Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Mark Rippetoe on the Right (and Wrong) Ways to Bench and Overhead Press

Episode Date: August 31, 2018

In this episode, I speak with the grandfather of barbell training, Mark Rippetoe, who has given us many a great things, including books that everyone should read, Starting Strength and Practical Programming. I’m a fan of Mark and his work, of course, because nobody has done more to promote, teach, and defend barbell training than Rip, and also because of his peppery personality, which always makes for a fun conversation. This time around, we talk about pressing, specifically the bench and overhead press and all of their variations and subtleties. These are two of the most effective upper body exercises you can do for gaining strength and size. It’s not a stretch to say that the stronger you get on these two exercises, the happier you’re going to be with how you look above the waist.   There are a number of factors beyond your control that influence how well you can bench and overhead press—your limb lengths, bone structure, height, and so forth—but there are also many things that you can control, like your technique and training methods, and these are what you’re going to learn about in this podcast with Mark. Whether you’re new to the bench and overhead press or trying add a few more pounds to your powerlifting totals, I think you’re going to find today’s talk helpful, because we discuss a number of common questions like . . . Should you do incline bench press if you’re already doing bench press? Should you do wide- or close-grip bench press? Should you arch your back a lot, a little, or none at all while benching? Should you do seated or standing overhead press? Should you do overhead or military press? The bottom line is by the end of this interview, you’re going to know more about bench and overhead pressing than 90% of the people in your gym, including the trainers. 8:54 - What's your take on flat bench pressing versus incline versus decline? 11:17 - What are your thoughts on incline pressing to emphasize the upper chest? 24:47 - What are your thoughts on grip width? 34:39 - How much arch should you have in your back? 41:53 - What about elbow position? 44:40 - Do you prefer seated or standing pressing? 45:39 - What about seated allowing you to lift more weight? 49:34 - Let's talk about hip drive. 54:53 - How does a military press and strict press differ? 1:02:15 - Where can people find you online? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

I'll tell you the key to pressing heavy weights overhead is you've got to train the lift rather frequently. If you're going to be a good presser, you're going to have to do some pressing four days a week. Hello, hello. Mike Matthews here from Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics back with another episode of the Muscle for Life podcast. Now, I know I've been saying this every week for several weeks now, but I apologize for my absence. It's not because I have given myself over to Fortnite or Netflix. It is because I have been working seven days a week, many hours a day on the third editions of both Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, as well as their accompanying workout journals, the year one challenges for men and women

respectively. And I'm pretty excited to announce that I am at the tail end of the entire project. I will have everything wrapped up by the end of next week, including the recording of the audiobooks, which is what I'm working on basically all day every day right now for the last couple weeks. Recording audiobooks is a slog, I will tell you. But it also makes for the best final draft because you have to read every single word of your manuscript slowly and deliberately, which forces you to really consider every single word in every single sentence. So anyways, I've been giving that project basically all of my attention for the last six to eight weeks or so, because I want the books out. I want these new third editions out in December. And to do that, I had to work on a very difficult

and tight deadline, basically. But the good news is it looks like we're on target to release these third editions in December. The digitals will definitely be out by then. The eBooks and audio books, absolutely. The hard copies, probably. If the printer can do me a favor and get them done a little bit faster than usual, then yep, the hard copies will also be out in December. And I'm super excited because my intention with these books,

honestly, is to create the best fitness books ever written for men and women. That was my goal going into it. Whether I've achieved that or not will be up to you and everybody else, but I can say they are the absolute best books I can create right now for men and women. I'm really happy with how everything came together. And even if you've read the first editions and the second editions, you are going to really enjoy the third editions. You're going to learn new stuff. You're going to get clarifications on things that I feel like I didn't quite explain as well as I could have in the second editions. And the programs are getting tweaked. They're not changing too much, but they are getting tweaked based on my experience working

with thousands of people just over the internet and getting a ton of feedback. So obviously, I'll be talking more about the books as we get closer to their release. But I just wanted to let you know that that's what I've been buried in for the last 68 weeks or so. And by the end of next week, more or less all of my work will be done on those projects. And then I'm going to get back to the normal routine of writing on the blogs, recording more podcasts, and so forth. I'm looking forward to it, honestly, because while I really enjoy researching and writing books, I don't exactly enjoy taking what would normally be a year's worth of work or so and cramming it into like two to three

months. Anyways, let's get to the point. What is today's podcast about? Well, today's is another interview with one of my favorite guys in the fitness space, the grandfather of barbell training, Mark Ripoteau, who has given us many great things, including books that everyone should read like Starting Strength and Practical Programming. As you can tell, of course, I'm a fan of Mark's work because nobody has done more to promote, teach, and defend barbell training than Rip. And he's also always fun to talk to thanks to his peppery personality. He does not mince words. He shoots from the hip and I appreciate

that. This time around, Mark and I talk about pressing, specifically bench and overhead pressing and all of their variations and subtleties. Now, these two exercises are two of the best that you can do for gaining strength and muscle. It's not a stretch to say that the stronger you get on these exercises, the happier you're going to be with how you look above the waist. Now, there are a number of factors beyond your control that influence how well you can bench and overhead press, like the length of your limbs, your bone structure, how tall you are, and so forth. But there are also many things that you can control, like your technique and training methods. And these are what you're going to learn about in today's interview with Mark. Whether you're new to the bench and overhead press or just trying to add a few more pounds

to your powerlifting totals, I think you're going to find today's episode helpful because Mark and I discuss a number of common questions that I get at least, like, should you do incline bench press if you're already doing the flat bench press? Should you do a wide or close grip bench press? Should you arch your back a lot or a little or none at all? Should you do seated or standing overhead press? Should you do the overhead press or the military press and more? So the bottom line is by the end of this interview, you're going to know more about the bench and overhead press than 90% of the people in your gym, including the trainers. Mr. Ribiteau, thank you. Hi, Mike. How are you, man?

