Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1652: How to Overhead Press Your Bodyweight

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin discuss nine ways to increase your overhead press. The overhead press, the squat of the upper body. (1:57) Is the overhead press more neglected than the squat? (5:44) The biggest mistakes made with the overhead press. (9:14) Mind Pump Reminiscences: The evolution of their overhead press. (12:13) Nine Ways to Increase your Overhead Press.  #1 – Practice it often. (14:25) #2 – Utilize Overhead Carries. (19:37) #3 – The Z Press. (22:07) #4 – The Bottoms Up Press. (27:24) #5 – The Push Press. (31:58) #6 – Loaded Rotational Exercises. (38:00) #7 – Rear Delt Exercises. (43:38) #8 – Work on Overall Mobility. (47:02) #9 – Build a Strong and Stable Core. (50:41) Related Links/Products Mentioned September Promotion: MAPS Performance and MAPS Suspension 50% off!   **Promo code “SEPTEMBER50” at checkout** Visit ZBiotics for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Stop Working Out And Start Practicing – Mind Pump Blog Improve Your Overhead Press & Build Your Shoulders with Unilateral Kettlebell Carries – Mind Pump TV Z Press to take Your Shoulder Development to the Next Level – Mind Pump TV Bottoms Up Kettlebell Press Tutorial for SVKO Wild Card Event The OFFICIAL Overhead Press Checklist! (AVOID MISTAKES!) How To IMPROVE Your Overhead Press | The Muscle Doc Overhead Press Vs Push Press – Mind Pump Podcast MAPS Fitness Prime | Muscle Adaptation Programming System The Official Indian Clubs Checklist (AVOID MISTAKES) | MIND PUMP TV Best Exercises for Strong Shoulders (UNCONVENTIONAL STRENGTH) | MIND PUMP Improve Your Shoulder Workouts with the Kettlebell Halo – Mind Pump TV Grow Your Shoulders With The Rear Delt Cable Fly – Mind Pump TV Improve Your Shoulder Press with Shoulder Dislocates The Wall Test | Mind Pump TV MAPS Prime Webinar Prime Your Shoulders with Handcuffs with Rotation on a Bench The (2) BEST Ab Exercises You’re NOT Doing Properly (STRONG CORE) | MIND PUMP TV You’re Not Training Your Abs Correctly! (AVOID MISTAKES!) – Mind Pump TV How to do a PROPER Plank – Mind Pump TV Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Jay Cutler (@jaycutler)  Instagram Ronnie Coleman (@ronniecoleman8)  Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Saldas Defano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we talk about the squat for the upper body. The exercise for the upper body that probably communicates your total strength better than almost any other exercise. The

overhead press. So we give you tips and points and exercises and techniques to help you get to the point where you can overhead press your body weight. Now this episode is brought to you by Zbiotics. Zbiotics is a genetically modified probiotic drink, so it's unique in patented, that you take before you drink alcohol. And what these special bacteria do is they actually produce compounds that break down some of the negative byproducts of drinking alcohol. So here was my experience. I drink Zbiotics, then I drink alcohol. I wake up the next day, and I feel way, way better.

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That's zbiotis.com forward slash mine pump. Use the code mind pump 10 for 10% off your first order. Also, there's only one day left for our 50% off sale of maps performance in maps suspension. So both programs half off 24 hours left from the time that we dropped this episode if you're interested head over to maps fitness products calm Again maps fitness products calm and use the code September 50 that September 5 0 with no space for that discount You know when we were coming of age with our workouts right around the same time. I mean I started as it Like a nice way say we're old on the same time, I mean I started as a, as a genius. That was like a nice way to say we're old. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But you know, we're youthful. Really it was like, it was the 90s, right? Early 2000s when we were really, you know, starting to get into working out and, and the exercise that everybody, you know, competed with or over or bragged about was bench press, right? Everything was about how much can you bend?

The golden standard was always bench. Yeah. I mean, it's still kind of that way, isn't it? A little bit. I think people now have more of an understanding of other lifts and how important they are. Yeah, nobody would have bragged about their squat or deadlift. That's fair.

I definitely, and CrossFit definitely brought that to the masses is like a thing to talk about, right? Like people talk about their pulling weight and their squatting weight, which they didn't before. Now, this episode is not about the bench press, but I bring up the bench press because for a long time, it's been kind of, you know, people talk about it as this test of upper body strength, like how how strong your upper body is and they'll use the bench press as a metric, but the reality is there's an exercise that is far superior way of measuring your overall upper body strength.

Agreed, fully agreed. And it's the overhead press. You know, how much you can lift overhead means so much more about your, well, just overall strength, but upper body strength in particular, then almost any other exercise I can think about. I'm talking about the standard, you know, standing, so much more relatable to everyday life and functional activities that you're gonna face. Not a lot of times you're gonna be horizontal,

pressing somebody off of you and being real stable and, you know, that's right. And again, that produces a lot of benefit for sure with the bench press, but in terms of like functional strength and phone calls and like answering, you know, make sure your shoulders are bulletproof. Yeah, you know, it's funny too is I figured this out later on as a kid, I started to get into kind of the history of resistance training and I would read about the old time strong

man. And I remember learning that the bench press was actually an exercise that nobody did back in the day. It was added much later on. In fact, when back in the day, I'm talking about like late 1800s, early 1900s, 1910, 1920s, when some of these lifters were performing these incredible feats of strength. This is, of course, before anabolic steroids, before even supplements. If they wanted a bench press, what they used to have to do is they would be a bench, they'd have to clean away, lay down, and then press it.

It wasn't until later on where they invented the bench press with the arms where you could sit the bar on it, and then do a bench press. So what exercise did they often compete with each other over? It was always the overhead press, always. That was the exercise where if you had, and this used to happen all the time back in those days, you would have strong men competing with each other or challenging each other.

You know, you could look up some of the challenges you, Jesus and I, would have with other strong men where they would get these huge crowds and the way that they would compete was almost always like how much can I lift overhead. Yeah. Well, you wouldn't you say it's the squat of the upper body? Oh, totally. Yep. And I think that there's a lot of limiting factors for people too for that. And a lot of people want to just discount doing the squat. Like, you don't have to do the squat.

