What about potential for injuries?

I'd give first place to overhead press, 2nd: Bent over row and consider the safest of the 3 to be bench press.

 

[bblazer]

Of course to stay healthy and injury free we must balance out the strength of opposing muscle groups so this is hypothetical in the extreme.

Let's say we're only concerned with muscle hypertophy and nothing else. Which upper body exercise done to the exclusion of all others would build the most amount of muscle on the upper body?

I would say the BB bent over row would build more than the overhead press or bench press considering the volume of the back muscles in comparison to the pecs and delts.

For musle mass exclusively I'd go 1st: Bent over row, 2nd Bench press, 3rd overhead press.

What about potential for injuries?

I'd give first place to overhead press, 2nd: Bent over row and consider the safest of the 3 to be bench press.

In a lot of ways I agree. Especially with the mass gains from the bent over rows. But the title is the most complete upper body single exercise. And in this case complete means the complete upper body.

B-

 

[desmond]

Dips? U can use slightly more weight than bench, and ROM just as good

 

[SouthernLord]

Best upper body pressing lifts. In this order. I dare you to disagree......

1. Standing Barbell OHP
2. Dips
3. Barbell Bench Press/Barbell Incline Press tie

Flat bench has cause more shoulder injuries than any other lift ever.

 

[SouthernLord]

The Press, Part One
by Bill Starr


Last February (2006) Dave Draper’s wife, Laree, contacted me regarding an online forum about my book The Strongest Shall Survive. She asked if I’d respond to questions posted by members of the forum. Since I’ve never been one to pass up free publicity, I readily agreed. See here - Questions for Bill Starr? - IronOnline Weight Training Forum

Those of us who have been weight training for a wide variety of reasons for any length of time tend to change their focus as regularly as the seasons, so I wasn’t sure just what aspect of training the online participants would be interested in: rolling around on fat balls, kettlebells or perhaps some magical routine that would make them huge and strong by working out five minutes a day, twice a week.

So I was surprised that the majority of questions dealt with some aspect of the military, or overhead, press – how to do it correctly, why was it dropped from official competition, is it a safe lift to teach youngsters, is it “less traumatic” to the shoulders than the flat bench and is it a better exercise for athletes than the flat bench? In addition to the large number of inquiries from the online forum, I also received several letters that basically asked the same things. It seems that the military press has once again stepped out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

Which is where it belongs. Yet for a long time I was one of the few who encouraged everyone who lifted weights – bodybuilders, athletes, powerlifters, Olympic lifters and those who trained for overall strength fitness – to include the military press in their routines. I fully understood the value of being able to press heavy weights because I’d always pressed. As did everyone else in the gym regardless of why they were lifting. The two primary exercises that absolutely every person who was trying to get bigger and stronger did were full squats and military presses. No exceptions. The exercises selected for the back varied, but not for the upper and lower body.

The military press was the standard by which strength was gauged. “How much can you press?” was always the question asked when someone wanted to know how strong you were. The rite of passage was to be able to press your bodyweight. Once you achieved that feat, you were on your way. By the way, that’s still an excellent measure of upper-body strength. I’d be willing to bet that in a gym where several are benching in the high 300s or even in the 400s, not a single one of them can military press their bodyweight.

The shift in giving the bench press priority over the military press wasn’t gradual but quite abrupt. Strike one was when the press was eliminated from Olympic weightlifting competition in 1972. Strikes two and three quickly followed: the emergence of the sport of powerlifting, which used the bench press as the test of upper-body strength, and the explosion of weight training for athletes across the country, especially for football. The bench press prevailed because 1) more weight could be used, 2) it was easier to teach, and 3) it was deemed safer. The final reason was the most important of all. Coaches and athletic directors were often wary of students lifting weights and certainly didn’t want to increase the risk of injury by including an exercise that had been banned from the Olympics.

Youngsters and beginners were no longer introduced to the military press for fear it would cause lower-back injuries, a direct result of the International Olympic Weightlifting Committee’s declaration that the press was no longer a part of the sport because so many back injuries were occurring due to the nature of the new style of the lift.

So presses were suddenly harmful, not helpful. No one doubted that is such as austere, knowledgeable body as the International Weightlifting Committee considered the press dangerous, than it must be. In truth, the committee was made up of a group of self-serving old men who used the sport for personal gain and power, Bob Hoffman being a prime example. There was no medical evidence to support the contention that the military press caused injury to the lower back. That was the smokescreen. Dropping the press was purely a political decision and had nothing whatever to do with the health of the athletes.

The real reason that the press was no longer a part of the Olympic sport of weightlifting was simply that the judges had allowed it to get completely out of control. Who sat in the judging chairs determined whose lifts got passed, and in international contests, politics took precedence over fair rulings. Some lifters got away with excessive layback while competitors from other nations had to stay very erect or be disqualified. Some used an extreme knee kick that resembled a push press, but the lift was passed if the judges were friendly. Even when the lifter adhered to the rules strictly and didn’t lay back too far or knee-kick the start, the judges always had an ace in the hole – the bar stopping on the way up. Having the bar stop on the way up was not to the lifter’s advantage. Just the opposite – and it got a lot of presses red-lighted.

