Would you build a building in a swamp? No. Why not? Becasue it’s squishy… and so are you. Don’t take that as an insult, I mean to say that in comparison to bedrock you are easily compressible. What does this have to do with lifting heavy things? Everything. In this post I’ll focus on how turning yourself into a granite slab will greatly improve your lifting.

When I first started pressing I never took my setup seriously. I would unrack the bar without taking a big breath and flexing my abs and upper back. Then, as I would begin to press, my body would compress lose all the hard work I was putting in to press the weight overhead. Why was I losing all this hard work? Because I did not have a solid surface to press against. As I was pressing the bar up, I was pressing my body down and moving it out of position. Energy was being lost everywhere in the connection between my main muscles and the bar.Because of the inefficiency in the transmission between my muscles and the bar, as well as the inefficiency caused by being in the wrong position to press I had to work extra hard to lift well under my potential.

How did I fix these errors? First off I learned to take a big breath and hold it before I unracked the bar. If I need to I can take another smaller breath before I start to lift. Secondly I learned to get my upper body very tight, again this is before I unrack the bar. The best way to do this is by thinking about pulling your shoulders back, and thinking about pulling your chest up and your ribcage down. The chest/ribcage cue can be hard to learn at first, but combined with the shoulders back it really locks the entire upperbody in place and provides the best platform for pressing.

The next, and possibly most important, technique that I have learned is to flex my legs really hard. Because your do not have to use your legs at all in the press this is the best way to provide your upper body with a solid platform to work on. Combined with the tightening of the upper body, flexing the legs can also help to engage the abs. All of these techniques will put you in the best position to press from and will keep you there throughout the entire movement.

I seriously love pressing. Not bench pressing, although that can be pretty fun as well. The standing press is great for all kinds of reasons; strength, pushing mental limits, assistance for other overhead/and or pressing movements, as well as the general caveman/brute strength fun. The press can be one of the best ways to build upper body strength and integration with the abs. In order to successfully press overhead you have to have both shoulder strength and the ability tighten your body in order to provide a stable base to press from. The press can be a great way to build strength in overhead movements such as the push press or jerk as well as a nice way to avoid over training injuries in the bench press.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the press is how hard you have to work to lift the weight. One rep max presses can often take a long time to complete due to necessity of grinding out the rep. This slow movement under maximal load is what really helps to build ab and back strength that is integrated into a shoulder movement. It is also fun as hell. If you enjoy lifting weights you will enjoy the challenge of a hard press, fighting the long battle that rewards you at the end with a new pr. Of course, this can also lead to the press being very frustrating. Just remember that the ability to press large weights guarantees you will be rated by your friends as “most likely to succeed at being a caveman.”