 Our next caller is Alexis from New Jersey. Hey, Alexis, how can we help you? Hi, guys. So I've been noticing that whenever I try to do an overhead press, I struggle with that initial lift off, like the front rack position. I was wondering if you guys have any tips for that. Yeah, good question. Super common, by the way, Alexis. That's the hardest part of the lift for most people. So there's nothing weird or wrong with how you're doing it or whatever. Anytime you have a sticking point in a lift, one of the things you could do is literally focus on that part of lift. So with a overhead press with a barbell, one thing you can do is literally take the bar off the rack in the front rack position, press it up, bring it back down, rack it, wait five seconds, then do the same thing. The reason why you wait is because this gets rid of that buildup of, what's it called, elastic strength that you build up when you lower a weight and then press it back up. So what you're doing is you're constantly working on that dead stop position of the press. You have to go lighter when you do this, but if you practice this often, you should get better at that particular part of the lift. What's the most difficult part? I know wrist mobility is a limiting factor to that in the rack position itself. What would you say if you wanted to pinpoint where it's a struggle for you? I would say just mentally connecting to the fact that, okay, I'm getting ready to push this up now. Once the weight is moving up in the air and I'm ready to walk out, that's fine, but just the initial part, connecting to whatever muscles to get the weight up. Okay, I see. Have you ever worked with kettlebells at all? I was just going to go that direction, I'm glad you did. Not too frequently, but I do have some experience with them. Okay, there's a few things. I've gotten the guys into this overhead carries, but also just like in the rack position doing some carries, so you familiarize your body with that position. The load itself, being able to just have control over that and brace and be able to generate force in that position, it's a good way to start really kind of familiarizing your body with that. So the way it's loaded, it's on the backside of your arm, so it's really conducive to pressing and overhead and doing sort of spiral type of presses that will really help to get that rotational support and be able to stabilize the joint and you'll find that you get stronger as a result of just working with a tool like the kettlebells itself. Alexis, how good are you about priming your shoulders before you go do your shoulder press? I actually make it a priority for sure. I forgot the name of it, but when you take a stick or something and you kind of like rotate it around the back of you. Shoulder dislocates. Yes, I do those. Is that the main thing that you do before you prime the shoulders to go in? I kind of also do some like lateral raises with like two and a half pound plates and I also have resistance bands, so I'll use like a light resistance band first and then go heavier and then eventually use a barbell. Do you have access to a strap? I heard you're in a gym right now. Do you have access to a strap like a TRX strap suspension trainers? My gym doesn't have that, no. So you can use your bands, use the really light band and do you know what a W looks like? If you can totally go on YouTube, I think we've done videos on this too and look up suspension trainer W's. You can do that same movement with a really light band. I like doing that before I do any shoulder stuff just because that joint is a floating joint and getting all it primed the entire thing, doing just the shoulder dislocates. Sometimes people just get in the motion of going back and over and they're not really priming the shoulder really well and doing a row to the W really wakes up the entire shoulder and then I would do a movement like Justin said like kettlebell presses with a little bit of weight and resistance and then go into your shoulder press with a barbell and see how you feel after that. Okay, sounds great. I'll definitely try that out. Yeah, Alexis, I'm going to back up what Justin said. I think carrying dumbbells or kettlebells in that bottom rack position and walking is going to probably help you the most. I think holding and staying tense in that position, the key is not to rest the kettlebell or the dumbbell in that bottom position but rather support it and stay tight and then walk for like 30, 40 steps. That tension, that isometric tension is going to build strength in that bottom position. I mean, when he said that light bulb enough, oh yeah, that would make a huge difference. Yeah, and I forgot this one more point. If you're working your way back to the barbell itself just to get a nice tight grip with a fist grip and have some outward tension so you're actually kind of pulling on the bar outwardly, it creates that, the body responds to it that the joint is more stabilized and so you're able to generate a bit more force so just being able to pull out and create tension before you lift, you're going to feel a lot more comfortable pressing it overhead from there. So what I would add to that is making sure that right before you press you think about squeezing your glutes and your abs tight so you have a good solid base. A lot of times people feel loose at the bottom because their core is not tense before they press up and that instability in the core which is your base and foundation of a press like that that's a lot of times the problem. So right before you press up think about squeezing your glutes like if you're doing a hip thrust squeeze your glutes and tighten your abs got it. All right, thank you for calling in Alexis. Thank you guys, I really appreciate it. Yeah, that you know the way the CNS works, you know, because the CNS, right, that's like the the amplifier to the speakers which are muscles, right? It's what turns on the muscles to make them fire and the CNS fires more powerfully when more of it is turned on, less of it's turned on. So in other words if I do, if I want to get my right quadricep to fire as strongly as it can I have to fire the whole body. We actually do this naturally when you're lifting something real heavy or doing something even with one hand that's real stressful you'll naturally tense up your entire body. So, you know, when you're trying to go from a dead stop position you can't go from, it's hard to go from dead stop to all of a sudden turn everything on better to turn everything on then go. Yeah, I imagine like I know you guys have seen this in carnivals and whatnot where it has that grip tester where you squeeze it and then you see the lights kind of go up the harder you squeeze it. You got to think about that when in terms of if you're not generating enough force, if you're not lighting up enough muscle fibers to contribute to that lift, you know, that could be an issue. Well, I just think when you're talking about the shoulder, like the hips it's a ball and socket joint and so you have all these muscles that are kind of supporting this floating joint and if they're not all woken up and activated and stable you feel unstable at the bottom just like when someone feels really unstable at the bottom of a squat. If you don't do a good job of waking up the hips just like if you don't do a good job of waking up all the muscles around the shoulder you feel really unstable when you go to a press just like when someone does a squat. Yeah, and then of course, if there's a part of a rep of an exercise that you're not comfortable with, literally just training that part makes a huge difference, huge difference. You can literally stop your reps at that part, hold the position then do your left, you could add more weight at that bottom part or make that the determining factor to how much weight you put on the bar. Just train that part I did this with bench press as a kid. I got the bottom part was so hard that what I started doing is I started doing, you know, I would do half reps bottom up just to practice that portion and I got so good that it actually became a stronger part of my lift.