At the major international meets, it got downright ugly. At the ’68 Olympics in Mexico City I was standing off to the side of the stage, observing the technique of the foreign lifters. I watched two Caribbean judges give red lights to a lifter from Cuba on his first two attempts, even though his presses were flawless. His knees stayed locked at the start, he remained erect throughout the lift, and he never paused from beginning to end. The Cuban coaches ranted and raved, but to no avail. He got three white lights on his third attempt. It didn’t matter. The two judges had made sure he’d be out of medal contention. In meets at that level, one failed attempt is enough to lower a placing by five or six spots. While I had no love for the Cuban, I still thought the actions of the two judges were totally out of keeping with the spirit of the Olympic Games. That lifter had worked very hard to earn the right to compete for the highest honor in his sport and had been royally screwed because of his nationality. Sad to say, he wasn’t the only one.

Politics, not a concern for the lifter’s well-being, prompted the committee to remove the press from the contested lifts. Few, however, knew the truth, which meant the press was suddenly relegated to the role of an auxiliary exercise, if it was done at all. You might wonder whether some lifters hurt their backs because of the press. Of course: The press is the same as any other exercise. Use sloppy technique and you pay the price. Even so, far more dings and injuries were incurred on snatches, clean and jerks and front and back squats than from pressing.

Also keep in mind that lifters spent one-third of their training time on the press, even more than that if the lift was lagging behind. That meant three to four sessions a week where they hit the press hard and heavy. I’m not suggesting that anyone train for the press in such an extreme manner. When I insert military presses into people’s programs, I have them press only twice a week, and they go heavy just once during the week. I also make sure they learn proper technique before piling on the plates and do plenty of specific lower-back exercises to ensure that their lumbars can take the stress if they do lay back.

It’s extremely difficult to learn how to lay back when performing a military press. It takes a great deal of practice to lay back at the precise moment and do it smoothly. The military press is one of those exercises that’s easy to learn but tough to master. I can teach athletes how to snatch or clean and jerk faster than I can teach them the finer points of the military press. That’s why I allotted so much training time to it. Sure, there were a few who merely muscled the weights up, but having excellent technique upped the numbers appreciably. Naturally, I don’t recommend excessive layback, but in reality, that just doesn’t happen. So stress to the lower back really isn’t a problem.

Speaking of injuries, I can say with certainty that one type of injury prevalent today was unheard of when the military press was the primary upper-body exercise – damage to the rotator cuff muscles. We didn’t even realize there were such muscles. No one who pressed had any trouble with them simply because the exercise strengthened them. Rotator cuff injuries started occurring soon after the bench press replaced the military press as the main exercise for developing shoulder girdle strength. The bench press was overtrained to the extreme and usually done with sloppy form, since all that mattered were numbers.

At the same time, the part of the back that houses the rotator cuffs was neglected, so the weakest-link concept emerged, as it always does. You just can’t slide around a natural law. Walk into any commercial gym in the country, and you’ll find a half dozen people with rotator cuff problems. It’s become almost epidemic and isn’t likely to change in the immediate future. Whenever people approach me asking for advice concerning their rotator cuffs, I tell them to start doing military presses. If they’re very weak pressers, I have them use dumbells. As they gain strength in the movement, they graduate to the Olympic bar.

Keeping your rotator cuffs healthy is a real plus for the military press. There are other benefits as well, It’s one of the best – perhaps the best – exercises for developing the deltoids completely, whereas other upper-body exercises, such as the flat and incline bench press, neglect the lateral head. It’s a great movement for building strong, impressive triceps. All you have to do is look at photos of the great pressers of the ‘60s to verify that. Phil Grippaldi, Bill March, Norb Schemansky Ken Patera, Bob Bednarski and Ernie Pickett immediately come to mind. Their amazing triceps and shoulder development was a result of doing lots and lots of military presses, period.

Military presses become a part of the routines of all my athletes, both male and female, because the shoulder and back strength gained from handling heavy weights in that lift converts directly to every athletic endeavor, such as shooting and rebounding in basketball, throwing and hitting in baseball, firing a lacrosse ball at 100-plus miles per hour and hurling a shot into the next county. That’s not the case with the bench press. Too much benching causes the shoulders to tighten and limits the range of motion, an important consideration for athletes engaging in activities that require a great deal of flexibility in their shoulders.

When you spend ample time on learning how to press, and move yours up into the mid-200 range, you’ll discover that it has a very positive influence on all your other upper-body exercises.

One of the best things about the military press is that it can be done in a very limited space and with a minimum of equipment – a bar and some plates. For those who train at home alone, it has another advantage: You don’t need spotters. Should you fail to press a weight to lockout, al you have to do is lower it back to your shoulders and set it down to the floor or on the rack. Even in extreme situations where you lose your balance and have to dump the weights, it’s still far better than being pinned under a heavy weight on a flat bench.

Speaking of dumping weights, when there were only metal plates, it was taboo. It damaged the floor and sometimes bent the bar. It wasn’t even allowed in meets. The lifter had to lower the bar under control back to the platform. Dropping it was cause for disqualification. Bumper plates changed all that. Seldom do I see people lower the bar after finishing a press, clean, snatch or jerk. They simply dump the bar. They reason that not having to ease the weights back to the platform saves them some energy to use on the upcoming attempts.

