 The technique series is brought to you by Barbell Logic Online Coaching. Did you know that you can get 100% free form check from one of our expert strength coaches? Seriously, absolutely 100% free. No credit card needed, no questions asked. Just go to barbelllogic.com slash technique and sign up for the free Barbell Logic experience now. Do that right now and then enjoy the show. Matt here, August 2020. Matt, want to jump in for a second before we start this episode and talk to you a bit about how we've changed our teaching on the press. Not a major change, more of a cadence difference on the press. And so in the past, I wasn't really crazy about the way we taught the press, especially to novices. And so there is some discussion that we've had in the past. You maybe have heard it where we talk about press 1.0 or 1.5 or 2.0 and it gets kind of confusing. And so ultimately what we had done for some time is taught the press with a big hip movement at the beginning. So use the hips, threw them forward and let the bar kind of rebound off of the stretch reflex or the hip flexors and fire up and shrug as we do and then bring the bar back down and take another deep breath at the bottom. And it just made the press complicated, mostly for beginners and novices. And so we noticed that most of our coaches weren't actually teaching it that way for novices and so we talked about how we taught it and we kind of refined that process. And again, great, socratic discussions where we're all trying to come to the best solution for our clients. And so the way we teach the press now is where same setup, same close grip, elbows forward, wrist straight, things like that, walk back. We take a deep breath at the bottom of rep one before rep one starts. And we just lean back a little bit. As we lean back a little bit, it gets the head out of the way and it pushes the hips forward a little bit. And we'll talk about that in this episode. Not much has changed there. And we press the bar up. But when we get to the top of rep one, we take our breath, we breathe out, we breathe in, we hold our air, and then we bring the bar down and fire it right back up instead of stopping in the bottom. So we stop in the top. And what we've noticed is it's much easier to teach beginners and novices this method. Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with the big hip throw. Big hip throw is a competitive lift. It's an advanced movement. It's for people who compete at the press, then it's a it's a great movement to do. So we're not anti that at all. It just we wanted to try to make it simpler for our novices. And so as you start to listen to this, you'll see some of that angst in our conversation about kind of how to do it or how to teach it and sort of like what was orthodoxy versus what we were actually doing. And so it should be an interesting listen for you all. And that's how we've landed now. So we don't call it press 1.0 or 1.5 or 2.0 or anything. It's called the press. And we start from the bottom on rep one. And after rep one, we breathe out at the top and we stop at the top on reps two through five or however many reps we're doing. So keep that in mind. As you listen to this episode of the next couple episodes on the press, that that is how we teach the press. Now we hope that works a little better for you. Remember, you can go to our YouTube channel and see exactly how we teach that and try to mimic it as best you can. All right. Enjoy the show. Welcome to Barbell Logic Rewind. Welcome to the Barbell Logic Podcast. I'm Scott Hamburg and that's Matt Reynolds. And today, we're going to talk about the press. We talked about the squat last week. We should have talked about the press, I don't know, back in August, but we're going to talk about it today. I love the press. I do too. And this is the press is why we bench press. The bench press is a press accessory, as far as I can tell. Yeah. I mean, you know, most people bench press, what's amazing to me is how many people we get that I've worked with over my career in online coaching, who've got a really big bench press and a really weak press. Right. And, you know, this is a ticket with a grain of salt, but it appears to me, based on the stats we've done, that a healthy ratio of press to bench press is about, your press should be about 70 percent of your bench press somewhere in that ballpark. Now, obviously, you know, segment links and things change, but that seems to be a healthy place to be. And so press is awesome because it's, you know, the other nice thing about it is, it's this cool old school lift that the guys did, and they got brutally strong at it, especially in the 60s and early 70s. You know, we saw three guys press over 500 pounds, and they cleaned it first. They cleaned it. Right. And then, for all intents and purposes, strict pressed it. And we'll kind of talk about what that looks like, but it wasn't a push press. They weren't allowed to use their knees. 500 pounds. I mean, how many guys do you know that can bench press 500 pounds? You can bench press 500 pounds. Carl, Carl can't bench press 500 pounds close, but he's, you know, maybe by time this airs. That's true. It's super rare. You know, I don't, I don't know that I've ever seen anybody in modern history press a strict press under the same sort of rules that they would have done in the Olympics. Right. 