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All right, here comes the show, you know when we were you know all of us kind of You know we're the coming of age with our workouts right around the same time I mean I started as a Yeah, you know more 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 about how much can you bend 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 Nobody would have bragged about their squat or deadlift. That's fair. That's fair I definitely and CrossFit definitely brought that to them the masses is like a thing to talk about right like people talk about They're pulling weight and they're squatting weight which they didn't before now the the and 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 read fully agree 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 are you gonna be horizontal? Pressing somebody off of you and being real stable and you know, 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, you gotta 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 strongman 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 you know, some of these lifters were performing these incredible feats of strength This is of course before anabolic steroids before even supplements If they wanted to bench press what they used to have to do is there 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 can look up some of the challenges Eugene Sandow 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, 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 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 extent, you know extended overhead press Is challenging for most people most people can't do it with with good form Yet, it's so important that we 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 side has always been into into strength. This is kind of how I get introduced to it Nobody lifted weights my grandfather in 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 gonna 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, you know thoracic spine It's all there your body full extended and it's probably why the oldest and most studied and you know form of strength competitive sport Olympic lifting involves a lot of overhead pressing in their lifts think of all the exercises that they do You know what they compete with the snatch the clean and I mean it's a lot of them involve Extending arms overhead and how much weight you can lift overhead. They don't do anything like a bench press Even a squat. Do you think it's more or less neglected in the squat overhead press? Yeah, probably a proper overhead press That's a good question. Yeah, a full overhead prep barbell overhead Standing same amount. I'll even give you seating but seated But I can't have the 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 squad. That's a good Yeah, I think you're right especially today because you bring up you brought up the point about you know Crossfit since CrossFit. I feel like you go in a gym now and it's actually rare I don't see someone's crying before like when we talked about when we all first started The dust that would be on the squat rack You would see one person may be a week that actually use the squat rack where you know ten years later Crossfit comes along now It's rare that I go in a gym and I don't see somebody at least one person squatting or dead lifting 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 point cringe worthy Like 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 astagrass kind of component to squats, too They're popular 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 there I'm sure within you know not going to full extension and just focusing on the squeeze and you know Not really articulating your shoulders all the way through and you know You'll get chiropractors out there Don't want you to go full rotation with your shoulder because it's for some reason is 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 Jay Cutler. So Jay Cutler was mr. Olympia. I don't know five or six times, right? He was a obviously impressive physique very big bodybuilder and I remember him writing about Incorporating this is this is after he turned pro. So typically bodybuilders will do You know, and this is generalized But typically will do these really big foundational movements early in their career later on is he a really big really bulky massive muscles They start to move away from these movements and more towards Machine work more towards shorter ranges of motion Part of that probably has to do with the fact of their just overall mass and you know 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 noticed his upper mid-back So he was known for started to really develop really well And this was a big deal because Jay Cutler, you know, a little bodybuilding history, right? Second place to Ronnie Coleman all the time and where Jake Jay Cutler would lose was the back Ronnie Coleman had this back that still to this day is unmatched and Jay Cutler in this article was 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 in 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 bodybuilding I know we're going off this little bit of a tangent But you just reminded me something that I haven't thought about a long time is is it Ronnie Coleman was six foot tall, right? I believe he was yeah, Ronnie Coleman was so comparing those two is kind of like the Arnold in Colombo time because Cutler short. It's like what five nine. He's like he's as walk He was I remember I'll never forget the first time that I ran into him in Vegas, and I'm walking right I wish I would take a picture of him when I was walking behind him. It looks weird how white he is Yes, he's as wide as he is tall He looks like a like a big square when he's when he's always so call Coleman's 511, which is very tall for bodybuilding Yes, yeah, so when I mean when you put those guys next to each other and the back that Coleman had it just was yeah five nine Yeah, so and I think that's even actually an exaggeration like when I these guys this thing sometimes Exaggerate all they are when they're shorter you exaggerate I'll tell you of course, but yeah, it was crazy. He was known though for shoulders his delts were insane They were and yeah five nine I think it's 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 I personally did overhead presses as a kid stop doing them later on reincorporated them in my I'd say mid 20s and Saw the best some of the best upper body development I'd ever seen and it improved my bench press and improve 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 I would be looking at the bar when I would press And so I had this massive excessive arch in my low back why I did 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, I don't do it very well. There's lots of other exercises I can do to develop my legs There's lots of other exercise I can do to develop my shoulders But the 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 the strength up in that I saw a huge difference in my incline in my flat. 