I hadn’t thought that much about the practice until I read what Bill Clark wrote in his Journal. In part, he stated that the press is a tremendous builder of upper-body strength – the lower back, the entire shoulder girdle, plus the hips. Then he recommended using iron weights. “There would be no more dropping of the bar. A lifter would control the weight from overhead to the shoulders, to the waist, and to the floor. Thus working the negative resistance . . . more for the price of one effort.

Good advice, especially for beginners.


At first, I’m only going to present basic information on how to do the military press, sort of a primer. I’ll save the more detailed points of form for a second article. After pressing for four or five weeks, you’ll be ready to hone your technique. In the second installment, I’ll also attempt to explain the rather complicated style of pressing the eventually prompted the Olympic Weightlifting Committee to drop the lift from competition. It’s not easy to learn, but you might want to take a crack at it. I’ll also include ways to incorporate the press in your overall upper-body routine and how to make it stronger.

Now for the basics. Grip the bar at shoulder width. If you extend your thumbs so they barely touch the smooth center of an Olympic bar, that’s usually right. Naturally, those with broad shoulders will need to grip the bar a bit wider, but don’t overdo it. You’ll know that you’ve found the ideal grip if your forearms are perfectly vertical. It provides maximum upward thrust.

Place your feet at shoulder width with toes pointed straight ahead. I see people in the gym pressing with one foot behind the other, almost like a split in the jerk. Wrong on two counts. It places uneven stress on the lower back and doesn’t let you grind through the sticking point. It’s a weak position from which to press.

Wear a belt. Not for safety, because if you use sloppy form over and over or haven’t bothered to strengthen your lumbars, the belt isn’t going to prevent you from getting hurt. Rather, it’s useful in that it provides feedback, particularly in regard to laying back, and it helps keep your lower back warm.

When learning how to press, clean the weights rather than taking a bar off the racks. Believe it or not, that makes the lift easier. And if your primary goal is a solid fitness base, clean and press each rep. It’s a perfect push-pull exercise. Most trainees, however, want to improve their pressing power. In that case, just clean the weight and proceed to do all your presses.

Rack the bar across your front deltoids, not your collarbone. Resting the bar across your clavicles is painful, and doing it repeatedly can result in bruising the bones. Not good. Simply elevate your entire shoulder girdle to provide a ledge on muscle to place the bar on. That will also put the bar in a stronger starting position than when it’s set lower.

Your elbows will be down and close to your body – not tucked in tightly but more close than away. Your wrists must be straight, not cocked; that’s most important. If you have trouble keeping them locked, tape or wrap them.

After cleaning the weight, grip the floor with your feet to establish a firm foundation, and then tighten your legs, hips, back, shoulders and arms. I mean rigidly tight. If any bodypart relaxes at all during the execution of the press, the outcome will be adversely affected.

Look straight ahead, and continue to do so throughout the lift. Don’t get into the habit of watching the bar travel upward, which will carry you out of the proper pressing position. While learning to press, drive the bar off your shoulders forcefully, yet in a controlled fashion. Explosive starts will come later. The controlled start will help you learn to press in the correct line, which is straight up, directly in front of your face. The bar should almost touch your nose.

As it climbs up past the top of your head, push your head through the gap you’ve created, and at the same time turn your elbows outward and guide the bar slightly backward. Not much, though, or it will force you to lose your balance. When the bar is locked out, it will be right over the back of your head. That places it in a very strong position over your spine, hips and legs.

Still staying tight, lower the bar back to your shoulders in a deliberate manner. Don’t let it crash down on you. That can damage your shoulders and it carries the bar out of the correct starting position. Make sure you tighten up again; then do the next rep. When the set is completed, follow Bill Clark’s sage advice and lower the bar back to your waist, then to the floor.

When learning the lift, take a deep breath before you drive the bar off your shoulders and another after it passes the sticking point or once you lock it out. While the weights are rather light, breathing isn’t that critical. I’ll get into how to breathe with heavy weights later.

With practice, you’ll find that there’s a rhythm to the press, and when you hit everything just right, the bar will float upward. It’s a fine sensation to press a heavy weight overhead, unlike any other exercise.

I mentioned that I have my athletes press twice a week, but when you’re in the process of learning the lift, it’s all right to press at every workout. Do 5 sets of 5, and go as heavy as you can. Pay attention to form, and after a few weeks you’ll be ready for a more advanced version of the military press – the European Olympic press.

 

[SouthernLord]

The Press, Part Two
by Bill Starr


In my last article, I listed many reasons why I believe all strength athletes should include the military, or overhead, press in their routines. I presented some basic instruction on performing the lift and also pointed out that even though the military press is easy to learn, the form becomes more complicated once the weights get heavy. Few have any difficulty pressing light and moderate poundages, but it’s an entirely different story when a max double or single is being attempted. At that point the technique must be perfect. the smallest form flaw will result in failure – not just sometimes but always.

If people are doing military presses as part of their overall fitness program and are not at all interested in going after a heavy single, then the guidelines I mentioned previously will suffice.