400 pounds. So, you know, there's some, there's some big, heavy log presses in the strongest world, but they can knee it, right? Yeah. They can, they can use some, some push press. So, Jernis Savikas, if he trained the press, there's no doubt he could press over 400 pounds. I don't think he could press 500 pounds with a, you know, kind of strict barbell. Now, he doesn't use a lot of legs. A lot of those guys use lots of legs. Some of those guys come from an Olympic lifting background, and they almost push, push jerk the logs or the axles or whatever. And the thing is, your entire body is loaded under this press. You think about how much of your body is loaded, especially at the lockout of a press, all of it. Yeah. It's so stressful because of that. Yes. This big, giant range of motion, the weight's way, way above the, you know, off the ground. And so, we just want to walk through what a press looks like, and kind of how we teach the press. And then also, I have kind of a, a, it's kind of a systematic progression of how I take people through the press, especially if they've never lifted before in their entire life. And so, we did what most people would call a military press, right? Stand flat-footed, take a narrow grip on the bar, elbows in front of it, and just shove it overhead. And press, right? So, yeah. And I want to talk about grip and stuff too here in a second. Yes. So, if you think about standing up with the bar, you know, in front of your neck, like you would think that you would press, like you don't have to be somebody that's done this before to visualize that, your chin's in the way. Chin's in the way. If the bar is going to stay over the middle of your foot, which is this master cue that we used in all of the lifts that we stand up. So, the squat, the deadlift, and the press, the master cue is that the barbell must stay in order to be as efficient of movement as possible over the middle of the foot. Well, if it's right over the middle of the foot, it's right underneath your chin. Right. Because your head's over the middle of your foot too. That's right, because your head's, and so you'll, you know, if you push it straight up over the middle of your foot, you're going to hit yourself in the chin, and teeth are going to chatter. If we throw our hips forward, lock knees, knees are locked, and if you throw your hips forward, you put a bunch of mass in front of that midline, so you have to get some behind it to stay in balance, so your head goes back, your shoulders go back, get your chin out of the way, you can put the bar up. That's exactly right. We can also develop some momentum that way as well. You can. So let's start with grip and where that goes. So almost everybody takes a grip on the press if they are untrained much too wide. They'll grab the barbell in a similar location than they do the bench press. Yes. That's too wide. We want a narrow grip, a grip that facilitates a totally vertical radius, a totally vertical forearm, and the load bearing bone of the forearm is the radius. And so if I have a wide grip, for those of you guys who are watching the video, if I have a wide grip and my wrists are significantly outside my elbows, then now there is a moment arm between my elbow and the grip that I have to overcome in the press. Does that make sense? Yeah. And it reduces the range of motion when you do that. It does reduce the range of motion, right? Now, sometimes reducing the range of motion for a competitive lifter is advantageous. We've talked about this before. For people who I'm trying to get generally strong, I want them to lift the most weight possible with the most muscle mass over the greatest effective range of motion because I'm just trying to get them generally strong as quickly as possible. And so I want a nice big range of motion with the press. So the grip needs to be close. The other problem that occurs if you take a wide grip on the press, so when I bring my elbows forward and my forearms are straight up and down as they should be, right? So when we when we underact that bar, we want our elbows forward of the bar. So there's an external rotation in the humerus, right? As I widen out my humerus internally rotates, right? And as I press up that internal rotation and that angle of the humerus to the torso will impinge the soft tissue of my rotator cuff between the head of the humerus, which is the top of your upper bone, upper arm bone, into your AC joint where you can feel the bump on your on your shoulder. And so a lot of people will say like, Oh, I just, you know, I've got rotator cuff problems. I can't press because I have rotator cuff problems. And it's much like people that say that they can't squat because I've got a bad back or they've got bad knees. You can't if you press incorrectly, you can, in fact, cause problems to your rotator cuff. You could theoretically saw a hole in your labrum, you know, rotator cuff tendons and so we don't want to do that. So by taking a close grip and we put our elbows forward, we make sure the bar is over the base of the palm because it's on the base of the palm. So we still wrap our thumbs around the bar, we wrap our thumbs around the bar on all this. Let's say one thing about the grip quickly. For most people, you're going to cover the neural, right? For most people, you're going to grab the bar, your index finger is going to be on the line between the smooth and the neural. Yeah. So that polish is what 17 and a half inches or something like that. Right. So most people, their hands are going to be 17 and a half inches apart. I'd like to think about like your thumb is going to be right in front of that shoulder joint. That's exactly right. So when it's overhead, your thumb is going to be right over your shoulder joint. So it's a narrow grip. Even great big guys. That's where I take my grip. My guy is going to be like maybe one fingers width outside of that. Maybe. Yeah. I don't see people that have much wider over grip if we're doing the standard strict press. Yeah. Right. And again, because we're trying to cut down on the moment arm. Again, from a moment arm perspective, I want the bar directly over the radius because that's the primary, that's the load bearing bone. If I let the bar get back into my hand and my wrist bends, now I have a moment arm between the wrist and the barbell. And that's an energy leak. You'll actually see people's wrist bend as they start to press. And so I want