You know, things are going though. The country's still here, so that's good. Well, for now yeah yeah you know i thought uh i thought we would mix it up and maybe talk about some popular culture like who's your favorite uh degenerate on uh the bachelor what's the bachelor it's a show we can't talk about popular culture with me i don't watch watch television. I actually don't either. I just know it's a thing. It's a show where there's a guy. And I think they also have the female version. Yeah.

So it's a guy and a bunch of girls chasing after him. They have the female version where it's a girl. It's a bunch of degenerates being degenerates, basically. Is it like reality TV or is it like a situation comedy? No, it's all scripted. I had this discussion. Yeah, I had this discussion with a buddy of mine's girlfriend who she's into one of them. I don't remember.

The Bachelor. The Bachelorette is the female version of it where it's the girl and all the guys are chasing after the girl. And she was trying. I was like, you do realize all of this is fake, right? Like every single aspect of this is scripted. And then she was trying to argue no no this is oh no they wouldn't do that to me yeah that's that's the appeal that's what makes it so great is it's just it's real it's spontaneous real man this is this is the way people actually behave

yeah you actually think that wow okay if this is if same thing with like kardashians and that stuff of course it's all scripted it's all fake of course it is what how you got to make it interesting it they're you can't just wing it and hope you get stuff you need to script everything and you know be very deliberate does this girl also go to uh wwe i wonder if she thinks that's real, too. Well, I mean, that's probably actually more real. At least you have to. At least the guy does fly through the air. Exactly.

The acrobatics and the athletics are real. It's an athletic male soap opera is all that shit is. Yeah. There's some girls, too, I guess. All right, fine. I haven't watched that in a long time, either. So that's not going to be productive. All right, so fine.

We're not going to talk about that. Let's talk about bench pressing and overhead pressing then instead. Okay. That sounds like fun. All right. So let's start with bench pressing. And I want to follow the same format as the previous two with squatting and deadlifting, where I'm just going to kind of throw some questions your way that I'm often asked on how to bench and overhead press properly.

Okay. And then you can rant and rave. All right, cool. All right. I didn asked on how to bench and overhead press properly. Okay. And then you can rant and rave. All right. Cool. All right. I know how to do that. Let's start with bench press. And let's start with flat pressing versus incline pressing versus decline pressing.

All right. I think that if you're going to bench press, that you ought to do the version of the bench press that uses the most muscle mass. Incline leaves stuff out. Decline leaves stuff out. Plus the fact that decline's got an extremely shortened range of motion. And there's not really any way to do it without the profound risk of being guillotined by a dull bar. And so I don't see a reason for any human to do a decline bench press.

It's mostly for putting up more weight than you can actually handle and trying to look strong. Yes, certainly. It's a partial bench is what it is. It's just a partial bench press. You want to do partial benches, just do partial benches. Make up some excuse, like call them floor presses or whatever you want to do. Just reduce the range of motion and use an artificially high amount of weight.

It's fine. That makes you happy. Go ahead and do that. Incline, I was going to say, is unnecessary because if you're doing the flat bench and you're doing the press, then everything's covered. Now, there are some shoulder injuries. Mine is not one of them that mitigate mitigate in favor of an inclined press. I know some people that can incline press without a great deal of pain,

whereas a regular bench press bothers their shoulder. For persons like that, then, yeah, go ahead and incline. But for the general training public, for beginners, for novices, as we call them, I think that if you're doing both the press and the bench press, that you've got all your bases covered. And I see no reason to, you know, doll this up any more than that. I'm a big believer in simplicity, and I see no argument for anything for the vast majority of trainees other than the bench press and the press. Okay, and what are your thoughts

on incline pressing for putting a little bit more emphasis on the clavicular part of the pec major? The clavicular part of the pec?. The clavicular part of the pec? The reason why I bring that up is. That's bodybuilding. I don't really give a shit about that. That's why I bring that up. If you're trying to fill in that subclavicular pec belly, hey, go ahead and incline. It probably works because it takes so much of the inferior aspect of the

pec out of the movement pattern. Yeah. And, you know, this is all dependent on angle, but by the same token, you know, a heavy press does the same thing.

Yeah. So, yeah. So the reason why I bring that up is because, I mean, I ran into myself when I was younger, just doing, I did a lot of benching.

Of course, I never trained legs because why would you train legs, but I did a lot of uh benching of course i never trained legs because why would you train legs but uh did a lot of benching and uh and i the way that my chest developed was a bit bottom heavy because the the upper portion of the of the muscle was a little bit underdeveloped and what helped balance that that's probably genetic yeah but it did but doing a lot of incline pressing which i was uh i I mean, a lot over the course of, I would say eight months in a mostly, I think most of that time in a slight surplus, if I remember correctly, like doing it right, it made a noticeable difference. Like I have pictures and I look before and after. So

from an aesthetics side, I find that in working with a lot of guys that are, that care, yeah, they want to be strong, but they also want to be pretty. They want to have pretty, pretty pecs. Um, it seems that the, the, the pecs just seem to be kind of a stubborn muscle group, uh, in terms of at least visual development and some incline pressing can help with that? Well, I don't doubt that it can. But first, you know, I'm not a bodybuilding coach and I'm really not entitled to an opinion about that. But more important than that, I personally prefer the look of older bodybuilders like John Grimmick over more modern bodybuilders like Ferrigno, who had great big fluffy pec bellies. I don't think aesthetically that big pecs on a male are that –

I don't think they're aesthetically pleasing. If I was, you know, I think it's real easy to train the pecs or the whole bunch of high rep bench pressing. And I think a lot of people overdo the pecs. I see it. I prefer a more balanced physique. Uh, if I've got a present, a preference for a male physique, I prefer, uh, preference for a male physique. I prefer, uh, the pre bench press emphasis, bodybuilder physique, as opposed to the post bench press emphasis. So the guys back in the, uh, you know, from Ridge park on back, that, that looks better to me than, than a guy with big fluffy pecs.