Should your goal be to press big numbers, however, then you must invest ample time in practicing this lift. When the press was part of Olympic weightlifting, athletes would spend at least one-third of their training time on it, not just to strengthen the muscles responsible for pressing the weight but also to hone the finer form points. In the end, the athlete who had better technique would move ahead in competition, since the press was done first, before the snatch and clean and jerk.

The military press has evolved over the years. Way, way back, weightlifting contest consisted of as many as a dozen tests of strength. The press was one of them, and it was done in ultra-strict fashion. Athletes had to start the press with their heels touching, and they had to stay absolutely erect throughout the lift. Leaning back was not permitted. If that wasn’t enough, they had to elevate the bar at the same speed at which the head judge raised his hand. That was indeed a pure form of the press.

Over the year the rules got more lax, especially in regard to back bend. Some lifters were capable of leaning back so far that they ended up finishing the lift with their backs horizontal to the platform. They were the exceptions, of course, since it’s not easy to lie that far back and maintain balance when handling a heavy weight. Plus, an excessive back bend can be harmful to the lumbars.

Then, in the early 1960s, the press changed from being a test of upper-body strength to an explosive quick lift. Those who adopted the new style of press could drive a bar from the shoulders to lockout in the blinking of an eye. A perfectly executed press moved as fast as a jerk. It was a revolution in Olympic weightlifting and resulted in world records being broken almost faster than they could be recorded. Somewhat ironically, it was the radical alteration of the press that ultimately resulted in its being dropped from the Olympic agenda.

The new form of press was called European style, but, in fact, it wasn’t a European who devised the more dynamic technique. It was an American: Tony Garcy, the middleweight champion from El Paso, Texas, who moved to York to teach and train. Tony had developed the new style and polished his technique to a fine degree by the time he lifted on an international stage. That’s where the European coaches and lifters saw the potential of the high-skill movement and instantly adopted it. By the mid-60s, 100 percent of the European lifters were using the new style so it became known as the European-style press.

The European lifters trained under tightly controlled conditions. If the coach said to use the new style of press, there weren’t any objections. In the United States things were quite different. For the most part lifters coached themselves, and only a few had the opportunity to see this style of pressing. An athlete either had to watch Tony train at the York Barbell Gym or attend a meet in which he competed – and Tony didn’t lift in a lot of meets. The quick press did spread across the country, but nowhere near as fast as it did in the rest of the world.

Eventually, it became known as the Olympic press, but I’ve always thought that it would have been fitting and proper to label it the Garcy-style press. In gymnastics they will name a certain innovative move after the athlete who did it first. Why not in weightlifting?

As you’ll understand when I spell out the technical points for the Olympic press, it takes a great deal of mental and physical effort to perform the movement correctly. That will help you appreciate just how much time and energy Tony spent developing it.

I should mention that if you can’t deal with frustration, you’ll be better off staying with the military press. On the other hand, if you like being challenged and enjoy testing your athleticism in the weight room, you’ll have fun learning the finer points of this lift. Those of us who had been doing press in the conventional way for a number of years had difficulty switching to the more dynamic style because it’s a totally different movement. With lots and lots of practice, though, most of us were able to become at least proficient on the Olympic press.


Here’s a review of the basic form points for the military press. Again, you can take the bar off the rack and press it, but you’ll find that you can use more weight if you clean it and then do your presses. I think that’s because the clean helps you get your body tighter than when you just take the bar from the rack.

A belt is a good idea. It keeps your back warm, and it gives you feedback during the lift, particularly in terms of how far you are laying back. Don’t be fooled into thinking the belt will protect you from injuries when using sloppy form. It won’t.

Your grip is right if your forearms remain vertical during the execution of the press. Be sure to wrap your thumbs around the bar. Don’t use a thumbless or false grip. Gripping the bar tightly gives you much better control, especially when the bar tries to run forward, which usually happens when the weights get really heavy. Set your feet at shoulder width, with the toes pointed straight ahead. Clean the bar and fix it across your front deltoids. Don’t let it rest on your collarbones. Elevate your entire shoulder girdle to provide a muscular ledge (think: chest up) and the bar should be ser right where your breastbone meets your collarbones.

Keep your elbows down and close to your lats. Your wrists must be straight, not cocked. Should you find that you have trouble keeping them locked while pressing, tape them or secure them with wraps. You’ll never press any amount of weight if your wrists move around during the lift. Your body should be vertical from feet to head, and your eyes should be forward. A common mistake many beginners make is to follow the bar’s upward movement with their eyes. Don’t do that because it carries your upper body out of a strong pressing position.

Before commencing the press, take a moment to tighten all the muscles of your body, starting with your feet and moving on up to your traps, shoulders and arms. Squeeze the bar until you feel your forearms, deltoids and upper arms almost cramping. Take a deep breath, and drive the bar straight up so that it almost touches your nose. As soon as the weight passes the top of your head, extend your head through that gap you’ve created, and at that same instant turn your elbows outward and guide the bar slightly backward. Not much though – just enough to keep your power base under the bar.
Here’s where the bar should be when you lock it out: Imagine a line being drawn from the back of your head directly upward. That’s where the bar should end up at the completion of the press, right over your spine and hips.