to keep that bar hurts. Yeah. It hurts. So I want to put that bar as low in my hand as possible. And then we have a technique we use where we, we walk up and we internally rotate our hands, thumb spacing down, grab the bar, put it as low as you can in your palm and you pinch the top of your fingers on top of the barbell. You press the bar into your hand, the heel of your hand with your fingertip. That's exactly right. As opposed to grabbing as deep in the hand as you possibly can. Now, when I press, I don't put my fingers on top of the bar, but the bar is still super low in my hand. It doesn't, you know, I've done this long enough that I know not to put the bar back in the, over my knuckles. We've got an awesome video of the Jason Ball shot. I think it's called the compression grip and the press. Yeah. So it shows you exactly how to grip that bar properly and take that moment off the wrist. Excellent. So what I use when I start people pressing, before we talk about lay backs, before we talk about Olympic press, we get them set up on the press correctly. And this is what I say, and listen to the words I say, because I've chosen my words carefully, and they're not exactly physiologically correct. But again, when I'm coaching, I'm trying to get my clients to, to move or my athletes to move the way I want them to move. So this is what I say. Close grip. Elbows forward. I want the elbows slightly forward of the wrist. The forearm angle will help facilitate the direction the bar is going to travel. What I don't want to happen is I don't want the bar to go forward. Right. I need the bar to stay over the middle of my foot and an elbow slightly in front of the wrist helps that. So close grip, elbows forward, and wrist straight. Yeah. Now wrists aren't actually totally straight. I believe they're about 15 degrees worth of extension, right? But to the normal business's executive who doesn't understand anatomy and physiology, straight wrist works because most of you can get it. It's really about as straight as you can get it. Right. Rarely do we see somebody about Brian says punch the ceiling and punch the ceiling. I like that as well. And so if you get set up in that position with a close grip, elbows forward wrist straight, you're in a position to succeed. And all regardless of what press you do from that point forward, whether that's a press 1.0, a press 2.0, an Olympic press, a press with the layback, they're all going to essentially start with that same setup. Right. There's one or two little tweaks we might make to a competitive press we'll talk about as we go on. And so that puts us in a good position. The least amount we certainly have cut down on the unnecessary moment arms. We're going to use the moment arms that we have to have in a way that is most efficient. And we're going to press the bar up over the middle of our foot as high as we can. And at the top, regardless of the press, the style of press, we're going to shrug up. Why do you shrug? I was going to ask you why do I shrug? Well, we want to shrug so that we can so that we rotate our shoulder blades. So we want to rotate those. What is it? So that they is this a superior rotation? We call this rotation. That's probably right. See, you rotate the there's a hook on the end of your shoulder blade. Right. That's the part that solves the hole in the in the bicep tendon. So we want to when we shrug, we rotate that shoulder blade up and that that hook gets out of the way of the head of the humerus and keeps us from having that impingement. It also increases the range of motion. Yep. Makes us stronger. It allows the traps to work, allows the traps to get in and get more work done. And so there's lots of things we do that will make that clean at the end with a nice big shrug. And so when we teach somebody to press the very first time, the first five or six reps, the first couple sets, I'll actually stand behind my lifter and grab their triceps, right? Lift up. Now, the cue that I use there sometimes shrug up shrug up should work if people understand what shrug is. But sometimes they don't really understand what I'm supposed to do. And so I say touch your ears with your shoulders, your shoulder blades on your earhole. That's right. Yeah. You literally want to try to touch it. Some people can't do that. But if they try to do it, it will shrug up pretty well. So close grip, elbows forward, wrist straight. By the way, the stance is going to be a fairly wide stance, probably about your squat stance. And that's not as important as it is on the squat. I just want a nice solid wide base. I don't have balance issues, certainly to the right and to the left, you know, laterally, with a close stance. When I take the bar out of the rack on a press, I have to take the bar out of a rack with authority. I get up under that bar. I take a deep breath, I go ahead and set my, set my forearms at the correct, at the correct angle. So my elbows need to be in front of my wrist when I take the bar out of the rack. If you take the bar out of the rack and your elbows are behind your wrists, and it's the empty bar, you can do it. But if it's 275, it's not coming out. Yeah, you have to do a reverse curl to get it out. Yeah, you can't do lots of extra work. And so when you say take it out with authority, I think that shorthand for get as tight as you possibly can before the weights in your hands. Yep. So I tell people, you know, get perfect before you get the weight in your hands. Yep. Super tight. Try to point your chest to the ceiling. Tight armpits, super tight. And then you do an eighth of a squat to stand up at the bar and you walk it out like a front squat. And you walk it out like Frankenstein. Yep. Don't let that breath out. We already got tight and just press it. That's right. You're already tight. Don't let the breath out. Do your first rep. Yeah. So I just think that the press is, as much of a