I agree. I agree. That's actually one of the reasons because, you know, and I have, you know, I have never been able to comfortably perform an incline press. Those things have always hurt my shoulders for 35 years. The damn things have hurt my shoulders and I just haven't done them in a very long time. This is before I had shoulder surgery, the damn things that bother my shoulders and, just haven't done them in a very long time. This is before I had shoulder surgery, the damn things that bother my shoulders and, you know, and those of you listening, some, you know, look,

if inclines bother your shoulders, don't do them. If they don't bother your shoulders and you want to do them and flat benches, there are occasionally guys, like I mentioned that, that flat benches bother their shoulders. Just incline. See how strong you can get on the incline. The primary difference between the two exercises, as far as I'm concerned, is the kinetic chain of the exercise. If you are standing on the ground holding a barbell in your hands

and pressing it upward, you're not leaning on a bench. The kinetic chain is your hands all the way down to the floor, which means that your abs and your low back are actually involved in the exercise where those things are basically asleep and a bench press. And I think that one of the primary contributions that starting strength has made to physical culture over the past 10 years is that we've basically single-handedly reintroduced the press, the standing overhead press, I just call it the press because that's what it is, it's the press, back into the gym. And, you know, a nice layback Olympic press is a beautiful athletic movement.

It involves way more muscle mass than a bench press does. The fact that it's being done with a lot of lighter weights than the bench press, in my mind, is not a particular drawback. I mean, the days of human males pressing 400 are pretty much gone. Although, I'll have to tell you that our young Chase Lindley here in the gym that works for us. He's a pretty good presser. He's pressed 330.

Wow. Standing press 330 at a body weight of 240. Wow. Which is a pretty damn good press. Yeah, it's impressive. And the other day, he did a set of pin presses from right at the forehead with 350 for a set of five. The boy is going to fuck around and press 400 before it's over with. And he's 19.

Wow. So, you know, it can't be done. You just have to train it. He's been training with us since he was 12, and, you know, he just thinks that what we do up here is normal. So, you know, he's expected to press over 300, and so he does. It's a lost art. The standing press is a lost art.

Yeah. And I mean, starting strength is what got me pressing years ago. I'd never done it before. Well, it's a, it's a, I know,

man, it's a, you know, till we started writing about it till we published it in all three editions of the book and incorporated it as a, as the other major upper body exercise, it just wasn't being done very much. And, you know, you see some strong men do it.

Some strong men competitors are doing the silly-ass log press thing. And there's some of those boys who have gotten real, real strong. But as far as 330 at a body weight of 240, there aren't many of them doing that. Yeah, that's some serious strength. I've never seen more than 275 in the gym. Somebody put that up for sets of three or four, which that impressed me. Yeah, that's an impressive press in 2018. Pressive press in 2018.

Now, back a long time ago, back in the day, as it were, back in the 50s, early 60s, before the invention of powerlifting and the emphasis on the bench press, body weight press for a male, that was just baseline. Yeah. And that's everybody. Everybody could do that. You know, you can't press body weight. Well, you son, you better get caught up. That took me a fair amount of work to get up to. I was surprised at how difficult it was. And it's probably partially because of my, I have crazy long monkey arms. That doesn't help, but it was hard to get up to one nineties, uh, even for sets of two. Yeah. It's a, it's really, it's quite an achievement because back then those guys

started doing that when they were kids and just pressing overhead. And I'll tell you the key to pressing heavy weights overhead is you've got to train the lift rather frequently. If you're going to be, you're going to be a good presser, you're going to have to do some pressing four days a week. Because of the skill acquisition, the technical component of it? It's extremely technical. One centimeter out of line on the bar path and it's a miss. Yep. Yep. The thing is controlled. It's an extremely difficult mechanical problem. If you increase the length of the moment arm between the barbell and your shoulder, by the slightest little bit more than you can tolerate, you miss the lift. And so the bar path has got to really, really be firmly established,

and it's got to be worked on, it's got to be practiced, and it's got to be trained real heavy. You've got to do some heavy partials. You've got to go, you know, get used to locking heavier weights out overhead than you actually can start off the shoulders. You've got to get comfortable with the idea that your low back and your abs are going to be under one hell of a bunch of stress. They have to get strong. Your abs get a gigantic workout during a heavy press

workout. You've got to learn to control your knee position or you're going to be doing a push press, and that's red lights. You've got to – the thing involves the whole body all the way down to the floor, and it's an extremely skill-dependent movement pattern, and it is – and a lot of people don't appreciate this until you've been training it quite a while. The press is also extremely dependent on psych. You can't just wander under the bar, take it out of the rack, and casually press the damn thing. It won't go.