As soon as you lock out the bar, breathe. And don’t merely hold the bar overhead. Rather, push up against it forcefully and try to extend it even higher. That activates many more muscles in the upper back than when you just casually hold the bar at lockout. Hold that dynamic lockout for three to four seconds, take another breath, and then, in a controlled manner, lower the bar back to your shoulders. It’s important not to allow the bar to crash downward. It’s painful to your collarbones, and it carries the bar out of the ideal starting position. You can cushion the descending weights by bending your knees, but be sure to lock them before the nest rep. In this style of pressing, your knees will always be locked.

Make sure everything is right: feet, placement of the bar on your shoulders, body extremely tight, eyes straight ahead. Then take a breath and do the next rep. After you’ve completed all your reps on a set and have lowered the bar to your shoulders, don’t dump the weights to the floor even if you’re using rubber plates. Lower the bar from your shoulders to your waist, pause, and set it on the floor with a flat back. Always stay in control of the bar. The only time you’re allowed to drop a weight is when you miss an attempt.


There are many similarities between military and Olympic presses, as both lifts involve moving the bar from the shoulders to overhead. Yet there are several differences as well, and those are what changes pressing from a pure-strength feat to a high-skill lift.

Your grip, where the bar is placed on your shoulders, and head position are the same in both styles of pressing. Other than those points, the two are as different as day from night. The feet, for example, need to be set closer in the Olympic press and must be pointed forward. That’s necessary in order for you to shift your weight from the balls of your feet to your heels and back again to the balls instantaneously. The success of the lift depends completely on your ability to make that transition smoothly and quickly – actually, faster than quickly.

On the military press your elbows are positioned close to your body, but on the Olympic style they need to be squeezed against your lats. That forces the elbows to stay low and directly under your wrists. Keeping your wrists straight is even more critical on the Olympic press than it is on the military version, so much so that I think it’s a good idea always to tape them.

Set your eyes directly ahead, and never allow them to look up at the bar as it travels overhead. Tuck your chin down toward your chest, and keep it in that position until the bar reaches lockout. You’ll understand why that helps after you’ve done a few sets of Olympic presses.

The biggest change from the way you perform the Olympic press in contrast to the military press is your starting position. On the military press you’re basically erect at the start. On the Olympic press you need to get into position like this: Lock your legs, tighten your glutes and abs, and extend your midsection forward until it’s over your toes. You want to create a muscular bow that starts at your heels, runs up through your legs, hips, midsection, back and shoulders and ends at the base of your head (see illustration).

You are, in effect, a coiled spring, with your weight on the balls of your feet. They form the base from which the lift is executed, and if that base is not solid, pressing a heavy weight will not happen. At York we used the analogy of trying to grip the platform with out toes much like a bird grips a limb of a tree. That helped us lock into the platform.

A powerful start is critical for success once the weights approach your best. The power for the start is generated out of the hips and legs, and transferred up through the midsection, back, shoulders and arms into the bar. Much of the explosive thrust comes from your lats and traps, although few think of those muscle groups in connection with pressing a weight overhead.

When utilized, the lats, along with the deltoids, propel the bar off the shoulders. Then the traps help elevate it even higher. In order for the start to be effective, it must be explosive. I liken it to a short jab in boxing, where all the energy is concentrated in a dynamic move. And, of course, the bar must be driven into a precise line. That only comes with lots of practice.

Once you put a jolt into the bar, transfer your weight back to your heels as you shrug your traps and extend your body vertically. At the conclusion of the start portion of the lift, your body should be perfectly erect.

Now comes the hardest part to master. As soon as you drive the bar as high as possible, you must shift your weight back to the balls of your feet and drop back into your original starting position, bowing from heels to head. At the same time you must continue to keep pressure on the moving bar. Otherwise, it will pause or even drop, and you don’t want that to happen, as it’s often impossible to set it in motion again. Pressing the bar upward as you resume the coiled position also helps you control the line of the bar. If you relax tension on the moving bar, it will invariably run forward, and it moves too far out front, you won’t have enough leverage to finish the lift.

As the weights climb upward, bring your hips back so they stay under the bar. Extend the bar on to lockout, where it is fixed directly over the back of your head. Control it and push up against it while you hold it for several seconds. Lower it to your shoulders in the same manner as I suggested for the military press, reset and proceed with the next rep.

After you have tried a few of these, you will recognize that they are nothing at all like a conventional press. One of the biggest differences is the balance factor. On a military press the bar moves slowly enough that lifters can usually manage to keep their balance, even with heavy weights, but the Olympic press consists of an explosive start, a quick move through the middle and a fast finish, with the bodyweight being shifted from front to back to front in a flash. Plus, the foot stance is narrower, which adds to the problem of maintaining balance through the Olympic press.


Those who used this style in the ‘60s and ‘70s will notice that I haven’t mentioned the key form point of the Olympic press – bending the knees at the start. You may be thinking, wasn’t bending the knees illegal? Yes, it was. The knees had to remain locked from start to finish. So how did the lifters get away with it? This is what Garcy figured out.