And I'm sure you don't have to do the overhead press. But I think part of what makes it so special is because of that, because of how challenging it is. I think because we're so rounded forward, the ability to do a full overhead extended overhead press is challenging for most people. Most people can't do it with good form, yet it's so important that we have this ability

to do that for Justin's point of, you know, this daily function. Totally. And again, when you go back in time, people instinctively knew that. It's funny when I talk to my dad, so my family's always been, my dad's side has always been into strength.

This is kind of how I get introduced to it. Nobody lifted weights, my grandfather and Sicily, I don't think ever saw a dumbbell, especially not his father. But they would, when they would go to work, they would always, you know, just to make work more lively, compete and see who could be the strongest.

And it was always what you could lift overhead. And so there's like a little bit of wisdom to that. And one of the things that I noticed is, if you have any weak links in your entire body, it's going to expose immediately. You know, you could have, you have lower body instability. You can't do a good overhead press. You have a weak core, good luck with an overhead press. And of course, the shoulders, arms, thoracic spine.

It's all there, your body fully extended. And it's probably why the oldest and most studied and form of strength, competitive sport, Olympic lifting involves a lot of overhead pressing in their lifts. Think of all the exercises that they do, what they compete with, the snatch, the clean and pre, I mean, a lot of them involve extending arms overhead and how much weight you could lift overhead.

They don't do anything like a bench press or even a squat. Do you think it's more or less neglected in the squat? Overhead press? Probably a proper overhead press, that's a question. Do you think it's more or less neglected than the squat? Overhead press? Yeah. Probably a proper overhead press? That's a question. Yeah, yeah, no, a full overhead barbell, overhead release, like the same amount.

I'll even give you seating, but seated, but you can't have the short 90 degree military press that you see all the time. I would think that it actually is as much or more neglected than the squat. That's a good point. Yeah, I think you're right. Especially today because you brought up the point about, you know, since CrossFit, as much or more neglected than the squat. That's a good point. Yeah, I think you're right.

Especially today, because you brought up the point about, since CrossFit, I feel like you go in a gym now, and it's actually rare I don't see someone squat. Before, when we talked about, when we all first started, the dust that would be on the squat rack, you would see one person maybe a week that actually used the squat rack where 10 years later, CrossFit comes along.

Now, it's rare that I go in a gym and I don't see somebody's, at least one person squatting or deadlifting, that's very common. But I have to say that it's still very common that I'll go in a gym and not see a single person barbell overhead press. Yeah, I mean, I do cringe-worthy.

I have to give them a bit of credit for bringing back squats and overhead press. Those were two, you know, main lifts that you didn't see a lot of people doing with full extension and the astergrass kind of component the squats to their popularizing that. But yeah, I think those two specifically I have so much to give and I like the comparison of, you know, the overhead press being like a squat because there's just so many different parts involved that have to work perfectly in order to perform it correctly. And then you get that benefit to it. Otherwise, you could be practicing

this with bad form and getting no benefit. In fact, you know, hurting yourself. So it's, you know, so you'll get some pushback of other coaches out that I'm sure within, you know, not going to full extension and just focusing on the squeeze and not really articulating your shoulders all the way through. And you'll get chiropractors out there. Don't want you to go full rotation with your shoulder because it's for some reason it's bad for you.

And so there's lots of crazy information out there to get through. But if you're doing it right and you're focusing on each one of those components that make up the overhead press, it's gonna totally trump any other exercise out there. You know, one of the big mistakes I think that is made with overhead presses is that people consider it solely a shoulder exercise.

And here's why that's a mistake, because yes, it is a shoulder exercise. The shoulders are involved. And of course, the triceps are involved. But a good overhead press, standing overhead press, uses a large amount of your upper mid-back muscles. There's a lot of core stability and posterior chain stability that is involved. In fact, they're involved heavily in stability. I remember reading an article by Jake Cutler. So Jake Cutler was Mr. Olympia, I don't know, five or six times, right? He was obviously impressive physique, very big bodybuilder.

And I remember him writing about incorporating, this is after he turned pro. So typically bodybuilders will do, you know, and this is generalized, but typically we'll do these really big foundational movements early in their career. Later on, as they get really do these really big foundational movements early in their career. Later on, as they get really big, really bulky, massive muscles, they start to move away from these movements and more towards machine work, more towards shorter range of motion. Part of that probably has to do with the fact that they're just overall mass and the way that they move.

But I remember Jay Cutler saying in this article that he started doing overhead presses standing. Not only did his shoulders develop more, but he said he notices upper mid-back. So he was known for. It started to really develop really well. And this was a big deal because Jake Cutler, you know, little bodybuilding history, right, would second place to Ron and Coleman all the time. And where Jake Cutler would lose was the back.

Ron and Coleman had this back that's still to this day is unmatched. And Jake Cutler and this article was like like one of the biggest improvements I saw from standing overhead presses was my upper mid back development. You have to have incredible stability to do that. So doing a good standing overhead press, being strong on it, and then, you know, being able to press your body weight overhead means a lot. Like if I see someone in the gym overhead pressing their body weight, that is extremely impressive to me and with good form and stability.

It's extremely impressive. You know, speaking of body building, I know we're going off this little bit of a tangent, but you just reminded me of something that I haven't thought about a long time is, is it Ronnie Coleman was six foot tall, right? I believe you will. Yeah, Ronnie Coleman was,

so comparing those two is kind of like the Arnold and Columbo time because uh, Cutler short. It's like 159. He's like, he's as white. He was, I'm not never forget the first time that I ran into him in Vegas and I'm walking right by. I wish I would have taken a picture of him when I was walking behind him. It looks weird how wide he is. Yes. He's as wide as he is tall. It looks like a like a big square when he's when he's well, oh, he's so Coleman's 511, which is very tall for bodybuilding. Yeah, so when you put those guys next to each other and the back that Coleman had, it just was yeah, 5.9. So I think that's even actually an

exaggeration. These guys think sometimes exaggerate on how tall they are. When they're shorter, you exaggerate on how tall you are. Of crazy. He was known though for his shoulders, his delts were insane. They were, and yeah, 590, I think, is the average height for pro bodybuilders. But yeah, I read that article and I was like, well, I didn't realize how big of a difference. And I personally did overhead presses as a kid, stopped doing them later on,

reincorporated them in my, I'd say mid-twenties and saw some of the best upper body development I'd ever seen. It improved my bench press, it improved my tricep exercises. I noticed just benefits all the way around. I didn't do them forever because they hurt my low back because I did them terrible.