If it doesn't come out of the rack, and it doesn't feel good as it comes out of the rack, if it doesn't feel light coming out of the rack, in other words, if you're not revved up a little bit, you haven't got the right breath as you take it out of the rack. If it doesn't, it doesn't feel light coming out of the rack. In other words, if you're not revved up a little bit, you haven't got the right breath as you take it out of the rack. You haven't got a little bit of central nervous system excitation going on. You're going to miss. Yeah. I've experienced that. It's funny to say that. I've experienced that where exactly that where if it's heavy, it feels off. Like I know it's not heavy because I did this last week and I'm not even, maybe I'm not even trying to progress in weight. I'm just trying to get an extra rep and I'm like, it just doesn't feel

right. And then I'll miss my reps by two or something and be like, what the hell is that? Right. You're just not all the way awake. You've got to get into the movement. You've got to make a little noise. You've got to get under it. You've got to stamp your feet. You've got to rev up a little bit to press. You can't just casually press. Whereas with squatting, I've had it where I'm walking right off the bar and it feels heavy. It feels like shit and you say, okay, well, here we go. You take a big breath and you go down and you get the set anyway, but a press just won't. You can't bullshit your way through a press like that.

You know, interesting. You just can't do it. You know, you're going to, if, if everything is not tight, everything is not in exactly the right position. The bar path is going to go out of line. If the bar runs out in front of you, you're done. If you can't hold that thing close to your face all the way up, then you're done.

You're not going to make the rep. You're certainly as hell not going to get the last two reps of a set of five. If you're loose, you're not absolutely in the moment. Everything else out of your mind, concentrating on making this thing feel light, the first three reps of a set of five are going to use you up. You will not get the last two. It's strange. Of all of the lifts, including the Olympic lifts,

the psych component of the press stands out to me. Interesting. None of the rest of them are nearly as dependent on that. It's a mind game. Certainly is. You have to learn to focus on it. You have to learn to reproduce these conditions. Every time you take a heavy press out of the rack, it's just going to lay there.

I've experienced it. out of the rack or it's just going to lay there. I've experienced it. Hey, before we continue, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my best-selling health and fitness books. My most popular ones are Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical hands-on blueprint for personal transformation, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of

people build their best body ever. And you can find them anywhere online where you can buy books like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google play as well as in select Barnes and Noble stores. So again, that is bigger, leaner, stronger for men, thinner, leaner, stronger for women, the shredded chef, and the little black book The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and one other thing is you can get any one of those audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account. And that's a great way to make those pockets of downtime like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. Now, if you want to take Audible up

on that offer and get one of my audio books for free, just go to legionathletics.com slash Audible and sign up for your account. Let's go back to bench press though, and then let's flip over to OHP. That was actually going to be bar path was going to be one of my questions, so we actually then talked about it. But back to the bench press for a few more questions. Grip width, what are your thoughts? Well, my thoughts on grip width are derived from what are we trying to do with the exercise? If we're trying to bench press as much weight as we can, then what we want to do, like if we're at a meet,

then what you want to do is probably going to be a little bit wider grip width than what you would do is if you're, if you're trying to just use the bench press as a strength exercise. And the reason I say that is as follows. How come? Just to clarify. To clarify that, the IPF rules state that the maximum permissible legal competition bench press grip width is 32 inches and whatever that is in centimeters. All right. Now, if you're 104 pound female and you're, you know, 4'11", the rule does not stipulate that your grip width is any narrower than the super heavyweight guy weighing, you know, 330.

But the difference in anthropometry is going to turn those two lifters into completely different creatures performing that movement pattern. A 330-pound man with a 32-inch maximum width grip is going to be very close to vertical forearms at the bottom. A 104-pound female at 4'11 may be able to get the barbell out of the rack, may be able to get the barbell out of the rack, unshrug her shoulders without even bending her elbows, and then shrug back up into a lockout position, having moved the bar an inch. And obviously those movements are not comparable. Right.

One is a different thing than the other. Yet both of them are considered bench presses by the IPF. So, in my opinion, for training purposes, we want to use the longest range of motion around the shoulder, which means that the grip you take yields a vertical forearm when the bar touches your chest. And just play that little piece of geometry in your head. You know, that's as far down as your elbows can go if your forearm is vertical. Right. And just so people can picture that.

So your forearm could be, I mean, I guess you could also think of it in terms of in relation to your upper arm, right? So it'd be a 90 degree angle as opposed to. No, no, no. The angle probably, the angle at the elbow will be determined by chest height. Well, sure. But you get to a point where you could have a 90 degree angle. Whereas if you had your forearms in, you would never get there. You'd always have an acute angle, right? Well, it's, uh, and maybe that, maybe that doesn't either. Practically speaking, a close grip bench, an extremely close grip bench is so hard on the

wrists. Most people don't really do those. Yeah. A close grip bench and, you know, most decent benchers are close grip in 90, 92% of their actual competition bench press anyway. Right. is that when you lower the bar and it touches your chest, the greatest amount of downward travel at the elbow and therefore the greatest amount of humeral angle expression on the way down is presented with a vertical forearm, which means that most people are going to take a grip about a hand width out from the inside, the 16 and a half inch bare spot on the inside of a power bar. Okay. About a hand width out into the nerve.

Yeah, I was just trying to help people visualize. When you say vertical forearm, it's like a straight up and down. If someone were behind you. Someone is behind you, the head judge sitting behind you would see vertical forearms. Right, right. And from both the top and from the side. Yeah. Okay. And that would yield the greatest range of motion around the shoulders. And this would therefore be the grip that we would select to use for a person

who is just strength training with the bench press. All right. There's nothing to be, there's nothing to be obtained in terms of strength wise by reducing the range of motion of the movement. So if you want to reduce the range of motion, take a real wide grip. Well, we don't care how much we're benching because we're not competitive. And you see people doing that. Sure. You do that. You see people do that in just, you know, random consumer kind of gyms. Sure you do.

