 Question is from DSA Inc. 213, what are the differences between a front and behind-the-head overhead press? Is one more beneficial than the other? Okay, so they both have unique benefits, but before we get into those, one is more risky. Yeah, way more. So a traditional front overhead press with the bars in front of your head is far less risky than a behind-the-head overhead press. A behind-the-head overhead press requires a lot of good mobility control. You have to explain. It wouldn't be if we all had healthy posture. Yeah, if you could just, it's not the case. Yeah, I mean if, and that's why we weren't taught it in any of our certifications. Like if every national cert that I have, every single one of them, none of them advocate for it. Oh, they avoid it like the plague. Yeah, it's a do not do type of deal. And so that's why I didn't teach it and I didn't do it myself for many years, which actually probably did more harm than good for me. And the truth is, if it hurts you or you can't do it with good form. Don't do it. Yeah, don't do it till you can, but that's a great sign that there's an area you need to work on. Totally, yeah. And it's the lack of shoulder mobility and probably thoracic mobility that is limiting you from being able to do that, which is an obvious thing since I think the percentage is somewhere between, I wanna say 65 and 80% of the population suffers from upper cross syndrome. So if a majority of the population have the rounded shoulders and the forward head, well, yeah, trying to take a bar behind your head. Without jutting your head forward and externally rotating your shoulders. Yeah, but if you can do it, it's gonna promote good shoulder mobility and thoracic mobility. Totally. So it's kinda like the, think of it the same way of like doing a deep squat. Most people shouldn't do an astagrass squat because they don't have the capabilities to do it because their form is gonna break down, they're gonna fill it in their low back, they're gonna fall way forward, but that's a sign that you should work on that. So I was this person. Now what's cool, now that I've done all the work of working on my mobility for a solid year and a half or so to get into a deep squat, now the only thing I need to do to keep mobility in my ankles and my hips is deep squat. That's what's awesome is that, so if you can't do behind the neck presses right now, the real benefits of being able to do them is it promotes good shoulder and thoracic mobility and that's an excellent thing. No, totally. Now an overhead press is hard to do for the average person anyway. It still requires work and mobility and you take that behind the neck and you've just exponentially made the exercise far more difficult. Now that all being said, just like Adam said, if you can do them properly, if you have good control, good stability, I love behind the neck presses. It's a completely different type of form. I feel it in different parts of my shoulder. I go lighter because of the position that I'm maintaining, the pumps I get in my shoulder phenomenal. I feel like I get less of the front part of my shoulder and a little more of the side of my shoulder when I'm pressing up, mainly because of the position that I'm trying to hold myself in. It was a favorite among bodybuilders back in the day. Back in the 70s, 80s and 90s, bodybuilders favored behind the neck press over traditional overhead press. The overhead press didn't get popular in bodybuilding. It was popular originally in the 40s and 50s, maybe 60s. It didn't get popular again until relatively recently because you had bodybuilders like Jay Cutler who did standing overhead presses and of course whatever the top guy does, everybody else does. But for a long time, it was all about behind the neck presses, behind the neck pull downs. You see Arnold Schwarzenegger and Franco Colombo doing them like crazy. I love them. I have to go much lighter. So if I do an overhead press, I'm gonna go, the lightest I'll go with a barbell is 100 pounds. As I'll go as heavy as 130 to 140 pounds. When I'm behind the neck, I go 50, 60 pounds and maybe 100 pounds at the absolute heaviest. Yeah, I would definitely put that as an advanced exercise to where it is something that is achievable and attainable and it does provide value. Like it definitely promotes a different stimulus for your muscles to respond to and it does help your shoulders build in a different way but it's gonna require a lot of work, a lot of prerequisites to even get close to be able to have access and also to control it properly. This is why I love the Z-Press. The Z-Press. I fell in love with this exercise for this exact reason. It was around the time that I was working on this. Yeah, cause when you first, it wasn't long ago you first started doing behind the neck presses. Right, cause I couldn't. Like many people, I couldn't take the bar behind the back of my head without forcing my head forward and what I loved about that. Now, some of the, obviously the prerequisites that Justin's talking about, your wall circles, your thread, the needle, your even doing a PVC pipe, your handcuff to rotation, these are all great mobility exercises to do to start with getting in the right position. Then the exercise that I love to do to help me get to a place where I can do behind the neck presses is the Z-Press. And the two main reasons why that. One, when you're in the Z-Press position and you press, which for those that don't know what that is, it's when you're, and I like to do it inside the squat rack where I'm sitting on my butt and I use the- And your legs are straight out. Yeah, my legs are straight out and I use the guards on the squat rack, like you with safety guards to start the bar on there to where it's resting by my chest. And then you press up above your head, pull your head through the window. And the key to this is the stabilization at the top. So I, when I'm teaching this to a client that I'm working on this with is we'll start really light and we start in the Z-Press, we press and it completely extend all the way up and stabilize up there. That stabilization with the bar completely extended above your head, your head pulled through the window, we say. And that right there is a great place to start. This is also why I would do those like one-arm carries and stabilizing like weight overhead carries. And then also, because you need to learn that mechanism, that mechanism on packing the shoulder. So not just reaching out, but you have to anchor that too with your shoulder blade. And so to be able to stabilize properly in your full lockout, being able to control the load, be able to decelerate it properly, bring it down nice and slow. And all these things involved, it takes some time and effort but you definitely can build your way towards a nice solid behind the neck press. And the beauty of the Z-Press is that you can't cheat it. And that's why I like it better than single-arm exercises or machine or anything else that you're trying. It's great for teaching. It's almost cheaper. It is because in order for you to stay upright and fully extend to where the bar is above, or behind your head and your arms in line with your ears, that's the only way it works without you falling backwards. If you press and extend all the way and you're the type of person who arches the back and uses your chest to leverage up and you can't pull your shoulder blades back like Justin's saying, you will fall backwards. And so it's a great way to teach those good mechanics. This is like to Sal's big argument on Instagram in the last few days about, here's a good example of like, this is where coaching comes into play for a really long time. If you were to show somebody the research on a Z-Press compared to a standing overhead press, which builds the most muscle in your shoulders, like Z-Press is gonna lose. It's not a better movement in comparison to a standing overhead press where I can generate more force and I have more. But its value is not in building muscle in comparison to it. Exactly. And so that's just something that you've learned from years of coaching people and knowing that trying to- And application of it. Right, getting clients to cue them the correct way to do the movement properly. It's one of those little trainer tricks I love. You know who does a version of that exercise that I've seen done over and over again of that is Olympic lifters. You ever seen Olympic lifters? They'll put the bar across the traps. Yeah, like they finish this like they're squatting and then they pop and they press it up and bring it back down. That's a move, what does that call, Justin? That's a move, isn't it? Yeah, like, I mean, it's pretty much just like a push press but it's off the traps. But it's off the traps. And it's in a seated position. No, no, standing. No, standing. It's explosive. Oh, you're saying standing. Because, you know, when you're Olympic lifting they have to be so good at lining their body up straight up above their head with maximum weight. They can't be forward an inch or back an inch or they're gonna lose the lift. So that's one of their lifts. I saw a video on YouTube of Mario Pudzanowski. He was the world's strongest man doing that with like 300 pounds. And that encouraged me to do a full range of motion behind the neck press. When you get really good mobility and control bring the bar all the way down to your traps and press all the way up. The pump you get from that, but again, you gotta do it right. Otherwise you're gonna hurt yourself. But the pump you get from that is insane. It's one of the number one exercises that'll give me the best shoulder pump by far.