I remember when I would press, I couldn't get full extension and I would be looking at the bar when I would press. And so I had this massive, excessive arch in my low back, which is what I see a lot of times when people try and do it. You don't see like a good full extension. I, in fact, I don't think it was until I started working out with Justin. Did I start incorporating that exercise into my routine? So I don't remember what year you and I got linked up and when we first started training,

but back in like 0506, but before that, even as a trainer, it was a movement that I completely neglected. Primarily because I sucked at it, just like squatting, squatting and overhead pressing, which is probably why I'm so passionate about those two movements is I was in the camp of not doing it for a long time. For a long time, I was like, ah, don't do it very well. There's lots of other exercises I can do to develop my legs. There's lots of other exercises I can do to develop my shoulders. But the effort to work towards getting a good overhead press like the squat ended up being one of the most beneficial things I ever did. I mean, not only just from a development point of view, but also from my performance. Like you talk about

the bench press. Like my bench never got past 225 until my overhead press really started to accelerate. Once I started to get to strength up in that, I saw a huge difference in my incline and my five bench. It just, it just, it will reveal all kinds of weak links. Like you think you're strong, you think you're stable, try doing an overhead press with your body weight, and if you're weak anywhere

in that chain, it'll reveal itself very, very quickly. Much like the squat. In your case, it was, yeah, exactly. Yeah, much like this squat. That's why I think those two are so similar to that. I mean, from literally your feet all the way up, totally, is being incorporated, and if there's a breakdown anywhere, you won't be strong in that movement. Totally.

Now, I think the first component to being able to overhead press your body weight is kind of the first component to getting better at any exercise, which is to practice it often. Whenever you're looking at a high, especially a high skill exercise, now all exercises require a level of skill. So there's technique and skill, understanding how to control the weight, how the muscles fire, what it's supposed to feel like when you get into the groove of the lift, all that stuff. The more skill that's required for a lift, the more you're going to benefit from frequent practice. And a standing overhead press is up there with one of the more, one of the exercises that requires more skill than not.

Now, it's not as skillful as I say in Olympic lift, but it's definitely more skillful than most other shoulder exercises or upper body exercises. And so what practicing often does, and we'll get, we'll talk about the muscle building effects and all that stuff, but what practicing often does is you learn the movement. Your muscles learn how to communicate properly. And that allows you to get stronger and stronger and stronger at the lift because skill is a very important component when it comes to strength. Yeah, and with this sort of mentality, lowering the weight substantially is going to be a big

factor to that. So that way, you can just really hone in on the technique and see where all the deviations are occurring in terms of feeling your way through it. One thing that I take a lot of clients through when we're really trying to work and sharpen on our overhead presses to be able to add more tension and utilizing that grip to really enhance your muscles response as you're going through that movement, the more tension you can provide, the more stability your signal, you're providing your body that everything is accounted for and it tends to move through that a lot more smoothly.

Well, speaking of practice and grip, one of the things I do remember about lifting with Justin and starting to practice the overhead press was the way I grabbed the bar. So one of the things, if you fall in the category like me where you train more like a body builder or you never did full range, you kind of grab when you do a shoulder press, you grab this real wide 90 degree in your elbows shoulder press movement, where when I started training with Justin, my elbows were a lot of time arrow tucked in by my side. So I could bring the bar all the way down to my chest

without me having to arch. So if I'm here and I come down to my chest, I've got to arch my low back to get it down in that position versus if my elbows are tucked in by my side, I can sit upright. Like that was a major game changer for how I did the shoulder press. And that came from practicing and learning where the proper hand position was for me, my stance, things like that.

That all comes together with that constant practice of the movement. Yeah, the first time I was able to overhead press my body weight, I was overhead pressing in some way, shape or form, about four or five days a week. So literally four or five days a week, I would go to the bar and I would practice some form of an overhead press. Now, some of those were heavy, some of them were lighter, some of them were fast or slow or one arm, but the bottom line was I practiced overhead pressing often. And that allowed me to get really good at the skill overhead pressing.

It got me really good at knowing how to brace my core properly, how to stand properly. And then what ends up happening, this is a really cool feeling. If you ever do an exercise frequently and you do it right, you'll notice that you could call upon your CNS quickly. Like I could generate a good amount of force right away. Didn't feel like I was unstable

or like I had more strength left, but for some reason I couldn't push it out. It was like I honed that signal and my strength went up so fast, and this is for any exercise. It'll go up so fast with frequent practice. And again, if you look at strength athletes, athletes that compete in the objective way of winning

is not being on stage and looking good, but rather how much you can lift, they practice their key lifts often. I don't care if it's strong man power lifters or Olympic lifters, often practice is important in studies support this now. Yes, so a couple of things that bodybuilding does really well is really connects you to your mind muscle sort of connection there. So a couple things that bodybuilding does really well is

really connects you to your your mind muscle sort of connection there and has you feel feel that response and feel your muscles getting involved where performance really shines is really addressing Sort of like that weak link in the the overall movement and so we can sort of break it down as where that weak link is. A lot of times it's in the overhead position and the full lockout position. And so that's something too. As I went through practicing, I noticed that I was a bit weak and unstable, which then affected my core. You feel lower back, sort of talking to you at that point. So obviously bracing the core and getting the core involves a huge part of that, but also just being able to recognize that overhead position and be strong in that overhead position

was a massive game changer for me. Yeah, overhead carries. That is a, that's one of the best ways, and I'd never, I didn't incorporate that until I was in my late 30s where I would do this. Well, with Justin, it was. It Justin It was does the same thing for me. I you know why you don't see that in like a 24-hour fitness You'll never see I at least I have never seen that I have never seen somebody put kettlebells or a ball anything over their head And then walk across the tree. Yeah, that's I've it was so foreign to me and it wasn't until

Not only you and I got linked together But it was after you and I you went your separate ways you were in a private gym and it wasn't until not only you and I got linked together, but it was after you and I, you went your separate ways. You were in a private gym and it was the, you know, going into like a private setting like that and then you were the one that got me to do that. Up to that point, I don't think I'd ever even seen anyone do one before. No, and you know why? Part of it is it's not ever promoted as like a muscle developer or a body shape. But it is. It's a tremendous one.