Because, you know, they're just dumb. You know, they hadn't really thought about it. And what we run everything through the greatest amount of our criteria for all these lifts are the the the you want to involve the greatest amount of muscle mass in the exercise that you can that allows you to use the greatest amount of weight on the bar move through the longest effective range of motion so that that's one, two, and three, so that you can get four as strong as you can using that exercise. So if we're going to bench press for strength, then we bench press with a grip that produces a vertical forearm at the bottom.

Now, in my opinion, if I were running the International Powerlifting Federation, and when you can go on YouTube and find a world record bench press by a tiny little girl, where the bar moved an inch, I'd be concerned with the public perception of exactly what the hell she's doing. Because that's clearly not the same effort put into the bench press by a large male who actually has to move the barbell. Right. Right. So I think that what would benefit powerlifting more than anything they could do besides just getting rid of the bench press, which they're not going to do. I think that a technical rules change that states that the head judge must observe that the forearms are vertical when the barbell touches the chest of the lifter.

Now, that's easy enough to implement. It's exactly the same type of a call as a depth call on a squat. And I realize that most federations don't judge depth anymore, but the ones that do, the judge is responsible for making that judgment call. What's wrong with doing the same thing in the bench press and making the judges observe the lifter use a vertical forearm as the bar touches the chest and just turn on the red lights. That way, she's got to do a movement that looks a whole lot closer to what he's doing.

And then there's no confusion in the minds of people that are observing this exactly what the hell is going on. And not only that, but then she has to do the same type of movement that other women that she'd be competing against have to do, because if they don't have, you know, the,

the anatomy that she has, well, they're just at a disadvantage. Sorry. You know, and everybody then from that point on, everybody's doing the same bench press. Yeah, you've got some people with more flexible backs. You can get a big higher arch. Well, that can't be helped.

You know, but at least we take the effect of grip width out of the equation because if everybody is responsible for using a vertical forearm at the bottom then everybody's grip width must generate that vertical forearm so you don't get to cheat the movement by using this ultra wide grip if you're a small person. Right. Now, in my opinion, and the same thing goes for the sumo deadlift. That should have been dealt with back in 1981 by a technical rules committee meeting on Monday morning after the first guy did the sumo at the Worlds. committee meeting on Monday morning after the first guy did the sumo at the Worlds, and they should have amended the rule right then to say the deadlift shall be performed with the

grip on the bar outside the stance. And that way, little tiny girls can't set world records by pulling the bar two inches. That's stupid. It just really is stupid. And I don't see the point in not making these rules changes because it would help the sport.

It really would. Yeah, I'm sure. Speaking of arch, what are your thoughts on bench press? How much arch should you have in your back and why arch? Well, I think that most people are limited in their ability to arch. Hyper-flexible females can all show quite a bit more thoracic and lumbar overextension than you and I can. You know, I think most people can get enough lumbar arch and thoracic arch to where you can shove your hand under the small of their back when they're on the bench. I think since everybody can do it that way, that's probably fine.

But I don't think that they're, you would, if you're going to start monkeying around with the rules, you're going to have to do it one step at a time. I can't think of a quantitative way to fix a big, huge arch on a hyper-flexible female. The grip with things is easy. You could just arbitrarily ban her. You could just be like, nah, go away. Yeah, just turn the red lights on. Why did I get a red light? You know, because just go away. Yeah, just turn the red lights on. Why did I get a red light? Because just go away. Because get out of here.

That's why. That's why. Just for the everyday person, though, should they be trying to arch, achieve as much arch as possible or the standard, if you can get a tennis ball under there, you're good to go? I think that the primary thing that a person ought to be doing when they minch is to adduct the shoulder blades and get the chest up. And the reason you want to do that is because it's kind of a complicated mechanical thing that we cover in the book. And I can summarize it probably for you here by just saying that if you have your shoulders, shoulder impingement is the issue. I'm trying to think of the best way to introduce this topic.

is the issue. I'm trying to think of the best way to introduce this topic. Shoulder impingement occurs when you have an extreme amount of abduction at the humerus with regard to the glenohumeral joint. If, if you sit up in your chair right now and raise your elbows up straight to the side, right now and raise your elbows up straight to the side, then when your elbow approaches, when your humerus approaches about- Just to interject, just people listening, that is abduction, right?

Moving away from the middle. Yeah, moving away from the middle. And AD, you've probably heard of adduct is in, yeah. Adduction is in. So when your elbows are down laying on your lats you're ad ducted and when they're out at 90 degrees to the side they are ab ducted at approximately 90 degrees of abduction you are going to feel a sensation in your shoulder and that sensation is produced by the entrapment of the rotator cuff tendons between the head of the humerus and the inferior aspect of the acromioclavicular joint. And I would say if people want to see this, if they want to visualize this, just Google AC joint and you'll see.

And there's an illustration in the book that perfectly illustrates this point. Okay. So what we recommend as far as a bench press angle from humerus to the midline of the body is about 70 degrees because that removes all the impingement. What that does do, though, is drop the elbow down relative to the shoulder, and this produces a moment arm that has to be dealt with that exists between the barbell and the shoulder joint. And the price you pay for reducing that moment arm through elbow position is you're going to impinge your shoulders, and bench presses sometimes are hard on the shoulders because of this. So we recommend 70 degrees of abduction instead of 90.

The mechanical price you pay for that is that there now exists a little moment arm between the barbell and the shoulder joint that you have to overcome when you press. That's why the bar path and the bench press is not a straight vertical line. It's a curve and it curves from the chest back up to the shoulders because the lockout position is directly over the glenohumeral joint, and the bar contact on the chest is down below that. So there's about a three-inch moment arm there that's going to have to be built. So it's kind of like a little bit of a J kind of motion. Well, no, really, it's just a straight curve. It's not a J.

