Why your press sucks?

[mgil]

A few tricks to try (for the last few comments):

Put your heels together and press, i.e. strict military press. It's much harder to get your hips involved that way and will focus on getting your traps involved and upper back, specifically lats, tight.

Pin presses can work well also, but you need to get tight and nail your positioning under the bar. Video (imho) is a must here.

[Allentown]

Personally I fixed this by putting the bar way further forwards at the top. I had a chronic problem with locking the bar out too far back, and this caused overextension that no amount of tight abs would ever fix. I lock the bar out a little further forwards and now suddenly it's like my abs are barely even necessary to keep neutral.

What I mean is that I go into layback almost immediately. I'm sure part of it is just being weak, and layback helps turn the press into more of an incline bench. But part of it too is that on a vast majority of my reps, I simply forget to squeeze my abs. I'm actually pretty bad about that on all the lifts, something I should probably take the time to work on if I can convince myself to take a break and focus on important things I have neglected my whole lifting "career" and other things more recently.

[mbasic]

I have never tried the pin presses . . . but could see that working.
I want to try to, but no room in the program right now.
(worthless post I know)

[Les]

I have never tried the pin presses . . . but could see that working.
I want to try to, but no room in the program right now.
(worthless post I know)

I tried the super leaning 3.0 pin press. I sort of jacked my back up doing up. I just went back to my ghetto 2.0 for now.

For programming, I agree that you could go pretty high frequency training it. I could even probably do it 3x per week, and I am a guy that only squats 1x per week right now.

[Allentown]

I tried the super leaning 3.0 pin press. I sort of jacked my back up doing up.

Perhaps your glutes were not meaty enough?

[KarlM]

Personally I fixed this by putting the bar way further forwards at the top. I had a chronic problem with locking the bar out too far back, and this caused overextension that no amount of tight abs would ever fix. I lock the bar out a little further forwards and now suddenly it's like my abs are barely even necessary to keep neutral.

What I mean is that I go into layback almost immediately. I'm sure part of it is just being weak, and layback helps turn the press into more of an incline bench. But part of it too is that on a vast majority of my reps, I simply forget to squeeze my abs. I'm actually pretty bad about that on all the lifts, something I should probably take the time to work on if I can convince myself to take a break and focus on important things I have neglected my whole lifting "career" and other things more recently.

No expert here, but I've found squeezing my glutes, quads and abs prior to initiating each rep is where it's at. Like others, I've found the hip bounce is tricky, especially with the floating rack. Sometimes my wrists wiggle leading to a rather strange and unfortunate bar path.

I want a BW OHP so bad. I can see it off in the distance. If I can manage to not get any fatter I may have it in 4 months.

[Allentown]

No expert here, but I've found squeezing my glutes, quads and abs prior to initiating each rep is where it's at.

Every once in a while, I have the magical rep where I actually do this properly. The legendary "quad cramp" from OHP.

[Idlehands]

Got questions about improving a lift no one really gives a shit about?

Post some questions. Let's discuss.

Press is awesome. I've pressed since high school when I had to do seated cause my ceiling was low. I've pressed all my life. Press is awesome.

Good example. See wimps at gym squatting. You ask to work in.
Press their squat weight.
Be alpha all over them.

Best example.
Got kids? Press them over your head and toss them into pool. Bonus points for having practiced power cleans to really get some air and lift them off(maybe thrusters a better carry over to kid flying into air. )
Either way, you just made yourself the coolest dad in the neighbor hood.

[TimK]

The legendary "quad cramp" from OHP.

All too real

[Les]

I tried the super leaning 3.0 pin press. I sort of jacked my back up doing up.

Perhaps your glutes were not meaty enough?

Perhaps. I think they would say that I wasn't contracting my abs, etc. hard enough so my back extended a little too far. I would like to learn it someday, but for now ghetto 2.0 is where it is at.

[damufunman]

Got questions about improving a lift no one really gives a shit about?

Post some questions. Let's discuss.

Ooh ooh! I do! Why does my press suck? How do I improve it? I don't really care though.

I made some progress benching and pressing each twice a week (TM style, I like it, shut up). 5x5 or 6x5 seemed to work well for my bench (recently went from 225 to 250 1RM, but it took way too long). Haven't had as much success getting my press to go up. I'm thinking about trying lower intensity, and possibly more volume. Also just added in push presses, but that's more for jerk development. Also jerking after cleans, haven't needed to do extra jerk work yet. Too much all over the place here?

[mgil]

Got questions about improving a lift no one really gives a shit about?

Post some questions. Let's discuss.

Ooh ooh! I do! Why does my press suck? How do I improve it? I don't really care though.

I made some progress benching and pressing each twice a week (TM style, I like it, shut up). 5x5 or 6x5 seemed to work well for my bench (recently went from 225 to 250 1RM, but it took way too long). Haven't had as much success getting my press to go up. I'm thinking about trying lower intensity, and possibly more volume. Also just added in push presses, but that's more for jerk development. Also jerking after cleans, haven't needed to do extra jerk work yet. Too much all over the place here?