I got great shoulder development and upper back development from doing it. But the reason why I did it, and that was a side effect, by the way, I didn't do it to develop my shoulders, although I saw that happen. It was to make me really stable at the top. And Justin's 100% right. Most people are unstable with an overhead press.

If they're unstable anywhere, at the very top, that's when the lever is the longest. That's when the weight is the furthest from your feet, which are grounded in the floor, and you're off by a little bit, it's like holding a broom by the very end versus by the very middle. It feels very heavy because of the leverage.

Your arms are fully extended, you're off a little bit. If you're off an inch and the weight's down on your chest, it's not that big of a, you're off an inch and the weight's down on your chest, it's not that big of a... You're off an inch and the weight's overhead. It can get away from you real quick. Very quickly. So walking with heavy weight overhead, and when I say heavy, it's all relative.

You need to have perfect form. So what you do is you extend a weight overhead. I love kettlebells for this. Over your head, real tall, real stable, brace your core, and then you walk real good in a straight line, keeping everything brace. Low and controlled. And that's what I love about this.

You talked about earlier about how, there's any breakdown in the kinetic chain, like you're gonna be weak in your... That's why you walk. And that's yeah, so when you do these overhead carries, and I love to do it if you can, if you're in a gym that'll allow you to be barefoot and take your shoes off,

so you can like feel the grass as you walk so I can feel my feet gripping on the floor. I can feel my core tightening up and staying stabilized and holding the shoulders above there. And that's all you're thinking about as you're walking and keeping that like perfect posture through the entire movement. I'd to carry over to that into the shoulder press

was insane what a difference that was by incorporating that. Huge. another movement that I'd never did until later on was the see press. Yeah, and I never did it. I had seen a Z press before I'd seen it in magazines and you know here and there wasn't a popular exercise. But when I saw it I thought what's the benefit of that just sit on a bench doesn't make any sense you're sitting on the floor. I thought, what's the benefit of that? Just sit on a bench. It doesn't make any sense, you're sitting on the floor. Why don't you just sit on the bench? I didn't realize the stability that was required in order to do a Z-Press because your legs

are out in front of you. You have to brace your core, sit real tall. You're not nearly as stable as if you're sitting on a bench or even a physical ball. It's very different from even a physical ball. You have to stabilize even your lower body in an interesting way. If you have tight hamstrings, forget about it, and then it slows you the hell down.

And that full extension really has to come through at the top of a Z-press. Otherwise, you're gonna fall back on your back. What a great exercise for overhead press strength. It's the ultimate test, I think, you know, for if you're bracing properly, if you have that core connection, if you have that stability, it's going to completely expose, you know, any instability. And that's why I love it so much. And it's just, you

don't realize how much you compensate with your legs. And when you're doing a lot of these like total body movements or compound lifts, I think sometimes we get carried away with the momentum of them just trying to get to the end position, not really paying attention to all the moving parts involved and this is one of those that's just like, okay, if you don't have proper stability, this is gonna totally destroy you. I'm so mad that I did not find this movement

until way later in my career, in fact, we were pretty much done personal training. I mean, I had maybe a few clients at this time. I would have actually never taught the overhead press without first teaching the Z press. 100%. So if I were to go back and do it all over again, I would never teach a client, okay? So for all my trainers, I would never teach my client

and overhead press first, I would teach teach a client, okay, so for all my trainers, I would never teach my client an overhead press first, I would teach a Z press first and get them good at that. And the reason why, as a trainer, you're always looking for like these trainer hacks to like, you know, I've done one of the viral videos I did on YouTube was the split stance bicep curl. And that doesn't, you know, develop the biceps any better. It was a trainer hack to keep clients in good posture

while they did a bicep curl. And it was magnificent, it was so simple, and yet it corrected so much of my clients' bad form when doing curls. The Z-Press is that for the shoulder press. How can I, as a trainer, there's so many things that they have to think about when they press, how do I cue them,

so they have this perfect posture, all the way up the kinetic chain while they're doing this press? The Z press forces them to do that because you'll fall over if you don't and you have to stabilize at the top so you get that part of it, your core has to be tightened up or you'll fold and fall over.

It just forces them into perfect form and if you master the Z press, then getting them into a standing press, seated press, push press, all the other shoulder movements, you'll see a huge difference in form and technique. Well, one of the hardest things to learn with an overhead press is that bringing the head forward and getting that full extension,

where they say, coming through the window, the head through the window. You have to do that with the Z press. In fact, here's the challenge. If you're watching and listening to this and you think you're strong and you do, but you never do overhead presses, but you do lots of shoulder exercises, get on the floor in a Z-Press position and do no weight. Hold just the barbell or a broomstick and see how it feels to get a full straight line. What I mean by a full straight line is it's not just overhead, but if someone looks at you sideways, the stick,

your shoulders and your hips on the floor are perfectly aligned. And I bet you a good 30 to 50% of the people watching this wouldn't be able to do it. They'd be like, oh my God, I can't get in that position. In fact, Adam, I would have loved it with my clients. And that's what I would have done. I would have done no wait. Can you do this with no wait? Let's get in that position.

Learn that and then we'll add a little bit of weight. It's the perfect prerequisite for teaching somebody how to do an overhead press. It's to get it. It also changed the way I do all my shoulder press movements on other exercises. For example, because you have to fully extend the core SB tie and then you kind of have to stay, the first time you do this, if you haven't done it before, the very first time you press, you'll feel this, whoa, you know, because everything is having to be tightened up,

and if it's at all slightly off, it'll be off balance at the top because you don't have that ground or your feet to help compensate for that movement. So doing this is a movement that I think everybody should do to start off before you get into your shoulder pressing. And what it did for me was I noticed that I had to stabilize the top.