It's a, you know, just a kind of a slightly. Well, if you take a tip away, yeah, it just comes, yeah, it comes in and then it comes up. Right. Everybody can understand this. So one of the things that you can do to mitigate that moment arm is to get your chest up. is to get your chest up. So you're going to rotate your chest up, and in doing so, you rotate your shoulders back under the bar so that a person that knows how to do this can get a pretty vertical bar path

back out of the bench press, even with the elbows down at 70 degrees of abduction. And again, it's hard to visualize this verbally without being able to draw it. All I can tell you is that it's in the bench press chapter of the book and it's beautifully illustrated and it shows you exactly the concept you need to know and why. It explains the mechanics of all this. Yes. So that's why you need to arch your chest. Okay.

And that also ties in. You're trying to efficient mechanics through your bench press and prevent shoulder impingement. Right. And that ties into the elbow position, which was going to be my next question, which you touched on. Because, of course, what you see all the time in your everyday gyms are people, mostly guys, putting too much weight on the bar, on the bench, and then flaring their elbows up to as close to 90 degrees as they can to try to wind out those last couple reps. And that's how you wind up. That's unproductive in the long run. It's unproductive in the long run. There's a surgical procedure called the Mumford procedure that will eventually be necessary if you keep doing that.

It's best to hold the elbows down and arch the chest up. If you flare the elbows up into 90 degrees, I understand that that pulls all of the pec into the movement. It adds the delts. It's easier to bench heavier weights like that. That's absolutely true, but it's not good for your shoulders. And you ought to be taking a narrower grip than that. And you need to be very careful about arching the chest up so that you can do that nice vertical bar path with your elbows now in a little bit, because that's how you take

care of your shoulders. And you got to pay attention, especially if you're new, you got to pay attention to that, especially when you get to your, you know, if you're working at a, if you're lifting heavier weights and working close-ish to failure, those last couple reps, when, you know, you're- That's when you hurt yourself. Yeah. You're really focusing on trying to get that weight up and it's easy for the elbows to float up just as a natural instinctive way to recruit a little bit more power. That's just where it takes the presence of mind, a little bit of discipline of technique to keep your elbows where they need to be. And don't, don't use that as the, you know,

the crutch for finishing the set. Right. Exactly. And that's really, if those of you that are real interested in this, I can't recommend this enough. I'm not just trying to sell my book, but we're the only resource that illustrates this concept. And you can see exactly what we're talking about. Just get the blue book, Starting Strength, Basic Barbell Training, 3rd Edition. It shows you exactly what we're talking about. It's hard to visualize just with me and Mike here talking about it, but look it up. Agreed. I mean, if you're going to train with a barbell,

starting training is a book that you should have gone through. That should be the first thing you go through in my opinion. Right. All right. So let's move on. Those are the main points I had for bench press. I think we can move on to overhead press. And my first question for you on overhead is seated versus standing. Always standing. And so do you think, do you think there's no reason? I see no reason to do a seated press. Really? Well, if you're an amputee, I'm not being funny. I mean, if you're, if you've gotten, if you've come back from from military deployment and your legs are gone through no fault of your own, then you're going to have to do a seated press. But if you've got both your legs and you're doing a seated press, you're just being a pussy. What if?

What if? Stand up and press the barbell overhead. Use your whole body. Be happy you have your legs. Use them. I don't understand. Honor them. Yes, absolutely. Honor your legs by making them part of your pressing. They want to help you. Okay. Okay. So let me, let me, so what are your thoughts on seated? Uh, you can obviously put up more weight, which you could argue is. I don't, I doubt that at all. No, I don't agree with that at all. I mean, I, unless you've, if, if you have learned how to seated press

and you, you, you basically what you've done is learn how to do a very high angle inclined bench press. All right. But using the correct pressing technique, like we teach a dynamic start off your shoulders, you should be able to press more weight that way. And if you can't, you just haven't learned. But you should be able to press more weight overhead standing than seated. Okay. And that's probably a technical thing. Cause I've, I've, yeah, I've, I've pressed, I would say seated about 20 pounds more than, than standing,

but that's probably a technical point then. It is. That's a pretty good seated press, Mike, but I'm, It is. That's a pretty good seated press, Mike. But if you learn how to do a correct standing press, and I'm sitting here looking at a painting I have on the wall that is a rendition of a photograph of Tommy Suggs pressing from back in the 60s. That picture is on the first page of the press chapter in the blue book. You can see exactly what, when you do a correct press, your chest is actually pointing at the ceiling. And you start it with the motion of your hips, not your knees, but your hips. You learn to do a little hip kick, and this gets the bar started up off the shoulders

without the extreme amount of help that a knee kick push press would have. And once you learn how to do, and once again, like I mentioned earlier, this is an athletic movement. It's technique dependent. It has to be practiced. And practice at lightweight does not constitute practice at heavyweight because the mechanics of the motion changes as the weight on the bar goes up. You have to practice doing heavy presses. Yeah. Actually looking at it when I was just my own experience, if I look at it,

I don't think I was getting my chest quite where it needed to be. That alone could have explained some of the difference actually between the seated and the standing. Yeah. You kind of want to think about it like you're doing an incline, you know, like your chest is actually pointing. Right. So, in other words, you're going to use quite a bit of thoracic extension in order to get your chest up because that is the position that gets the most weight off of your shoulders because you want to use your pecs, Right? And then as the bar passes the top of your head, you get under the bar. But you launch the barbell up off of your chest with a hip movement, and the position is stronger if the chest is facing the ceiling.