confidence lift as any lift, if you take it out of the rack, and the first thing you think to yourself is like, oh, my God, it's so heavy, you're not going to press it. Right. And so that's why I say take it out with authority. So you're exactly right. I want perfect form, close grip, elbows forward, wrist straight, get underneath the bar, boom, stand up. And pretend it's 400 pounds. That's right. Every single time. Before you even grip it, it's 500 pounds, 500 pounds. And then you might take a second, small breath in without letting any of the air in your belly and your lungs out. So you'll walk back and you go, you take a little bit more and then pow, press it. What I don't want to see, I don't want to see my clients walk out with the bar in their hands and take 10 seconds before they start to press. You know, two, three seconds, stand up, walk back, little breath, boom. There's a cadence to this. Right. And in that two or three seconds, you're just going through your checklist. Are my elbows where they need to be on my tight, on my back is an extension is my chest up, press. You're just going through the checklist. You're not dallying, you're not avoiding it. You're just going through the checklist. Close grip, elbows forward, wrist straight, nice wide base, big air, same valsalva, take it out with authority. Now it's time to press. Okay. Now, once it's time to press, we really have a progression that we use. The session number one, we're not, I'm not going to put the hips in there. We're just going to do some strict presses, showing where the bar path needs to be, having practice getting tied under the bar. And we're just going to teach the shrug. And that's, for me, that's plenty on the first session. Well, here's the way I think about it. When we teach somebody how to squat with an empty bar, how important is bar path? Not very not like not very like, obviously, if it moves two feet forward, but the problem is an empty bar is not really a heavy enough bar compared to your own body weight and your own like mobility sort of things and balance issues to really, to really easily stay over the middle of your foot. If you pull a one rep max deadlift, that bar is going to stay on your foot. There is no other option. Right. You can try to move it outside of them, you know, forward or back with the middle of the foot. It's not going to go. So on a press, I'm a little less concerned about the bar having an absolutely perfect bar path on day one, on day two, on day three. For really the first couple of weeks, I try to get the motor patterns established because, you know, one of the things that is occurring on a press is that this new client is trying to think about, okay, are my hands in the right place? Are my elbows in the right place? Am I taking a deep breath? Are my wrists straight? Like, are all those things? And then, and then I just try to get them to press the bar as close to the tip of their nose as they can. Right. Tip of the nose is the aiming point. You should hit your chin or your nose at once a session for those first several weeks. And you should. Yeah. And if you have a beard, especially if you have a short beard, like I've got a short beard, I run the barbell through my whiskers every single time. And then I've got a client who has hair, it's kind of kind of short hair like you, but, you know, not no hair like me. He runs the bar through his bangs every single, every single rep. And I said, his name is Shannon. What's up, Shannon? I said, Hey, did you know that you run the bar through your bangs? It's awesome. Right. And he was like, huh, and I videoed and showed him, look, it literally touches your hair every time. So I want the bar to go as close to your face as possible. And that's important because your face is over the middle of your foot, right? The further the bar, that's right. The further the bar goes up in front of the middle of your foot, the further the bar goes, or the further the bar goes away from your face, the further it goes in front of the middle of your foot, right? So now I'm doing some work that's not just against gravity. That's really important. So once they develop a basic motor pattern with press number one, I'll let them breathe at the top sometimes with press 1.0. So they'll obviously they'll take a breath at the bottom of their first rep, press straight up and they'll hold it at the shrug and breathe out and breathe in and bring it down and right back up. Now they're bringing the bar down should look exactly like it does when it goes up. The elbows stay forward, the bar stays close to the nose, everything is the same and then bring the bar down and right back up. And we'll push that for a few weeks until that starts to slow down and those motor patterns are established. And then as soon as they are, then I add the next step. It really comes back to this sort of minimum effective dose programming we've talked about lately. It's this next step for me is now it's time to add the hips and what the hips do when I push those hips forward, the shoulders go back and most importantly, the bar goes down. The bar goes down. The bar doesn't go back. If you're not sure if you're doing this, you should videotape, videotape. Do we tape things now? Yeah, sure. OVHS because that came quarter out. This is back to the future. You know, you video, get your cell phone out and video yourself from the side and watch your hips go forward and your shoulders go back and the bar should go down. Your face gets out of the way, but your shoulders don't move back so far that the bar goes backwards. The bar goes down and up. And if you think about like a bow, a long bow, you use an archery. Yeah, we pull that bow string back. The the hand, the grip where your hand is on the bow moves forward. That's where your belt is and the ends of the bow get closer together. That's exactly right. And that's what we want. We're trying