And then I noticed this like amazing pump. I got in my shoulders from stabilizing at the top. Yes. So now even when I do single arm presses, normal barbell presses, push presses, I actually, I stabilize the top for a couple of seconds before I bring down. Which is... Connect better. Yes.

And in the past, I used to, you know, you just, you just press up. And then as soon as you get the top, you're coming right bring down. Which is... Connect better. Yes. And then the past, I used to, you know, you just, you just press up and then as soon as you get the top, you're coming right back down. Instead, now when I press, I stabilize, then come back down, press, stabilize, then come back down. And that came from learning how to Z-Press because you had to do that on the Z-Press or you'd fall over and it's now carried over

into all my other pressing. Well, before we jump into the push press, which I know we're kind of going out of order here, but like I wanted to bring up the bottoms-up press, being another way to really identify any instability in terms of lateral forces, rotational forces, something that's gonna take you out of alignment in your press.

And so what a bottoms-up press is with a kettlebell, so basically flip it upside down and you're holding the handle of it. So challenges. So it's just like, and a lot of times with the overhead press, you're gonna see a lot of broken wrists. So like the wrists are gonna be down in this position,

which is not gonna be ideal. And so this really helps to address that as well in terms of keeping a nice tight wrist and fist. And the challenge itself of just holding it in an isometric position alone is something to work on. And so if that's a challenge for you, I'd probably start there and then start with some walks, just like you would an overhead press walk

or overhead carry. And then from there, you want to literally take it as slow as possible as it's moving on you. You have to keep and maintain that stability and then into full lockout position. And then back down it's insanely challenging, but you're working on so many different stabilizing contributing muscles that we just don't highlight enough. Yeah, it's, when you're holding, because when you hold the kettlebell by the handle, right, the weight now, the most of the weight of the kettlebell

is at the top, not at the bottom. So you've lengthened the lever and the part that you're holding is lighter than the part that, the most of the weight that you're moving. So what this forces you to do is to keep your elbow and wrist directly under the weight, This forces you to do is to keep your elbow and wrist directly under the weight, which by the way, this technique and skill is extremely important when you're doing

any heavy overhead pressing, because if my elbow is in front of the weight or behind the weight, I'm losing strength. I'm losing force. The biomechanics now are not ideal. So it forces you to keep everything straight because if you move out just a little bit, that kettlebell's flipping.

It's gonna flip over and land right on your forearm. So it forces you to, and the first time I learned this, believe it or not, was when my dad embarrassed me in my studio. And I say that tongue in cheek. My dad is just, he's got this incredible natural strength on the beast.

I'll never forget, he came into my studio and he's at this time, he's probably 58 or something like that. And he's got, I've talked about this before, he's got arthritis everywhere. He's been working hard labor since he was a kid. And he comes in, we're gonna have breakfast next door. I got two of my trainers working, a couple guys. And my dad comes in and he picks up one of the heavy kettlebells

and he's like, whoo, how much is this way? And I knew, I know my dad, I'm like, oh, he's gonna lift the heavy kettlebell to see how strong he is. And he flipped it upside down. I never taught him an over, you know, bottoms up. He flipped a 70 pound kettlebell upside down and pressed it overhead.

Now I can press 70 pounds overhead. I could not, for the life of me, even balance a 70 pound kettlebell. Yeah, bro, try it. 30, that's 45. And I remember thinking to myself, like, and it's my dad is very stable, and he's got really good technique to press overhead. And that's the first time I realized that just the stability

and strength required it, because again, I grab a 30 pounder and it was extremely challenging. That was the first time I was like, oh, this is a big deal, this is very challenging. So this comes up, and we've actually never talked about this together. So I'm curious to what you guys think. This is actually a movement that I like to do

for priming the shoulders before I do like hardcore shoulder exercises workout, that or like W's. And it's the rotator cuff and stabilizer muscles that get involved that I think is so valuable. One of the most common things I would see with clients that would have hard time shoulder pressing is like pain. And a lot of that is because the shoulder

isn't floating in like the proper position and it's sliding left or right or front or back and then moving in pinchment there. Yeah, and then you're getting in pinchment and then that's what's limiting them from actually doing this, where Justin was saying, you know, that movement, it wakes up all those stabilizer muscles so well. So it puts you in a more optimal position when you go to do it.

And this is for bench pressing too. So I like to do this stuff with both W's and the bottoms up press before any pressing movement. So whether I'm doing, I'm going to go heavy bench that day or heavy overhead press, I love to use the suspension trainer, do some W's, do a couple of bottoms up presses, and then get into whatever my heavy movement is. I feel like it just wakes up all those stabilizer muscles and puts myself in this solid stable position before I go to press a lot of weight.

Now the next movement, I think a lot of people are familiar with, but most people don't do this right. It's an extremely valuable upper body power movement, and it's the push press. Now the first time I was exposed to a push press was reading Arnold Schwarzenegger's inside a cyclopedia bodybuilding. And in there, Bertel Fox, who was a bodybuilder that he used to show all the shoulder exercises,

talked about doing push presses as being this great mass builder. Now, the way I did them when I was younger was wrong. A push press when I was younger just meant cheating with an overhead press. And I really wasn't gaining much benefit other than I could lift a little more weight because I would jerk the weight up. Later on, I realized the value of a push press

is being able to generate speed on the bar. So you could definitely push press your max weight, but you're not going to gain the best benefit by doing that. The best benefit, in my experience, from a push press, is using a weight that you could overhead press strict, and now try to generate speed and then it gains stability at the top.

So the idea is at the bottom, can I explode into the press, and then at the top, can I stabilize, bring, and then at the top can I stabilize, bring it back down. You're treating it like a power movement. This translates into, it's almost like giving you more torque with your lift, right? If you look at a car's performance, there's torque and there's horsepower, right? Horsepower requires that the engine revs up a little bit before it generates this power.

Torque is right now. Right now you got that power. So when you strengthen your body properly with a good push press and you build that power, then when you go to your strict overhead press, rather than needing the bar to move a little bit before you can generate all that strength, you call upon it right away.