Right. And you can see that position very, very clearly in the picture of Suggs as he's pressing this big weight up over here. Yeah. If people are listening, if you just Google Tommy Suggs. Embed that picture in your brain, man.

Yep. Suggs 2G press. And then you'll see, you'll see what Mark's talking about. Yeah. It's a, it's a great picture. Great picture.

It's a, that picture alone is worth a lot of coaching. Yeah. It's a, it's a great picture. Great picture. It's a, that picture alone is worth a lot of coaching. Yeah. Because it's go there and emulate that. Yes. And put yourself on camera and see if you can do it. Yes, absolutely. Let's talk about the hip drive. That's obviously one of the things on my list. Um, cause that's often misunderstood and it's right And I found it a little bit tricky to get used to. It is. Again, it's complicated. And the way we teach it at the seminar is we have the person stand there

with their hands on their hips, just arms akimbo, hands on your hips, and we'll tell you to tighten up your abs and your quads so that there is a band of tension from your chin all the way down to the floor. You're tightening the anterior front, just the front of your body, the whole, the abs, quads, everything is tight. And then you're going to push your hips forward into that tension. If you stay tight, it is the equivalent of drawing a bow because you're pushing into the tension. And the further you push into that tension, the more resistance you meet. And what you have to learn how to do is push into that tension to create a rebound. All right.

Now, if the bar is sitting on your shoulders and you go from a straight vertical line down the abs and the thighs, into a curve. Then the position of the barbell will drop a little bit, about an inch, just because you went from a straight line to a curved line. You see the geometry of that, right? Right. So what you're going to do is stand there with a bar in your hands. You're going to push your hips quickly. You're

going to push your hips forward. The bar is going to come down, and then as the hips come back out of the tension, the bar jumps up a little bit. So you're going to create a little bounce in the position of the bar. The bounce is caused by the change in the length of the vertical line caused by the curve as you push into the deal, into the tension of the hips and abs. Right. As you kind of go from that convex position back toward a... Right. Exactly. And then the bar jumps back up. So what you do is in the way we teach this, and it's easy to learn. If you, if you teach it like this, we put the empty bar in the hands and we make the bar jump up a couple of times. And then we say hips and press. So you're going

to catch the momentum as the bar comes up off the shoulders and press through it and lock it out. the momentum as the bar comes up off the shoulders and press through it and lock it out. And once you do it once you do it once like that, you say, Oh, okay. And then, and then the timing is easy.

Now you have to make sure you're not unlocking your knees because you leak power out of unlocked knees. Right. And you have to make sure you're not doing a down and up push press. This is a, this movement turns a forward and back, a horizontal hips movement into vertical bar movement. Makes sense. And then it's just then it's just timing and it's just and it's practice. It's timing and practice after that. But once you watch once most people see how this works with an empty bar,

then you can, you get the timing down. It feels natural to them. It's, it's a kind of a fun movement to do because it's athletic and it really helps with the press. A strict military press done without any torso movement at all. Doesn't handle a lot of weight.

And that was one of my next questions for you. But this is kind of an Olympic press. This is how we informally refer to this, is the Olympic press, or some of the geeks call it press 2.0. But this is really an Olympic press. It's a press using a hips movement, not a knees movement, a hips movement to start the bar out of the bottom. You can handle more weight like this. And unlike a push press, and good push pressers can add 30% to the weight they can press because they can get enough leg out of it to drive a whole lot more weight up. This doesn't add that much to the press,

and a push presser, an effective push presser, doesn't even really start pressing on the bar until it's about its forehead. This one is not that radical. But it does add a whole bunch of muscle mass, not that radical, but it does add a whole bunch of muscle mass. So it satisfies our criteria by involving more of the body in the movement. Right. While still retaining all of the characteristics of an actual press, you're pressing the whole range of motion.

You're getting a little help from your hips as it starts off your shoulders. You're getting a little help from your hips as it starts off your shoulders. And this is an extremely effective compromise for lifting more weight with more of your body than a strict press would provide. Let's talk about that next just for people that have heard. So how does this compare to military press or strict press? What do these terms mean? Well, a military press is a press performed without any torso movement. Okay.

It's hard to do. I mean, you've got to get your chin out of the way. Yep. You know, I haven't ever actually seen a correct military press performed because the criteria. The way I've heard it described is you ought to be able to press leaning against a wall with your back against the wall, your heels and back against the wall. You just go through your face, man. Yeah. So, in other words, you're going to produce a curved bar path that goes out around your chin.

That's not good mechanics because good pressing mechanics is a vertical bar path for all the mechanical reasons we discuss in the book. So I don't see a point in even. Are you supposed to kind of. Like we're doing a military press. Yeah. And if your head's against the wall, you can't pull it away. Right. You know.

So at any practical level, you don't really have what is a strict press anyway now you can move you can lay your head back and get out of the way and not use any hip movement and that's probably the closest you're going to get yeah to a strict press i've done that seated you can do it seated you know because you don't have your hips available to you in your seat. Right. Right. So we want you to stand there and actively use your abs and your hips and your quads and your calves and your shoulders and your traps. And here's another important point. When you lock a press out overhead overhead the load is on your traps the triceps straighten out the elbow and hold the elbow locked but at lockout the load is on

your traps so every correct press finishes with a shrug yep you've got to remember remember to shrug at the top of the prism. And why is that? It's not locked out. Yeah, why is that important? Because you want to keep from impinging the shoulder joint. Because the shrug rotates the scapulas medially and superiorly and pulls the AC joint away from the head of the humerus. See, this is the hilarious part about popular culture and the press.