to load that energy. I want your shoulder to get closer to your foot. That's right. And the whole time you're doing that, the elbows have to stay forward of the wrist, right? So a lot of people, as they do that, the other thing they'll do is they'll drop their elbows down and the elbows will end up behind their wrist. And then as soon as they press up, well, now my forearms are pointing forward and the bar goes forward. And that's how that's the most common way to miss a press is to press it out in front. So one of the coaching cues I give again, which is an overcorrective coaching cue. It's not what I actually want you to do. But I'll tell you to try to throw the bar behind you. Now, if you're a hypermobile person with hypermobile shoulders, I don't tell you that some people automatically press it too far back. Right. Most people press it too far out in front. So I'll say throw it, try to throw it up and back behind you. And then big shrug at the top. And that's where we'll finish that that piece. So yeah, so that's the press 1.0. We teach that to we teach that to brand new beginners, not novices, right? Beginners, oftentimes. So for men, I find that 2.0 with the hips, the hip movement doesn't really work that well until it gets sufficiently heavy, you know? Like if you try the hips thing with the bar, you can kind of get it down a little bit. But you can't really learn that darn thing until it gets heavy. So for guys, I find that when they get up around like 105, 115, it's easier to teach it then than it is at, I don't know, 95 or 65. Yeah. When it gets up in that area, that's when I'll start teaching that 2.0. Yeah, I'd agree. I just think sometimes the 2.0 gives trainees an extra thing to kind of complicate stuff. And by the way, I don't think that's always the case. If you have somebody that's generally athletic, like you said, if they're a, even if they're a beginner weightlifter, but they're, but they've got good body awareness because they've been, they've played sports or they've been in gymnastics or whatever. Like a lot of times I'll just start on the press 2.0. There's certainly not a, I don't think that the only way to start somebody on a press is to start with press 1.0. That's not fair at all. But for middle age and elderly people, especially who are absolute beginners, we start with 1.0. So then the question is, when we get to the 2.0, when we get to the 2.0, we throw those hips forward and you're really trying to push your bladder, your waist, your belly button. It goes forward. And when that goes forward and when we do that, everything else is going to be really, really tight, right? So our core tight, tight abs, tight belts, tight knees and a belt carries over on the press so well because you can, you get this like this really long body. And the more we can make rigid, the stuff in the middle between the barbell and the floor, the better we are. And so we want, we want tight knees, tight quads, tight abs. I want like an 18 inch belt for the press. I want to, you know, the build strongman, like the Ray-Ban belts, the blue neon, the blue neoprene belts. I used to put that on when I pressed for strongman and then put a four inch lever belt on top of it. Right. Oh, it was wonderful. You just mummify yourself, you know? I like it, you know, knee sleeves. We're doing anything we can to make ourselves as tight as possible. And so on that press 2.0, we press the hips forward, the head gets out of the way, the bar goes down and comes back up. Let me see here. Let me see your mic. Am I talking in the back of my mic? I don't know. I may be. Test, test. That's going to suck. Now all that slap back for me makes more sense. All right. Okay, here we go. So back to this. Better? Better sign. Everybody's going to be like, man, Reynolds Sound got, should we just tell the story? Yeah. So the last podcast and a half I've been recording backwards in the microphone. Talking in the back of the mic. Well, I mean, look, man, I've only been doing this for one or two episodes. This isn't episode 63 or anything. So be it. So I talk backwards. Okay, so if the sound gets significantly better for me, by the way, I've got a better microphone coming. I'm not crazy about this mic, so Trent's got a new one coming for me. Okay, press 2.0, hips go forward, waist goes forward, everything stays rigid, knees stay rigid, abs stay rigid, everything's super tight. When all of that middle of your body goes forward, your head gets out of the way back and the bar is able to come down over the middle of your foot, just like that. Just like when you're talking about the longbow, right? Right. The bar comes down and that creates a rebound and the bar goes right back up for every action. There's an equal and opposite reaction and the reaction of the bar going down, everything gets tight. There's a rebound effect there and the bar starts going back up. The key is when the bar starts going back up, it stays close to the face and gets pushed straight up over the middle of the foot, which means you're probably going to have to think about pressing it up and back behind you, especially if you are a more muscular male, right? Or just have somebody that just doesn't have very mobile shoulders. It's too easy to throw it out in front. Yeah, big chest, big shoulders, it's easy to push it out front. Yep. So charity tells people to push their elbows up. Throw your elbows up. Yeah, I think I told her that, remember? Yeah. That was mine. She struggled a little bit with the bar would come up and away before the elbows would lead. So I kind of want the elbows to lead the way. If the elbows come up as it starts to fire up off your shoulders. You want that shoulder flexion before you have the elbow extension. Yeah, and remember why? Because why is if the elbow continues to come up, the forearm continues to have a little bit of this angle back. So the elbow stays in front