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 are weak anywhere in that chain It'll reveal itself very very quickly in your case. It was yeah, exactly. Yeah much like the squad That's why I think those those two are so similar that I mean from literally your feet all the way up totally You is being incorporated and if there's a breakdown anywhere, you'll 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. Yeah, there whenever you're looking at a especially a high skill extra 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 an Olympic lift, but it's definitely more skillful than most other shoulder exercises or upper body Exercises and so what off 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 You know 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 kind of trying to work and sharpen on our overhead press is to be able to add more tension and you utilizing that grip You know to really enhance You know 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 it 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 bodybuilder or you never did full range You kind of grab when you do a shoulder press you grab this real wide. Yeah, 90 degree in your elbows Shoulder press movement where when I started training with Justin my Elbows were much much narrow tucked in by my side So I could bring the bar all the way down in my 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 to 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 the bottom line was I practiced overhead pressing often and That allowed me to get really good at the skill over overhead pressing It got me really good at knowing how to brace my core properly How to stand properly and then 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. It didn't feel like I wasn't stable 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 and 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 off often practice is important and study support this now Yeah, so a couple things that bodybuilding does really well is Really connects you to 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 that weak link is a Lot of times it's in the overhead position and the full lockout position Yeah, and so that's something too as I went through practicing like 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 getting the core involves a huge part of that but also just Being able to to recognize that overhead position and be strong in that overhead position Was a massive game changer for you 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 well wasn't it with Justin was the same thing for me I you know why you don't see that in like a 24-hour fitness. You'll never see at least I have never seen that I've never seen somebody Put kettle bells or a bar anything over their head and then walk across here. 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 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. No, and you know why part of it is it's not ever promoted is like a Muscle developer or such a body shape a great movement, but it is it's a tremendous one I got great shoulder development and upper back development from doing it But what it but the 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 a hundred percent 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 weights down on your chest It's not that big but you're off an inch and the weights over your head 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 you 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 and a straight line keeping everything break slow and controlled and and that's what I love about this You talked about earlier about how you know There's any breakdown in the kinetic chain like you're gonna be weak That's why you walk and that's yeah when so when you do these overhead carries You're 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 keeping that like perfect Posture through the entire movement at the 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 my press yep, and I'd never did it now I'd 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. 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 Mm-hmm. You have to brace your core sit real tall You're not nearly as stable as if you're sitting on a bench or or even a physio ball It's very different from even a physio 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 in that full extension really has to come through Yeah at the top of a z-press otherwise you're gonna fall back on your back What a great exercise for overhead press. 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 gonna 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 and this is one of those It's just like okay. If you don't have proper stability. This is gonna totally destroy it I'm so mad that I did not find this movement until way later in my career In fact, we're pretty much done personal training. I mean I had maybe a few clients at this time This 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 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 get like, you know I've done one of the viral videos I did on YouTube was the split stance bicep curl Right 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 it was magnificent It was so simple and yet it like corrected so much of my client's 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 you have to stabilize at the top so you get that part of it Your core has to be tightened up or you'll you'll fold and fall over it 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 you'll see a huge difference in form and technique One of the hardest things to learn with an overhead press is that bringing the head forward and getting that full extension 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 a barbell or a broomstick and see how it feels to get a full straight line What I mean by 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 30 to 50 percent 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 That's I would have loved it with my clients and that's what I would have done I would have done no weight. Can you do this with no weight? Let's get in that position learn that and then we'll add a little bit of weight Perfect prerequisite for teaching somebody how to do an overhead press is to get it also Changed the way I do all my shoulder press movements on other exercises So for example because you have to Fully extend the core sp tight and then you kind of have to stay the first time you do this If you haven't done it before you're 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 for that movement So doing this is a movement 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 with single arm presses normal barbell presses push presses I actually I stabilized at the top for a couple seconds before I bring down which you 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 back down instead now when I press I stabilize perfect then come back down press Stabilized and 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 moves Well before we jump into the 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 going to take you out of alignment in your press And so what a bottoms-up press is with a kettlebell. So basically you flip it upside down And you're holding the handle of it. Yeah, so challenging So that's just like and a lot of times with the overhead press you're going to see a lot of broken wrists So like the wrists are going to be down in this position, which is not going to 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 You know is something to work on and so if that's that's a challenge for you I'd probably start there and then start with like 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 Then 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 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 is Clipping on you it's going to flip over and land right on your forearm So it forces you to and I the 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 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 you know, I've talked about this before he's got arthritis