What's up, guys? Jake Hutton from Fitness Culture.
Today we're gonna be talking about how you can improve your overhead press really quickly.
So this is one of my favorite progressions for the overhead press.
Let's get into it.
So one of the biggest reasons that it's hard to increase your overhead press, and I'm sure
you've noticed this, is you add just a small amount of poundage and you shut down.
It's one of those lifts where just a tiny bit of weight makes it from being easy to
being really hard, really fast.
And the reason that is, is you start from the stacked position right on your shoulders,
and just getting the weight moving is essentially going to be one of the hardest things.
So when Sunny's sitting here with her elbows straight down, her core is nice and tight,
getting it off her shoulders is going to be the hardest part of the movement in the overhead press.
So, the way that we work around that, and the beauty of the overhead press, is that
it's one of the safest movements to cheat and get it up, and that would be called a
push press, so it's an actual lift.
You're going to push press the weight up, and then we're gonna control the eccentric down.
So during this entire cycle the first few weeks, that's what we're gonna be doing.
We're going to be working on push press, you're gonna drive your legs, explode the weight
up, and then you're gonna be getting all the work for your overhead press on the eccentric
part of this movement.
Right now we're gonna go over the points of performance on a push press a little bit,
just to give you an idea on how to execute it properly.
Alright, so we're gonna show you what a push press looks like if you haven't done one before.
Sunny is gonna step out.
The biggest thing on the push press is you wanna make sure that your elbows are down
and out, your core is nice and tight, and you're creating a shelf for your shoulders here.
Because when you dip down, you're gonna dip down with the weight on your shelf, and then
you're really gonna drive through your hips, explode your hips through, initiate that bar
off your shoulders, because this is gonna be, when we do this progression, at some point
this is gonna be heavier than you can press with your strict overhead press max, and we're
gonna be doing it for reps.
So you're really gonna need to use your legs and your hips to drive that weight up above your head.
So, core is nice and tight, elbows are down and out, you've got it racked up on your shoulders,
from there you want to dip straight down, knees track over the toes, explode your hips,
almost like you're doing a vertical jump, driving those hips all the way through, and
then finish through the bar, just like Sunny did.
So let's do one more in full speed.
When we control down the eccentric during this progression if you want it to transfer
well to your overhead press, you're gonna bring it down in the mechanics you would in
an overhead press.
You're not gonna have your shoulders out as much, you're gonna point them down right here.
So you're gonna lower it down like this.
So core is gonna be tight, you're gonna squeeze your glutes, so let's get it up to the top
real quick. Drive it up.
From here, squeeze the glutes, core is nice and tight, and you're gonna let your elbows
come straight down, and you're gonna control it all the way to your chest, nice and slow.
And that's where you're gonna get the work, right here off your chest.
From there you'll re-rack it before you go into your next push press.
So now that we've gone over that, the most common fault during this movement is people
aren't working that last portion.
So right when they hit their highs, they're gonna drop it to their shoulders.
So we'll show you what that looks like.
So a lot of the time, let's say it's a 4 second eccentric, people will 1, 2, 3, drop, just like that.
If you want this to transfer to your overhead press really well, you want to focus on controlling
it all the way down, even spending a little bit more time on the way down to your shoulder.
That's gonna give you a lot of power off your shoulder once we get into the overhead press
portion of the progression.
So once we finished our push press progression during this cycle, the next thing we're gonna
do is obviously start working with some heavier weights for the overhead press, leading you
up to a max week.
So we're just gonna go over a couple of points of performance on the overhead press.
The biggest things that we see wrong, number one, people are a little too relaxed when
they walk into the bar.
For me, I've found that if I grab the bar and try to break the bar, so basically, externally
rotate as hard as I can like this before I step in, it keeps everything nice and tight,
and it's almost like a little spring right off my chest to initiate the movement.
So really try to make sure you're externally rotated when you're set up.
The next thing, once you do get set up, step out, a lot of people experience low back pain
on this is because you just let your core hang out.
What's gonna happen right there, is you're gonna lose all that power on that initial push.
Because you're gonna put it into your low back, so all that power's gonna be gone instead
of keeping your core tight.
So you want to keep your core as tight as possible, your elbows are gonna be straight
down, squeeze your glutes as tight as possible, because that's gonna be protecting your low
back, because really on an overhead you are gonna lean back just a little bit.
You're gonna clear your head, lean back just a little bit, try to think about driving your
rib cage to your belly button, squeezing your glutes as hard as you can, and then you're
gonna drive through the bar.
Keep that core tight, squeeze your glutes tight, and just drive through the bar
as hard as you can.
Alright guys, I hope those little technique tips for the push press and the overhead press
will help you clean up your technique a little bit and hopefully help you to hit a PR.
And also, we only showed you a little bit obviously of this progression.
You can click the link in the description and we'll give you the whole progression.
So the sets and the weight, and how we put it together for a full 10-week cycle.
So if you wanna check that out click the link in the description to download it.
If you like this content, please leave me a comment on what you want me to cover next
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