of the wrist just a little bit. It creates this little bit of an angle so that it facilitates the bar going up and back. And if that elbow for any reason, if the hands start jumping off of the shoulders and the elbow doesn't really move up, then the elbow ends up behind the wrist. And now I'm throwing it out in front. Right. That's a good way to kind of lay that out. So that's the press 2.0. That's how we teach the press. And that's super important. And it works probably the longest. So the reason I think we do that is if we teach the press 1.0, we have a couple issues. One, I've got a lot of people there that have already at least attempted the novice progression. Right. Maybe they haven't done it right. Maybe they haven't done it for three straight months, but they've done it some. And so when we're talking about introduce the press 1.0, this is something that just works for a few weeks before we're going to add press 2.0 as well. So it wouldn't really make a lot of sense to teach somebody a lift that isn't going to last very long. Right. And the press 2.0 is a thing that most people will do for the rest of their career. They won't ever move on to any press that's more advanced than a press 2.0. Now, I think that Wolf's 1.5 is more advanced than the 2.0. Yeah, it probably is. No, it is. So the 1.5 Michael Wolfs, I think he's the one that coined it. We're going to do a set of five presses or a set of three, even if you're a lady or a lady in your LP. You do the press 2.0, you buck the bar with your hips to get it overhead. Right. Because we don't want a dead press. We don't want to press from a dead stop. That's why we throw our hips is to get a little bounce at the bottom, get some upward momentum and lock the bar out. And then press 1.5. We use that to get the bar overhead. Then we let out a half a breath. Then we go, and then we let the bar back down, let the tension build. And when we get to the bottom, there's a little bounce at the bottom when you bottom out. Yeah. Tight arm pits, tight, your triceps are on your lats. And when they get that bounce at the bottom, you press it right back overhead. Right. So your first one, your first rep, you do the hips, the 2.0. It's a press 2.0. It's a normal press 2.0 for rep 1. And the rest of them are 1.0s. Yeah, 1.0s with a breath at the top. So it's a 1.0 with a rebound. But the rebound comes less from the hips and more from the upper body. So yeah, you take a deep breath at the bottom. You throw the bar, you throw your hips and throw the bar overhead. You hold it at lockout at the shrug. You breathe out, you breathe in, you bring it back down, elbows forward, wham, and go right back up to the top. Breathe out, breathe in. And there's a cadence to this, by the way. Like it has to be or you'll, you know, you're going to pass out. Yeah, I tell people they need a breathing strategy when they go into that. And so I typically shoot for three on the first breath, actually. Okay. And then, and same on bench press, actually. And then breath on number four and a breath on number five. Maybe two, but you know, you might be able to do the last two on one breath, but you can certainly do it with singles. Sure. Because every time you let that breath out, it squashes you a little. Yeah, sure. And then it's hard to get tight and inflate back up. Absolutely. I tell, let out half of a breath and you can't inhale normally and fill back up. Sure. You have to get gulp it in. Yep. I can get a bigger, a heavier set of five with the 1.5. Of course. Than I can five 2.0s. Of course. Anybody, I think almost anybody can and some of it is because it's actually easier to breathe with the bar at the top than it is at the bottom, right? Five 2.0s makes you, it takes a long time. That's right. It takes a long time. So let's go back to our idea of minimum effective dose programming if on the press, the very first thing I do. So we're still talking about doing three sets of five on the normal linear progression. So three sets of five normal linear progression. The first thing we do is typically, as I teach somebody to press 1.0, we run that out for several weeks, let's say a month. We run it out for a month. And then we teach them to press 2.0. And then you press 2.0 and they do all five reps, three sets of five. Yep. Press 2.0. Breathing at the bottom, throwing the hips, breathing at the bottom, throwing the hips, breathing at the bottom, throwing the hips. And then when they start to really grind and they miss one. Can you back up to 1.5? Then I go, hey, here's what you're going to do next time. You're going to take that first breath at the bottom. You're going to throw it at the top. And then you're going to start to breathe at the top. I don't even call it 1.5 because I'm afraid it's going to confuse them because they're going to be like, well, I just did 2.0. So instead, so now we're going to do the same thing, but now we're going to breathe at the top on reps 2, 3, 4, and 5. And you let them start to learn how to do that. And they learn that cadence and they continue to milk it. And then when they run out, they do that the first five and they rack it and they go, that was so much easier. Right, right, right. And then when they run out, then I typically switch into five sets of three. Yeah. That's the first time that I make a rep change in linear progression. And it's almost always with the press before any of the other lifts. The press is going to die out first because it uses less muscle mass. I hope you're enjoying this episode in the technique series of the Barbell Logic podcast. You know, at Barbell Logic, we believe that barbell-based strength training is literally for everyone. And that the only thing holding most people back from all the incredible benefits that come from it is good technique, inconsistency, and we can help with that too. And whether you're just getting started or you've been lifting