everywhere He's been working, you know 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, hey, how much is this way? And I knew my 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'd never taught him an over You know bottoms up he flipped a 70 pound kettlebell upside down and press 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 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 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 this is a big deal So it's very challenging. So this comes out and I you know, 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 a like hardcore shoulder actually work out that or like w's and you know, it's the Rotator cuff and stabilizer muscles that get in 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 the shoulder isn't floating in like the the proper position And it's a lot it's sliding left or right or front or back and then it's looming impingement there Yeah, and then you're getting impingement and then that's what's limiting them from actually doing this where to what jesson 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 and this is for bench pressing too So I I like to do this stuff But both w's and the bottoms up press before any pressing movement So whether i'm doing going to go heavy bench that day or heavy overhead press I love to use the the suspension trainer do some w's do a couple bottom 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 encyclopedia bodybuilding and in there Bertle Fox who was a bodybuilder that he used to show all the shoulder exercises He talked about doing Over you know push presses as being this great mass builder now the way I did him 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 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 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 the like 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 its power Torque is right now right now you got that power So when you 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 a lot of strength You call upon it right away. So that's the right way in my experience to do a completely different stimulus Yes, you know like the grinding strength is is very valuable and being able to kind of 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 Uh, you know gives your muscles a completely different stimulus that then they react to and then you're going to notice too How that forms and shapes your muscles to even like gain more size and strength Now this does fall under the the category explosiveness or like plyometric type of work where it's definitely closer to that Yeah, I so this is uh, 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 fast 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 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 by loading this sucker up and then doing it in explosive I also love when you do this back to the point I was making earlier about the stabilizing at the top man If you 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 there It kind of reminds me of like I'll never forget the first time my buddy and I've talked about this on show a long time ago When they wanted me to feel what you know, uh, three plates fell out Actually, I think it was two plates was way before I could even do that On a squat and they just wanted me to feel that that kind of weight That's how I feel like when I would get to a place where I was over Or I was doing the explosive presses with weight that I knew I couldn't strict press yet And then the 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 yeah And again, it's 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 you want to explode up hold at the top stable Then bring it back down and you 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 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 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 where I get the that's how I get that explosive benefit Out of that exercise. You're talking you know, you're talking about a lighter way to this I was talking I was talking about doing a heavier weight just in what's your opinion on 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 light weight that you can control with good speed first Yeah, but I also think there's there's tremendous value in being able 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've You want to enhance that further? That's a way to get up a lot of weight So now we can really start, you know 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 that's a misconception a lot with power training is There's speed training and then there's also like, you know Strength speed, I guess you would call it. So, you know, those two are are are somewhat different, but Provide, you know, their own unique. Well, that's a great no It's a great example And if you're if I'm talking to an advanced lifter who's got a good press That 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 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 Well, yeah, so this 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, you know, rotational movements You know, 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 You know a part of of, you know, progressive overload you can add into your programming That I I got turned on to by Old methods with Indian clubs and with the macebell training. And so you've seen examples of this, you know, popularized by You know, some of these like kettlebell groups that kind of came and then, you know, like on it and some other Companies have kind of highlighted Some of these old methods and their value. And so I was in on that whole um Quest to to find like unique exercises that had value and found my way to these Indian clubs and just doing these heart swings It just showed me, you know, how how many How many parts are involved? In in an actual rotation with your wrist your elbows your shoulders what your shoulder was more capable of And so, you know 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, you know, they have that nice like sort of long lever to it. So it adds Uh, you know that that 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, the stimulus that you're actually it's It's a struggle. It's an acceleration a 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 man, you know, I'm swinging something substantially heavy Uh, and I I have to have perfect mobility and strength, you know in this rotation Uh in order to, you know, not hurt myself for one, but also Uh, that's something that's going to keep sort of bulletproofing 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 Bulletproof your shoulders better than that I mean when you think about everything you're saying, you know, like accelerate decelerate the weight Control it through full range of motion forwards and backwards and all the muscles that are involved in You're developing everything that's around that 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 who also got me involved in that and I remember like breaking it down that way 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 Just keep your shoulders healthy 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 And I can't say the same 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 the 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 you 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 could do for yourself By the way, if you don't have a mace uh or You know indian clubs I recommend you get them But you can also do like halos with uh a plate or a dumbbell where you're starting for your body 