So that's the right way in my experience to do. It is pretty much stimulus. Yes, the grinding strength is very valuable and being able to work your way through that, but to be able to get that lightning bolt response and to be able to generate that amount of force on command gives your muscles a completely different stimulus that then they react to. And then you're going to notice to how that forms and shapes your muscles to even gain more size and strength.

Now, this does fall under the category explosiveness or like pliometric type of work where... That's definitely closer to that. Yeah, so this is not something I teach until I feel like my client has got really good form in the overhead press. Yeah, you better be able to do it perfectly slow before you try going further. Right, right. So the exercise, this isn't in any particular order because there's other ones we're going to do.

I definitely think that this is kind of the peak, right? Like I can't think of anything else that I would make after this. This would be the kind of the pinnacle of, you know, building this incredible overhead press. This is like, okay, you've done such a good job with stability and control and strength. Now let's see how well you express that by loading this sucker up and then doing it and explosive. I also love when you do this back to the point I was making earlier about the stabilizing of the top. If you can't get that weighed up by strict pressing and you have a

weight that you can explosively get up over your head and then you stabilize with it. It kind of reminds me of like, I've never forget the first time my buddy and I've talked about this on a show a long time ago when they wanted me to feel what three plates felt. I actually think it was two plates was way before I could even do that on a squat. And they just wanted me to feel that kind of weight. That's how I feel like when I would get to a place

where I was over, I was doing the explosive presses with weight that I knew I couldn't strict press yet, and then having to stabilize the top, the development that I got of holding that much weight, that I wouldn't be able to slowly press up over my head to get it up there. I saw huge benefits from it. Yeah, and again, you want to use weight, you can move relatively quickly, so it's typically a little lighter.

And stop at the top, you don't want to do a push press where you throw the weight up and bring it right back down. That's not a great way to do it. You want to explode up, hold at the top, stable, then bring it back down. And you shouldn't do these to fatigue. If you do them to fatigue, now you're turning an explosive movement into just a regular lifting movement. So you want to do these explosively. So let's say I do a push press with 135, okay? Let's say I put 135 pounds on the bar.

And let's say if I really wanted to, I could probably get 12 reps out. I'm stopping at five and though or six. And it's five or six explosive reps, then I put the bar down, I rest, and then I repeat. That's how I get that explosive benefit out of that exercise. You're talking about a lighter weight,

do this, I was talking about doing a heavier weight, Justin, what's your opinion on training it like that? Because I think there's value to both of these. I think there's value to, and there's actually an order for sure. You definitely should have a lightweight that you can control with good speed first. But I also think there's tremendous value

in being able to use your lower body to help push up a weight that you wouldn't be able to get up. Yeah, and I think that comes after really focusing on stabilizing that overhead position, lockout position. If you want to enhance that further, let's a way to get up a lot of weights.

So now we can really start progressively overloading that top position. So there's a lot of value in that, and I do that personally to challenge myself in that direction. But also the speed part is with lightweight. And so I think that's a misconception a lot with power training is there's speed training and then there's also like strength speed, I guess you would call it. So, those two are somewhat different, but provide their own unique.

Well, that's a great example. And if I'm talking to an advanced lifter who's got a good press, these are two different forms of adaptation, right? You either the way that Sal's talking about where it is, purely a speed thing where you would actually do a lighter weight than what you would even be able to strict press, and then there's the opposite

where you're going for like the explosive strength where you would do something that's much heavier that you wouldn't be able to get up in a strict press. Both are different adaptations, and both could be a way to change up your shoulders. Both utilizations of the push press. Yes, definitely. And then now, the next one would be your loaded

rotational exercises. I know you're big on this, Justin. What are some of your favorite, I guess, movements? Well, yeah, so I actually found my way here because I would just hit a wall all the time, especially with bench press or overhead press, where my shoulder just would inevitably sort of get off track. And I would start to feel this impingement forming.

And it was just because of the repetitive stress just in that one direction. And so finding my way towards rotational movements, obviously there's a prerequisite to this. And this is what we kind of highlight in our prime programs in terms of like regaining that ability to rotate and have that kind of range of motion again in your shoulder first and having connection to that.

So in terms of like loading that, though, that's something I think a lot of people don't even realize you can do. Like that's a part of progressive overload you can add into your programming that I got turned on to by old methods with Indian clubs and with the Mace Bell training. So you've seen examples of this popularized by some of these kettlebell groups that kind of came and then on it and some other companies have kind of highlighted some of these old methods in their value. So I was in on that whole quest to find unique exercises that had value and found my way to these

Indian clubs and just doing these heart swings. It just showed me how many parts are involved in an actual rotation with your wrist, your elbows, your shoulders, what your shoulder was more capable of. And so, to kind of break it down, I started working on the mobility aspect of it and regaining that rotation. And then started to load that with Indian clubs. So one at a time, they have that nice, like sort of long lever to it.

So it adds that weight sort of on the outside of this rotation, which you feel you know all your stabilizer muscles get involved you feel uh... you know this stimulus that uh... you're actually it's it's a struggle it's an acceleration deceleration so you have to be able to uh... have strength in slowing it down speeding it up uh... and then you can you can go from there with a heavier weight

and work your way up to a mace bell where you're in a position where a man, I'm swinging something substantially heavy, and I have to have perfect mobility and strength in this rotation in order to not hurt myself for one, but also that's something that's gonna keep sort of bullet proofing my shoulder when I go to then press.

I was just going to say that I don't think there is a single way to bullet proof your shoulders better than that. I mean, when you think about everything you're saying, you know, and accelerate, decelerate the weight, control it through full range of motion, forwards and backwards and all the muscles that are involved, you're developing everything that's around that shoulder. I don't think there is a better way for you to protect yourself for like overall health. So, you know, a lot of people see that and they think, oh, strong man stuff or they just think, oh, that's not for me. I don't really identify

with people that train this unconventional way, but I adopted it for that reason. I mean, you're the one that also got me involved in that, and I remember like breaking it down that way, and going, dude, this is, if there's one thing I don't stop ever doing for my shoulder, it's that. Like if I had to choose one thing for a client to do forever, to keep your shoulder self. Yeah, if you did macebell swings forever,

and you could do those really good, and you did no other shoulder work, I guarantee you would have healthy, strong shoulders for the rest of your life. That one thing, not, and I can't say the same. You're posture. Yeah, I can't say the same for even like a overhead press, which is what we're talking about today, which is by far one of the best exercises you can do for overall. It's been one dimensional in comparison.