As soon as the bar was cleaned, the lifter quickly assumed his set position and waited for the signal to press. But he didn’t lock his knees tightly; he bent them just a bit. Why couldn’t the judges see that? Because it’s impossible to determine whether the knees are fully locked or not quite locked. Keep in mind that most Olympic lifters had massive thigh development, with quads that lapped down over the knees in some cases. If that sounds farfetched, stand in front of a full-length mirror and put yourself in that bowed starting position. Lock your knees. Now relax them just a fraction. They still appear to be locked. The only way you can tell they aren’t completely locked is if you saw them in the locked position before you bent them. And that never happened. Lifters knew how to get into the starting position without ever locking their knees. The only time the knee bend was noticeable was when a lifter dipped lower during the start. Sometimes that move was missed because it happened so fast.

That slight bend helped. When the lifter got the signal to press, he locked his knees as he hurled the bar off his shoulders. It may not seem like much, but the move provided enough extra thrust to drive the bar higher and with more velocity, and if the rest of the lift was done with precision, it helped elevate the numbers appreciably. Some contended it added as much as 40 pounds to their presses.

Of course, the new style drove officials crazy. Since they couldn’t see the slight knee bend, they had to give lifters the benefit of the doubt. And lifters performed the new press so fast, it was also difficult to tell how far they had leaned backward. Those who mastered this technique included Garcy, Tommy Kono, Joe Puleo, Fred Lowe, Bob Hise, Tommy Suggs, Ernie Pickett, Joe Dube, Bob Bednarski and Ken Patera, who blasted the bar from shoulders to lockout so fast that the lift was only a blur.

Because it is difficult to learn, I only teach the Olympic press to athletes who are advanced and are very athletic. Except for rare cases I have them lock their knees at the start. That helps simplify the lift and is still productive.

Before you try learning the Olympic press, with locked or bent knees, make sure your midsection, lumbars and abs are up to the task. Those muscle groups are put under lots of stress with the coiled start and quick return to that position. Be sure to always do warmups for your abs and lower back prior to pressing, and while learning the finer points of the Olympic press, stay with light weights. Remember the weightlifting adage: If you can’t use perfect form with a light weight, you’re not going to have it with heavy poundages. Since this is a high-skill movement, stay with 3 reps so you can concentrate on all the form points. You’ll find that Olympic presses are quite taxing mentally, which I think is a plus. Improving the nervous system while gaining strength sounds good to me.


Finally, a word about breathing on Olympic and military presses. When you use light weights, it doesn’t matter how you breathe, but when you’re attempting to move heavy triples, doubles or singles, it matters a lot. Take a breath just before you start the press and hold it until you have driven the bar past the sticking point or after you lock it out. If you inhale or exhale while pressing, your diaphragm is forced to relax, which creates a negative intrathoracic pressure. In other words, breathing during the lift diminishes your ability to apply force to the bar.

In that regard, be aware of the phenomenon known as the Valsalva maneuver because it occurs most often in the performance of a heavy press. When lifters hold their breath for too long during a maximum exertion, they hinder the return of venous blood from the brain to the heart. That can result in a lifter’s blacking out, which can be dangerous when you’re holding a loaded barbell overhead. Should you start feeling dizzy while trying to grind a press through the sticking point, lower the bar to the floor and go down on one knee. Don’t move around. Most injuries happen when athletes fall into a weight rack or another piece of equipment.

 

[SouthernLord]

This has some relevance...........

Banish the Bench
by Bill Starr


From the title of this piece you might assume that I’m anti-bench press. That isn’t the case. I include the bench in all my athletes’ strength routines and will feature it in a future article. This discussion, however, is for people who can’t do bench presses because of a chest or shoulder injury. The problem may be due to a mishap on the playing field or faulty bench press form. Shoulder injuries are very common in athletes who play contact sports. I’ve had years where as many as 15% of my athletes were unable to do flat bench presses.

This discussion is also for athletes who don’t want to include flat bench presses in the routines or want to use them as an auxiliary rather than primary exercise. Olympic weightlifters, for example, typically shun flat benches because they tend to tighten their shoulders and make jerking and snatching more difficult. In addition, unless they’re heavyweights, competitive lifters have to be in constant control of their bodyweight in order to make weight for their classes. They don’t want to add pounds to their chest, since the pectorals contribute nothing toward helping them elevate more weight overhead. Many basketball players avoid the exercise because, they say, it restricts their range of motion for shooting and rebounding. even if you don’t fall into one of those categories, you may enjoy benches but have gone stale on them and want to change your routine around for a while.


This program is built around three primary exercises: incline bench presses, dips and some form of overhead lifting, such as military presses, push presses or jerks. It also includes useful auxiliary exercises.

Since most people resort to this program because of an injury, it’s wise to proceed with caution until you find out what you can and can’t do. Start with military presses and inclines done with dumbells. If you feel no pain with the dumbells, move on to the bar. Do free-hand dips – no weight. Sometimes when athletes say that it hurts to do the inclines, I have them try a slightly different angle. Quite often they’ll find an angle that doesn’t give them any discomfort.

If one of these exercises gives you pain, drop it and concentrate on the other two. If two of them hurt, drip them and put all your energy into the one that doesn’t. Eventually you’ll be able to do all three, but don’t foolishly pound away on any exercise that’s doing you more harm than good.


