 Today, I'm going to teach you how to press the most weight possible for press meats like the USSF or what they used to do in the Olympics before 1972. Coming up next. All right. So we've talked a lot about the press on this channel, the overhead press, what we often just call the press. It's just a strict, what a lot of people call a military press, right? Take it out of the rack, nice and smooth, no momentum, fire up, hold the breath, breathe out, down and up, right? That's a strict, basic press. Well, in the Olympics before 1972 and really in the years from like 67 to 72, we saw the most ridiculous pressing strength ever. We saw three different guys press over 500 pounds strict. And what I mean by that is a lot of people who don't press strict might use a push press where they bend the knees and then throw the weight or they might do a push jerk, which we have videos for that on the Barba Logic channel where they bend the knees and they throw and then they step up like this, right? In the Olympics pre-1972, they actually had a clean and press. And the rule was you couldn't bend the knees. However, many of the best lifters, guys like Ken Patera, Vasily Alexeyev, Tommy Suggs, Bill Starr, these guys, they figured out how to still use some body momentum to press the bar overhead while still keeping the rules. And this applies a lot today in a federation like the USSF and the United States Strength Lifting Federation where you're not allowed to bend your knees, but you are allowed to push your hips forward. And so one of the things we're going to try to do today is I'm going to show you how to reduce the range of motion, get the bar in contact with your shoulders or collar bone. And this is specifically difficult for a guy like me because I have a long forearm and a short upper arm. Most of you actually have an easier job doing this, getting it into contact with the body. And then three, how to actually use your hips and your torso to help throw the weight. If I can throw the weight and the bar is in contact with my body, then all of that energy will transfer from my body into the barbell. If the barbell is hovering above my body and I push my hips forward, some of that is going to bounce and I'm going to have an energy leak with the bar. So I'm going to show you what that looks like. Okay, so in a typical press, we do three things to start the movement. Close grip, elbows forward, wrist straight. So the setup might look like this. Close grip, elbows forward, wrist straight, stand up, right? The difference is in an Olympic press, we're going to take a wide grip. How wide? Well, about a hand width wider than your standard press grip. However, what I really want to do is make sure I can get the bar in contact with my shoulders, with my body. And for a guy like me that's got long forearms, I'm going to have to bend my wrist back a little bit to get there, actually quite a bit more than I normally would. So I'm not going to take a close grip. My elbows are still going to be forward of my wrists, but my wrists are not going to be straight. And I'm going to try to get the bar in contact with my body. At first, it's not going to be there. As the weight gets there, this is 135, I can press more than this. It's going to take a little bit more weight to probably press down and really get in contact. So let's watch. Come in, get set up, bars in contact with my neck. I'm going to push my hips forward and then throw and lock out. Then just like so, a couple of things. One, I really like wearing tight wrist wraps because my wrists are going to be bent. So again, I'm going to take a wide grip bent wrist. Elbows are still going to be forward of the wrist. The goal is to get the bar in contact with my body. Two, I'm doing this inside the rack so we can shoot the video today. I'm pretty tall to press inside the rack. I might actually have the bar hit the top of the rack. Normally I would do this outside the rack, but for space and video. So if you hear it ping or if my lockout's a little bit short at the top just because I'm hitting the top of the rack, mostly I want to show you what the throw looks like. Again, the throw is, I'm not going to bend my knees. I'm not going to be strict. I'm going to use my hips, throw my hips forward. As I push my hips forward, the bar's going to come down. I'm going to load it like a spring, like a long bow that's pushing forward. Load the spring and throw. That's the goal. It's done right. It'll look great. If not, I'll embarrass myself from everyone. Here we go. Let's try it. Got a little more weight on the bar. It should push down just a little bit better now. Let's see. So the Olympic press is really the last press in the progression of presses from a completely strict military press to a top-down breathe military press, what we might call the 1.5. Breathe up here, down and up, to a press 2.0 where you throw the hips and throw. To the last one, we take the wide grip, bend the wrist, make contact with the body. This Olympic press, push forward, push forward, push forward, make a spring and throw. So that gives us a perfect progression for all of the presses from truly novice to truly competitive for what you might use in something like the USSF or what the great lifters of old used in the late 60s and early 70s. For more great tips on how to press, get your press up, all sorts of everything press, check out the playlist right up here.