It's very one dimensional in comparison to those. So I think it's something that everybody should incorporate into their routine, whether you do it with mace or Indian clubs. I just think it's for overall health. It's one of the best things you can do for yourself. By the way, if you don't have a mace or Indian clubs, I recommend you get them, but you can also do halos with a plate or a dumbbell where you're starting from. Or a kettlebell, yeah. Or a kettlebell and you go around. I mean, that'll do some of that as well. I don't think people realize just how complex

the shoulder joint is. Right. It's one of the more interesting joints. Did it, the hips and the... Or the most dynamic. Besides that, even, like in the hip, you have your femur in the hip and that's kind of it. And there's some involvement with the S.I. With the SI joint and all that stuff.

But with the shoulder, you have the humor, and then you have the scapula. If you extend your arm above your head without moving your scapula, you're not gonna go very far, right? If you try to throw something without involving your scapula, you're not moving at all. In fact, when people have frozen shoulder,

if you've ever heard of frozen shoulder, it's because those two parts of the joint are not communicating, and one of them isn't moving properly. These rotational movements really keep those two parts communicating properly, and they have to, because that's how the shoulder joint, this is one of the reasons why humans can throw with incredible accuracy. It's one of the reasons why we were one of the apex predators. We have these really interesting shoulder joints that allowed us to these kind of full range of motion,

accurate, you know, fast movement, and so rotational movements allow that. But yeah, halos are, again, if you don't have that equipment, halos with a kettlebell or a plate will simulate this to some extent and give you some of that value. Now, the next point is something that I did for bodybuilding reasons, and I had no idea that it would contribute to my overhead press, which was rear del exercise. It's now, for those of you into body sculpting and body building, you probably do rear del exercises

because you probably have realized by now that having well developed rear delts gives you really round, nice looking shoulders. But athletes and people interested in strength, oftentimes neglect rear-delt exercises because they think, why? I overhead pressing, okay, I'm just gonna practice that. I don't really need my rear-delt to be developed.

Not true, the rear-delt plays a very special role in stabilizing your shoulder, especially at the top of the movement. So besides making you look better, you gotta develop the shoulder and its entirety. Otherwise, you're gonna miss out shoulder and it's entirety, otherwise you're going to miss out on its full capacity for strength. Well, that's a great point.

I mean, to kind of put it back in terms of like, nasty, like I didn't consider these quite as much. And I remember talking with Adam about this, as he was trying to develop his shoulders, to get on stage, and I was working, and I realized, like, wow, this just puts me in such a better position posturally too that it's addressing because I'm so forward, I'm so much in that you know

sagittal plane and everything it always loaded in front of me. I'm not really like pain attention or putting emphasis on you know these muscles that are supporting that to happen and keep everything tracking well. So, just getting strong there helped to pull it back. So, the potential for me to get that pain again really decreased substantially. Well, I love that point. Show me a person with great rear delts that doesn't have pretty good upper body posture. That was one of my favorite things about it.

Of course, I was doing it for aesthetic reasons with competing and stuff, but like you, Justin, one of the things I noticed was, man, as I started to develop those, it just helped keep me in good posture. I just think it's neglected. And it's very obvious, too, when somebody goes to do them, that you're just not used to working them because many people can't hit them because it's this movement like a reverse fly and the upper back ends up taking over a lot of the movement and the rear delts don't carry much of the load at all and I just think

that learning how to do that is just it's so important aside from aesthetics building into shoulder press but overall posture I think it's for sure something you got to do. You know what I noticed as a kid was, there was one athlete, it would type of athlete in particular that always had incredibly developed shoulders and in particular incredibly developed rear delts. And when I say the sport, I know you're gonna think

about those athletes, you're gonna see this particular muscle development. And at first it doesn't make sense, but when you really think about it does, boxers. If you ever watch boxers, and they're boxing, they always have these really well-developed shoulders, and especially the rear del. And you think, what does the rear del have to do with throwing a punch? As a lot to do with throwing a punch, decelerating that punch, stabilizing the punch, being able

to throw from different angles, that rear delt is very important in shoulder stability, movement, mobility, and explosive power. So if you're like a, if you're a power and a strength person, and you never think about developing aesthetics and you've neglected rear delt work, you're missing out. Do some of it and watch what happens to your overhead press strength. Now the next one is something that's very important. We talk about those all the time. It's just working on overall mobility. Here's one mobility movement that is easy that I think a lot of people can benefit from.

Those two reasons are why it's one of my favorites. It's just your good old-fashioned shoulder dislocates. Very basic shoulder mobility movement. Pretty easy for most people to figure out how to do, not that they can do it, but rather there's less skill involved so they can practice it, move within their range of motion and slowly develop that full range of motion. But it does move the shoulder through a lot of its potential,

involving not just the humorous moving in the shoulder, but also the scapula. And that's what makes it kind of an important movement. My first time doing it, I did it, and I remember feeling really weird doing it. Within three or four sessions of practicing it, I had already greatly improved my shoulder mobility. Yeah, and you see a lot of people misperforming this exercise and lots of arched backs to kind of...

I think that's the reason why I don't like it. It's because of how many people I think do it wrong. They think they're doing it right, but then they're cheating the movement. Yeah, you really have to maintain firm, good posture, like an upright position. And then also, like I see a lot of elbows bending and breaking, you know, to be able to get it further. And so, to be able to grab it as wide as possible first, and then I usually coach and have work on the grip in terms of sort of pulling outward

to get more tension there and maintain your posture, really emphasize that core to keep everything in good alignment as you're now flipping it back overhead. And really just from there you have to figure out whether or not you can keep proceeding because if you have to break in terms of bending your elbow or moving and arching your back, stop right there. Stop. That's then it's nil at that point. For me, my favorite to teach is the zone one. The zone one test. I just, for the average person,

the feedback of the wall is what is so different than all those other movements, is that they have something that can tell them like, oh, they're formed up perfectly. It's really hard. Like somebody who looks at one of you guys doing like a shoulder dislocate or even like a wall circle, and then I start throwing the thing. Yeah, then they just kind of do it,

and they think they're doing it correctly, and they don't have any really good feedback unless they have a coach or a trainer that they're telling them what's going on. Whereas I could take somebody who is brand new or relatively new client, put them on the zone one and point out like we do in the prime test. These are all the points of contact.