What does a typical week of upper body work look like?

[chromoly]

A Clarification:

I didn't say the lift sucks, I said no one cares about it.

Rows and deltoid work may help.

CGBP is a good lift to help.

But I care about it.

Supposedly, dips are a great assistance exercise for upper body lifts including the press. Personally, I cannot do dips (shoulder issues? or maybe just not strong enuff).

I was also told that getting your bench stronger will increase your press, but I have not found that to be the case. I think that bench and press need to both be trained in order to increase press strength.

My press has only ever progressed when my bench press has. I stopped benching back in May/June in favour of overhead press for a strongman comp, and my press actually went down... (could've been programming, though). After the comp in July, I added dips as a main movement (twice a week - one being weighted) and pressing once a week, and my press is still not up to where it was, despite adding >10kg to my weighted dips

I hate the press

OK, I should clarify on my original post. I was able to get my press up when I trained both my press and my bench. They both went up. But when I only trained my bench, my bench went up, but my press did not go up. (It also didn't go down.) I needed to press in order for my press to increase. The extra volume from benching definitely helped. I learned that running a 4x/week 12 week cycle for bench (with OHP/push pressing as an accessory only 8 times in the cycle) didn't improve my OHP. It did tremendous things for my bench though.

[damufunman]

What does a typical week of upper body work look like?

Previously it was 5x5 press, 5x5 bench about 85-90% 5RM, press 5RM, bench5RM then dropping reps as needed on intensity day.
Most recently it was just TM on bench with some half ass effort to press on OL days, but only got it done about half the time, if that.
Now doing press 5x5, bench 5x5, push press 3x3 on top of 3 OL days. Oddly, snatching seems to help my shoulder feel better so hopefully this experiment isn't too much. But the programming book had the same outline in one of the weightlifting templates so there's that.

[mgil]

What does a typical week of upper body work look like?

Previously it was 5x5 press, 5x5 bench about 85-90% 5RM, press 5RM, bench5RM then dropping reps as needed on intensity day.
Most recently it was just TM on bench with some half ass effort to press on OL days, but only got it done about half the time, if that.
Now doing press 5x5, bench 5x5, push press 3x3 on top of 3 OL days. Oddly, snatching seems to help my shoulder feel better so hopefully this experiment isn't too much. But the programming book had the same outline in one of the weightlifting templates so there's that.

Hm. Maybe try warming up to a heavy single (@8) and then dropping into the volume block. Then one other day of running up to an @9 and then doing 3x3 with about a 10-15% load reduction.

[chromoly]

Going to ask the T&P Hivemind something that I can't for the life of me figure out: why your bench sucks?

If I take time off of benching and pressing, I seem to lose bench strength much more rapidly. For example, I have been equally lax at lifting these past few months, but I can still press 92.5% of my press 1RM, but I could maybe 82.5% of my bench 1RM. What gives?

[mgil]

Going to ask the T&P Hivemind something that I can't for the life of me figure out: why your bench sucks?

If I take time off of benching and pressing, I seem to lose bench strength much more rapidly. For example, I have been equally lax at lifting these past few months, but I can still press 92.5% of my press 1RM, but I could maybe 82.5% of my bench 1RM. What gives?

Where is the lift failing?

[slowmotion]

And, could it be that it is because one can bench heavier weights than one can press?
Me, I don't know.



By the way, nice to have a thread about the press. If we had a thread about deads as well, I'd be happy.

[chromoly]

And, could it be that it is because one can bench heavier weights than one can press?

So more than losing relative strength, I've just retained more absolute strength? I don't really understand where you're going with this one.

Going to ask the T&P Hivemind something that I can't for the life of me figure out: why your bench sucks?

If I take time off of benching and pressing, I seem to lose bench strength much more rapidly. For example, I have been equally lax at lifting these past few months, but I can still press 92.5% of my press 1RM, but I could maybe 82.5% of my bench 1RM. What gives?

Where is the lift failing?

I can usually get it off my chest. I'm pressing the bar up and back, and it'll stall maybe 6 inches up? I need to video again and see where. Let me get back to you on this one. Maybe it's just a technical error, I don't know.

[KarlM]

Going to ask the T&P Hivemind something that I can't for the life of me figure out: why your bench sucks?

If I take time off of benching and pressing, I seem to lose bench strength much more rapidly. For example, I have been equally lax at lifting these past few months, but I can still press 92.5% of my press 1RM, but I could maybe 82.5% of my bench 1RM. What gives?

Interesting. I wonder if lifts that are more "neurologically complex" (yeah, I just typed that), in that more total muscle mass must be recruited and therefore coordinated to accomplish the lift, show a greater loss of 1 RM strength when they are not trained regularly, due to subtle loss of technical prowess? It is my impression that the OHP is technically easier than the bench.