What is it that every physical therapist in the northern hemisphere will tell you about the press? Oh, it impinges the shoulder. Yeah, it chews up your shoulders. No, no, it doesn't. In fact, it's anatomically impossible for a correct press to chew up the shoulders. press to chew up the shoulders. I've had both of my shoulders operated on for various reasons, and I can press perfectly comfortably. And in fact, if you go to my website, you can see a video that I have done about shoulder rehab after rotator cuff surgery that uses the press movement as the primary rehab driver. And it works. And a physical therapist that tells you not to press because it impinges your

shoulders doesn't understand either the press or the shoulder. That's obviously also a common charge level of the bench press too, is that it always chews up your shoulders all the shoulder. That's obviously also a common charge level of the bench press too is that it always chews up your shoulders all the time. It doesn't have to. Frequently it does. It's far harder on the shoulders than the press is because obviously you are trapped between the bench and the barbell. And what's in the middle?

The shoulder. Right. Well, you're never trapped under a press. If you miss a press, the bar comes down. Right? And if you finish the top of the press with a shrug, you will not even hinge the shoulder. It's anatomically impossible.

This is also illustrated in the book. All of these considerations have been dealt with in the book. And if you receive advice to not press because it's going to tear your shoulders up, I'm sorry, guys, you've just gotten some bad advice. Bad advice is everywhere. All right? Educate yourself about the anatomy and about how the press should be performed. But you didn't even, I know you don't remember this, Mike, because you're just a kid, but

40 years ago, there wasn't any rotator cuff surgery. Nobody had a rotator cuff operation 40 years ago when people pressed. Everybody, press makes healthy shoulders. It makes healthy shoulders. Yes, that's exactly the opposite of what most of you people have been told. But I'm telling you, the press makes healthy shoulders. Don't believe somebody that tells you not to press because they're damaging for your shoulders. Because they're not.

They're not damaging for your shoulders. They're good for your shoulders. They make your shoulders strong and they prevent shoulder injuries. Isn't it interesting how people are wrong sometimes? Similar to the deadlift and what it does for your back. Deadlift. Hey, you got back pain? Oh God, don't deadlift. Oh God, I'll tear your back up. It'll shear your spine into. Shoot vertebrae straight out

out against you know little bloody spots on the wall from people's vertebrae being launched across you know and and and what's the actual truth the actual truth is we take people with chronic back pain and we have deadlift and squat for two weeks and their back pain is gone. Magical mysteries. That's the truth. That's the truth. That's what actually occurs. Right.

Okay. Just because your back hurts doesn't mean that using your back is going to make it hurt more. And we probably ought to do a back pain show one of these days too. Yeah. Cause we covered the deadlift in detail in the previous, but any sort of, and I think we touched on it, but we,

we really ought to talk just about back pain. That'd actually be a great, that'd be a great follow up. Really useful for a lot of your listeners to, to, to let's get into this and talk about the epidemiology of back pain, why people's backs hurt, why they don't hurt, what makes them hurt, what makes them not hurt, what doesn't make them hurt,

and just kick that around a little bit. I think that would be real informative. I bet you'll have people asking you for that. They'll probably want follow-ups. After this comment, I'm sure. Yeah. For anything related to pain, there's obviously a lot of interest out there because if you have some pain, that's where

you're up late at night on the Googles trying to figure it out because it's annoying. Well, I think probably fully half of the questions that we get on our forum are about injuries. Yeah. Elbow stuff. That's been the case for 10 years. Shoulder stuff, back stuff, knee stuff. Everything. Yep. Everything. People are concerned about hurting.

I understand that. I understand that. But so often things are not what you think. And so often the people we trust to know this shit, doctors, don't have the slightest idea about it don't have the slightest idea about it. They have the slightest idea about it. Any doctor that puts you on opiate analgesics for chronic back pain should lose his license. And I'm dead serious about that.

Deadly serious about that. You've got a whole bunch of people running around, you know, the nation's opioid epidemic. You know where that came from? It came from back pain and from doctors prescribing opiate analgesics for back pain. That is irresponsible and it has caused lots and lots of problems for lots and lots of people. And the problem is, is they don't know what the hell they're doing. They don't know what causes back pain. They've never thought about it and they don't understand how to make it go away. And we do. And you and I are going to have fun on that show. I look forward to it. Let's plan that. Let's do it. Oh, I think those are all

the major questions that I had. I think we should just. Well, and this is about as long as anybody can stand to listen to us talk anyway. Oh, this is going to, people are going to complain. They'll be like, oh, what the fuck? This was 60 minutes. What? Yeah, I know.

They'll listen to Rogan for two hours and 45 minutes. But you and I considered talk for 45 minutes man you guys droned on and on and on I think it's been good information yeah we're not as

cool as Rogan unfortunately no and we never will be I'm okay with that yeah I can live with it all right well let's wrap up

just in case if anyone listening if I'm sure they've come across you in case they haven't what's the- We're at startingstrength.com.

Central Hub, startingstrength.com. Startingstrength.com, enormous website, getting bigger every day, new content, seven days a week, goes up about noon every day, brand new, or articles that you have not seen before, every day at noon, brand new content, stuff to talk about forums, to discuss all this stuff, videos, lectures, articles,

instruction, all that stuff, books available there or at amazon.com starting strength, basic barbell training, practical programming for strength training. Those are both in third edition. And I appreciate the time, Mike. Thanks for having me on. Absolutely. Thanks for taking the time. It's a pleasure as always.

Anytime, man. We'll see you next time. All righty. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and

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