I’ll start with the incline. It’s my favorite upper-body exercise because it’s a pure movement. By pure I mean it’s extremely difficult o cheat while doing it. Cheating is another word for sloppy technique. Since incline presses have to be performed correctly, there’s less stress on your shoulders and elbows, which reduces the risk of injury to those joints. What’s more, when you do any exercise perfectly, you get better results than when you use sloppy form.

When I see people in a fitness center doing inclines, it’s usually as an auxiliary movement, after they’ve done their flat benches. As a result, they use token weights. They don’t know that in the late 1950’s and early 60’s the top strength athletes used the incline as their primary upper-body exercise. Greats such as Parry O’Brien, Dallas Long, Randy Matson, Al Oerter and Harold Connolly handled well over 400 pounds on the incline. Ken Patera used it to enhance his overhead press and ended up with an amazing 507, which will forever stand as the American record in the Olympic press.

So id you decide to make the incline one of your core exercises, plan on leaning on it and pushing the numbers up – way up. Before you stack on the plated, however, you must learn the correct technique. Proper form is essential on this lift, and you must spend adequate time mastering it if you ever want to elevate big numbers.

If you try some of the tactics used for the flat bench, they backfire on you. When lifters rebound the bar off their chest on the incline, it darts forward, and there’s no way o them to bring it back into the correct line. Even the old standby, bridging, doesn’t help. What I once wrote about the incline still holds true: “You can squirm, you can jerk about and you can rebound the bar until you cough up blood, but you’re never going to find an effective method of cheating on the incline. That’s what I like about it.”

Your form has to be exact, and that’s good because all the muscles and attachments get worked exactly as they should. As a result, gains come quickly and consistently.

The first time people do inclines, they invariably touch the bar too low on their chest, close to where they place it for a flat bench. That’s incorrect. Touching the bar low will make it run forward, something you don’t want. The bar should touch high on your chest, just under your Adam’s apple, where your collarbone meets your breastbone. The incline differs from the flat bench in that you drive the bar upward in a perfectly straight line. I tell my lifters to imagine they’re moving the bar inside a Smith machine.

Keep your elbows turned out during the incline. Never tuck them in close to your body as you do on the flat-bench press. Before you take the bar out of the rack, plant your feet firmly on the floor and squeeze yourself down into the bench. Become the bench (I know it’s trite, but it might help you remember the point).

I always insist that m athletes use a thumbs-around-the-bar grip rather than the false grip that many use on the flat bench. The false grip is risky. The bar can slip out of your hand n a heartbeat, and since the weight is directly over your face, the consequences can be disastrous. Another reason the secure grip is better is that it enables you to guide the bar back to the correct groove if it starts to run forward. And heavy weights always want to run forward. With the false grip there’s absolutely nothing you can do once the bar moves away from your body.

On the subject of safety: the incline is an exercise that requires a spotter. The spotter, by the way, isn’t there to help you through your sticking point. He or she should only touch the bar once you’ve failed and the help you rack the weight. If the spotter touches the bar before you’ve locked it out, that rep was a failure. The spotter’s job is to assist you in reracking the bar. Often it’s hard to see the uprights because they’re behind you, and you misjudge the distance. It causes the bar to fly over the back of the bench or, worse, come crashing down on your face. So always ask someone to spot you. It doesn’t have to be a particularly strong person, since all he or she is really doing is helping you set the bar back in the uprights.

The spotter can, of course, also assist you in taking the bar out of the rack. Once you have it in your hand, push up against it to assure that you have complete control of it. Lower the bar in a controlled manner to your chest. Don’t allow it to crash downward. Pull it into your chest, hesitate a brief moment, then drive it upward forcefully in a straight line. The bar will almost touch your nose. The movement, both up and down, should be smooth, not herky-jerky. When you finish your final rep, have your spotter assist you in putting the bar back in the rack. Make sure it’s securely in the rack before you release your grip on it.

Where you grip the bar depends to some extent on your shoulder width, but another important point is that you want to keep your forearms vertical throughout the exercise. if they’re not vertical throughout, you’re giving away some power. Many use a very wide grip, saying that they want to work the outside of their chest more, but that’s really stressful to the shoulder joints and doesn’t let you use as much weight. To find the grip width I recommend for most lifters, extend your thumbs on an Olympic bar so that they barely touch the smooth center.

Vary the sets and reps each time you do inclines. At one workout do 5 sets of 5 with a back-off set of 8 or 10. The next time do 3 sets of 5 as warmups followed by 3 sets of heavy triples and then a back-off set. Then do 3 sets of 5 followed by 3 sets of doubles or singles with a back-off set. The slight change will involve the muscles and attachments in a slightly different manner, helping you to make consistent gains.


Next on my list of beneficial shoulder girdle exercises is the dip. As with the incline, there was a time when this exercise was considered a pure strength movement rather than an auxiliary one. Here again, there is no way to cheat when you’re doing dips. Olympic weightlifters include them in their programs to help increase their shoulder strength for pressing and jerking. Bodybuilders use them to build cannonball delts.