You need to fill this and they can feel that themselves. They know right away if they start to slide up that wall, the head comes forward or their back arches up off the wall or their hands come off the wall like they'll see that and feel that right away because of the feedback of the wall. So practicing the zone one test and getting good and I mean it's emulating exactly where you want to be in an overhead press. So I think practicing that for mobility is like one of the best things that's. It encourages tension, right? Encourages that you stay connected. If you do it right to all those moving parts. So I agree. I think that's another one. Another one would be hand

cuffs with rotation, which is another going to, by the way, with mobility work, it's not just going through the motion, you have to be connected to the whole movement. That's what's really important because you could have somebody that's Lucy Goosey and their shoulders and you know what they would call hypermobile but with really low tension and they could do shoulder dislocates, no problems by swinging it back and forth. But if you get that person to create tension and do it slowly, slow down, create more struggle in it. That's it. Now you're making the exercise really valuable. All right. This last one is extremely important and I want to explain why here for a second.

It's extremely important that you have a very strong and stable core when you're trying to overhead press your body weight. So here's why, right? The thing that you're trying to protect the most when you're doing an overhead press, at least in relation to the core, is your spine. And your spine, if you look at your spine,

you take it out of your body. I mean, it can move in almost any direction. It's made up of a bunch of joints. But it's surrounded by all this muscle. If some part of that muscle in the core is weak or not doing what it's supposed to, the other muscles start to take over. And oftentimes, and you talked about this earlier

in the episode, Adam, oftentimes what people have is a weak abdominal, oblique transverse abdominal area, which means that their lower back has the compensate. And so you get this overarching in the back and tightening in order to create stability. And then what happens is the spine moves to some of its end-range emotion. You start to rely on the joints of the spine and then you load it and now you're asking for a lower back injury. Now you're asking for a disc to get slipped or impinged because you're not able to stabilize with a strong core.

So how do we work on this? Well you want to strengthen all those muscles I talked about properly, your abs, your obliques, your TVA, you want to do those overhead carries muscles I talked about properly your abs your obliques your TVA You want to do those overhead carries that we talked about helps you stabilize that core if you have a state by the way for those You listening or like what do you mean strong core? I can overhead press a lot. I tell you what put on a weight Belgo overhead press again. Wow magical. You could press 15 more pounds overhead What do you think just happened that belt didn't lift the weight up for you. All it did was increase your core stability. All of a sudden, you could lift more weight. Why not strengthen your core naturally so that you could do that on your own? You could probably make the case that strengthening the core is most valuable

for the overhead president, almost any other movement. As you're talking right now, I'm kind of thinking about what else could I think of that having a strong core contributes to everything. But I mean really contribute to that movement more than any other movement. Yeah, it's usually the limiting factor. I would make the case for that, not only for the top of the movement because you've got this extended lever, but even the beginning when you initiate, think of a sprinter who's getting ready to take off and run, they put their feet in those running blocks and they explode out of there. 100% and now imagine that same sprinter doing it with no blocks and they're on that loose

dirt. What happens? It would lose so much of their takeoff and power the same way that you would if you have a really weak core. When you take off from that press, the first thing that initiates before anything moves is that core. And if that's unstable, you're gonna lose so much ground

just trying to get it up off your chest. If you guys ever seen really like cars with super high horsepower take off and then they twist, you're seeing that? Where the frame literally twists and if it's not stable enough, that power's gone,

that car's not going anywhere. And you've got a frame now that's bent. The reason why that's happening is the engine is generating all this force. The car wasn't stable enough or strong enough to withstand that twist. So although the tires went to generate force, the car wasn't able to translate it

because it wasn't stable enough. That's what happens with your core. You generate force from the ground, you press a weight overhead, uh oh, core can't stabilize. It doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter how strong your shoulders are. If your core can't stabilize it, you can't lift the weight. It's not happening or worse, you end up hurting yourself. So a very, very strong stable core is very important. In fact, if you look at some of the best athletes, forget strength athletes for a second. So let's imagine if we took all strength athletes out of this category

and just considered other athletes that exhibit incredible upper, upper overhead stability, right? Think of like ice skaters, right? When the guy lifts up the girl and he's skating across the rink or whatever, super stable, gymnasts, right? When they're holding people above overhead. They're lifting their partner, which is, you know,

I don't know, 120 pounds, maybe at the most, not very heavy, but how are they able to do all those movements and stabilize them? Their core is incredibly stable. It's like they're whole, I remember going to a Cirque du Soleil show and watching some of these people hold each other up above their head. And I remember thinking, the shoulder strength was cool.

I was like, man, the shoulders were holy cow. Their core is so stable. It's like an iron rod. Like nothing is bending them in half. And that's why they're able to hold each other up with the other. You don't realize how much energy and strength you lose when you don't, because it has to be distributed

to all of these other muscles. Totally, yeah. That's like where you're really gonna notice is, when you start getting three, four, five, six, 10 reps, when you have that stable core, all those other muscles aren't having to kick in to help try and get it up over your head and to overcompensate versus having that stable core, you'll see your strength go up

just from that alone. Totally. So I like counter rotation exercises for this. Planks done properly can be pretty good for stuff like this overhead carries. And then your direct work, right? So your ab work and your oblique work, rotational work is really good for this kind of stuff. You do that. And oftentimes I've seen this with a lot of clients. All we do is get the core stronger. And then their overhead press strength, you know, tends to go up. So there you have it.

Look, if you like our information, head over to MindPumpFree.com and check out all of our free guides. We have guides that can help you with almost every fitness goal and they're totally free against MindPumpFree.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram. So Justin is at MindPump Justin. I'm at MindPump Salon. Adam is at MindPump Adam.

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