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 It's one of the more interesting joints The hips and in are the most 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 shoulders like floating with the si joint and all that stuff But with the shoulder you have the humor and then you have the scapula If if you extend your arm above your head without moving your scapula, you're not going to 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 why 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 had 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 delt exercises now for those of you into body sculpting and bodybuilding You probably do rear delt 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'm you know overhead pressing. Okay. I'm just going to practice that I don't really need my my rear delts 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 got to develop the shoulder in its entirety. Otherwise you're going to miss out on its full capacity for strength Well, that's a great point. I mean to to to kind of put it back in terms of like Natalie like I didn't consider these quite as much and I remember like talking with adam about this As he was trying to develop his shoulders, you know to get on stage and I was working that I realized like Wow, this just puts me in such a better position posturally To that it's it's addressing because I'm I'm so forward. I'm so much in that, you know sagittal Plane and everything it all always loaded in front of me I'm not really like paying attention or putting emphasis on on, you know, these muscles that are supporting That to to happen and keep everything tracking well And so just getting strong there helped to kind of you know, pull Pull it back. So, uh, you know the potential for me to get that pain again Really decrease substantially. Well, I love I love that point show me a person with great rear delts That doesn't have pretty good upper body posture You just it's I that was one of my favorite things about 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 it's very obvious too when somebody goes to do them That you're just not used to working because many people can't hit them Because it's this mo 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 the shoulder head press But overall posture, I think it's it's for sure something you got to do You know what I noticed as a kid was there was one athlete in what type of athlete in particular that always had Incredibly developed shoulders and in particular incredibly Incredibly developed rear delts And when I say the sport and I know you're going to think about those athletes You're going to 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 delt And you think what does the rear delt have to do with throwing a punch has 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 this all time. It's just working on overall mobility Here's a here's one mobility movement that it's easy that I think a lot of people can benefit from And those two reasons are why it's one of my favorites. Just your 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 humerus 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 miss 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 they're cheating the movement Yeah, if you you really have to maintain firm good posture like an upright position Uh, and then also like I see a lot of elbows bending and breaking, uh, 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 I usually coach and have work on the grip in terms of sort of pulling outward to get more tension there Uh and maintain your posture You know 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 Uh because if you have to break in terms of bending your elbow or moving And arching your back and stop right there. Stop. That's then then it's nil at that point I for me my favorite to teach is the zone one the zone one test I just for the average person Um, the feedback of the wall is what is is so different than all those other movements Is that they have something that can tell them like oh, they're forming up perfect It's really hard like somebody who looks at one of you guys doing a like a shoulder dislocate Or even like a wall circle and then I start throwing the things 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 They're telling them what's going on Whereas I could take somebody who is a 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 from the wall So practicing the zone one test and getting good and it 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 it encourages tension Right encourages that you stay connected if you do it right to all those moving parts So I I agree. I think that's another one another one would be handcuffs 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 Loosey-goosey in their shoulders and you know what they would call hyper mobile But with really low tension and they could do shoulder dislocates No problem just 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 the 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 to 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 of motion 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 and now you're asking for You know a disc to get slipped or impinged because you're not able to stabilize with the 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 that we talked about helps you stabilize that core if you have a state By the way for those you listening who are like, what do you mean strong core? I can overhead press a lot I tell you what put on a weight belt go 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 press than almost any other movement I'm as you're talking right now. I'm kind of thinking about I'm like, what else could I think of that? Having a strong core contributes to everything But I mean like really contribute to that movement more than any other movement. Yeah, it's easy the limiting factor Yeah, I would make the case for that not only for the the top of the movement because you've got this extended lever But even the beginning when you initiate, you know think of like a sprinter who's getting ready to take off and run They 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 going to 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 ever seen that where the frame literally twists and if it's not stable enough that power is gone That car is 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 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, you know overhead stability, right? Think of like ice skaters, right? When the when the guy lifts up the girl and he's skating across the rink or whatever super stable Gymnast right when they're holding people above overhead They're lifting their partner, which is you know on 120 pounds 100 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 circle sole show and watching some of these people hold each other Up above their head and I remember thinking I was the shoulder strength was cool It's like man their shoulders were holy cow their 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 You don't realize how much energy and strength you lose when you don't because it has to be distributed to all these other muscles Yeah, when that's like where you're really going to notice is when you start getting three four five six ten 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 mind pump free.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 mind pump free.com. You can also find all of us on instagram So justin is at mind pump justin. I'm at mind pump sal and adam is at mind pump adam