Dips have always been one of my favorite upper-body exercises. I was influence by the uncontested king of the dip, Marvin Eder. He was the first person I ever read about who really pushed the limits of the dip. He did reps with 300 pounds hanging from a weight belt. Add his 200 pounds of bodyweight and it was indeed an impressive feat of strength. Thanks to his amazing dipping prowess, Eder could bench 510 back when 400 pounds was considered remarkable.

Another advocate of the dip was Pat Casey, the first man to bench press 600 pounds, reaching 617 in 1965, Pat dipped twice a week, even though he weighed close to 300 pounds.

The best dipper I ever coached was Steve Dussia, an Olympic lifter at the University of Hawaii. Steve competed in the 181-pound class and pushed his dips up to 200x5 and 250 for a single. In the process he moved his jerk to more than 350 and developed deltoids that any bodybuilder would envy.

In order to dip with any significant amount of weight, you need a dip belt. If you plan on using lots of weight, you’ll also need an apparatus on which you can stack 25-pound plates. It’s a bar attached to a base plate with a hook at the top that attaches easily to the dip belt. Some companies carry this equipment and it’s well worth the investment if you’re serious about doing dips. It’s possible to do dips by holding a dumbell between your knees. I was using up to 100 pounds, but after that it was to awkward.

Before adding any resistance, start with freehand dips. Do as many as you can for 4 sets, and when you can do all 4 sets for 2-0 reps, you’re ready for weighted dips. Proceed cautiously; this is concentrated work. Start with 25 pounds and when you can do that for 8 reps move up.

The dip is a natural, simple movement, but there is form involved. The lower you go, the more muscles you work, but if going low hurts your shoulders or elbows, stay above the pain. Even with a shorter stroke you’re still going to work your front deltoids, your triceps and the pecs where they connect to your shoulders.

You need to do these in rhythmic fashion. Don’t slam into the deepest position. That can be very stressful to your shoulders and elbows. Lower yourself slowly, and when you’re as low as you want to go, drive out of the bottom forcefully. You want to keep your body vertical, don’t lean. And perhaps the most important form point for dips is, DON’T SWING. If your lower body starts swinging around like it’s a pendulum, you aren’t going to be able to handle as much weight, and it can be traumatic to your shoulders. It you start swinging, stop and start over.

When you’re handling a heavy weight, the first rep is critical. If you do the first one in perfect form, the rest follow nicely, but if you start moving around on that initial rep, it will get worse as you continue. Most dip bars are fairly high, and getting into position with 100-plus pounds dangling off you is a chore. Here’s what I recommend. Pull a bench up next to the dip bars. Grab the weight between your knees – or some people prefer locking it behind their knees. Either way is fine, just so the weight is under control, which will keep it from swinging. Get in position on the dipping bars and step off the bench. The bench is also handy once you complete the set because you can step back on it. That’s much safer than having to lower yourself to the floor when you finish.

As I suggested for the inclines, change the sets and reps each time you do dips. I use this formula: 4 sets of 8, 5 sets of 5 with a high-rep back-off set, 3 sets of 5 followed by 2 or 3 sets of triples and a high-rep back-off set, and, finally, 3 sets of 5 followed by singles to limit and then a back-off set. I don’t put a number of the back-off set. I have my athletes just do as many as they possibly can with approximately 50 pounds less than they used for their final work set. The back-off sets are instrumental in improving the dip. They increase the workload and help the athletes hone their form.

One final note on the dip. Always do 1 set of 20 with no weight as a warmup before strapping on the dip belt.


Since I focused on pressing movements in other installments of this series, I won’t go into detail on those exercises. If you haven’t been doing any type of overhead work, start with the military press. It will help establish a foundation from which you can go on to push presses and jerks if you like,. Change the way you do the sets and reps on these, as described for the inclines and dips. Stick with 5’s, triples, doubles and singles, and forget about the 8’s. On push presses and jerks use 5’s as warmups, and then do no more than 3 reps on the heavier weights.


If this is a new routine for you, do each of the exercises once a week. The incline fits best on the heavy day, the dips on the light day and the overhead work on the medium day. That adheres to the principle, since you’ll use the most weight on the inclines, the least on the dips and something in between on the overhead exercises. Keep in mind that light in this case does not mean easy. You’ll push the numbers up every time you dip. The same goes for the overhead presses. Lean on the top-end lifts ad try to improve them weekly.

After doing the core exercises, you can add an auxiliary movement for your deltoids or triceps. My favorite triceps exercise for athletes if the straight-armed pullover. I like it because it’s not as stressful to the elbows as many other triceps movements, such as the skull crusher. Since you’ve already stressed the elbows during the core exercises, it’s easy to overwork them with a snappy movement. 2 sets of 20 works well. Dumbell inclines and lateral and front raises performed with dumbells are also useful. I use the 40-rep rule for all the upper-body auxiliary movements, usually staying with 2x20 but sometimes switching to 3x15 for variety. Before someone writes to tell me that 3x15 is more than 40, I know it is. But it’s close enough to the rule to fit.


If, for whatever reason, you lay off the flat bench and concentrate on these three exercises, when you do start benching again, you will be pleasantly surprised to find that you can handle more weight than before. You’ll also find great improvement on all upper-body exercises.