for a while, it's difficult to know if you're performing the lifts correctly or if there's anything you can do to make your lifting better. We have tons of free resources online from basic how-to videos that'll get you lifting safely and efficiently right away to podcasts, articles, and videos that will help you troubleshoot common errors. All you have to do is visit barbelllogic.com slash technique to see our best technique focused content in one place. And while you're at it, you can sign up for a consultation with a Barbell Logic coach. This is a free form check and a chance to ask an expert all your training-related questions. There's no reason you should be struggling to get started or to make progress. Check out barbelllogic.com slash technique for more information and sign up for the Barbell Logic experience. Again, it's 100% free. There's nothing better for your training than knowing you're lifting safely, training efficiently, and on the right track. All right, let's get back to the show. Now there is a third version, right? Well, there's really two pieces of this third version. So the first piece is the layback at the top. And so the layback, which I really don't believe should be used unless you're a competitive lifter. No, I have to use it because I'm kyphotic and I have to get my turtle head out of there. Yeah, right. That's fine. That's fair. So you've got some screwed up genetics, but such as life. Some people automatically learn your sticking point on a correct press. If you use a press 2.0, you throw the bar correctly, the sticking point is going to be right at the top of your head, somewhere in that ballpark, right? Somewhere between your eyebrows and your top of your head. Yeah, or even eyebrows to an inch or an inch and a half above your head. Everybody, you see the bar slow down, right? Your leverages are not as good. Your shoulders are kind of letting go and your triceps are trying to take over. And you're getting this internal rotation of your elbow. And so as that occurs, some people, as they start to grind in the middle, they just start to lay their upper body back and their elbows begin to extend even though the bar doesn't go up. Yeah, you could lay back far enough theoretically that you could lock your elbow out and then you sort of do a stand-up. Right, it's exactly right. So that's what all the big pressers in the late 60s and early 70s were doing. They did these big laybacks. And some of them did the layback where, I mean, they laid so far back that their upper body was essentially parallel to the ground. It's a standing bench press. It's a standing bench press. It's certainly a standing incline press. And for some of them, it was a standing bench press. And so again, if my goal is to get people generally strong, I think that's a bad idea. Now, if I have a client who do this big time and they're toward the end of their novice progression, looking at you, Jess, then I have to start adding in. I have to force them to have some strict press. And so I might stick them. I might make them do some seated presses. Literally make them sit down. They're not going to do a layback and a seated press. And I usually don't let them have back support. I'm yet to find a client who does a layback on a seated press without a back support. Well, your feet will fly off. Yeah, right. And if they did, I would just force them to have back support. But I want to have the least amount of support there. So there are things you use that are probably not always conventional that you have to put into work. And so, but I think it's fine for a competitive lifter, if you're going to a strength lifting meet or some sort of trying to do a starting drink total, then I think it's a perfectly good method to use. You can lift the most weight and when we become competitive, that's kind of the goal. And so now the last version of the press is one we would call the Olympic press. And that's where the problem that you get with the press 2.0, depending on anthropometry, specifically depending on the length of your upper arm to your forearm. So if you have a, if you have a relatively short upper arm and a relatively long forearm, the bar is going to hover significantly over your shoulders. Right, right under your nose. Yeah, it's got to be under your chin to count, right. And so, yeah, you're kind of lifting your chin to get it up there. You might have three inches of hover. I mean, I'd be three, four inches above your shoulders. Now if you, if you're the other way around, you've got a long upper arm and a short forearm, it may be sitting on your shoulders right the way it is. Well, the problem is if we're going to be competitive and we want to throw the bar as hard as we can without push pressing it. So we want to use our hips to throw. What will occur most of the time in a press 2.0 is that the hips, the throw will cause a bounce in that upper body, but because the bar is hovering, not all of the energy thrown from the hips goes into the barbell. Some of it goes into the hover. And the elbows go behind the bar. Right, there's all sorts of, you can have some problems. And so, we started playing around with widening the grip a tad. How much do you widen the grip? I don't know because it depends on your anthropometry. You widen the grip enough and you get the bar back in your hand just a tiny bit. So it's still going to be pretty low in the palm. It's definitely not going to be like the, it's not going to be in your fingers like in the rack of a clean. It's still clearly going to be in the palm of your hand, but there might be a little bit of a moment on there. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to make some contact with the barbell and the, and the, and either your delts or your clavicles or your top of your chest, um, somewhere in that ballpark. So for me, I have to take a grip that's about two and a half inches wider per hand, two and a half inches per hand. That's pretty wide. It is. And I'm, but I also have a higher hover than most. And some of it is, I've got a relatively short upper arm, a relatively long form, and I'm a fairly muscular arms. And so it doesn't allow me to let it sink very well. My arms just said muscular. I have to. No, it's not that. It's just maybe just fat arms. So I think that for the proper grip width, you're going to be super tight. You're pulling your chest up as hard as you can. You've got your triceps on your lats and you want to widen that grip enough that the bar is about probably somewhere between an half inch to an inch off of your chest at that point. Yeah. So that's exactly right. You're not going to actually have it resting on your meat. Correct. So you're reducing the hover and then unlike the 2.0, where we throw the hips forward or explode them forward, we're going to load up, we're going to push them forward and load up all that tension on the front of our torso. And as we do that, the bar is going to come down when that bar touches your delts or your chest. Clavicle or whatever. Depending on how you're built. Yep. Then you fire up. Then you fire up. You pull your belt buckle back as hard as you can and throw the belt, the bar overhead. Yep. So I never think about pulling my midsection back. I just get so tight. If I keep pushing my belly button forward that as I push that forward and suck the bar down with my upper body while keeping my elbows up and while keeping my wrists relatively straight, then eventually I can get the bar to touch my delts or touch my, for me, it's more my clavicle, but it's sitting on that area. So then as my shoulders, chest, clavicle comes flying back up out of the rebound of loading that 100% of that energy goes from my body into the barbell and I throw it. You can throw the crap out of the barbell. The barbell throws so much better. I'm not explosive whatsoever and I could throw it up to my nose. Yeah. I can throw just about anything over my head. Now, my triceps aren't enough to lock it out yet. Right. So I was playing with this the other day. I did 265 for a double and we've talked about it in just a couple of weeks ago. Like I'm not training very consistent right now. I'm training once or twice a week. It's bizarre. It's bizarre that I feel like my strength continues to get, it has to be getting worse a little bit because I'm not training very consistently and everything's nuts. I'm traveling all the time and business is crazy and so I'm just traveling. I'm just training once or twice a week and yet every time I press I press a little more weight. Right. So all my other stuff is going down. Like my deadlift is not as strong, my squat's not as strong, my bench press is not as strong and my press continues to go up. Well, I think I'm just getting more and more fluid in that moment, in that movement that's becoming more efficient. And so that's the Olympic press. If you watch the guys, if you, there's a great video, we can put it in the show notes on Ken Patera. I believe he's doing 490, 485, I think. Now, he's got some knee kicks. So if you watch it, his knees get a little bit bit. He's jacking around in the gym. He is. He's just fooling around. He's just fooling around, training, trying to figure out how to load it. He throws 485 like it's an empty barbell. Like I'm going, how much more could he have done there? That was insane. It was nowhere near a limit. He could have done 50 more pounds. Yeah, that's what it looks like. Right. And so when you kind of figure out, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to push my hips and belly forward and get really tight and load and load and load and really what it does. It's just like you're loading a spring. You got this big spring and you're pushing and you're pushing in the springs, getting more compressed and more compressed and more compressed and more compressed and then wham! And the bar comes flying up. Now, the hardest part about this is that bar wants to fly forward. Yeah, it wants to fly forward more in the Olympic press than it does in the Olympic press. Absolutely. So everything you've got, you've got to try to throw that bar backwards. And if you do, it's kind of like a clean in the way that, you know, when you hit a clean, you can hit what essentially looks like a near max, especially a power clean, a near max power clean, and it looks easy. Right. And then you go up five pounds and you miss it. Yeah. That's the same thing with this. So you'll hit a weight and you're like, good grief that was, if you groove this, you'll crush it. And if you misgroove it at all, it's not even going to be close. And then they hurt me and Nikki Sims. Yeah, it bothers your shoulders a little bit. Now, do you think it bothers your shoulders because you're taking the wider grip? Well, 2.0 bothers my shoulders too, just because of that. The downward moat, the hammering is what hurts them. I don't think the grip with matters that much. I think that the downward momentum that I have to turn around is what hurts the shoulder for me. We tested this. I'm trying to think of who I'll test this with. Brett McKay. And he tied his PR on a press 2.0 with an Olympic press on the very first attempt. I did it with not peaked out. Not peaked out. Hey, let's just, I just happened to be in Tulsa. I was like, Hey, let me show you this thing we're playing with. And he tied his all-time PR. Nikki tied her all-time. Nikki Sims tied her all-time PR. A kid that worked for me tied his all-time PR. I am way not as strong as I've ever been. Like, you know, back to my best press being 300-305. I'm not anywhere near that. And I'm pretty close to pressing that at this point. Far smaller, far fatter, far older, far more stressed. More difficult. Much closer to death. And it's just because I've started to figure out the key. This really came from, I started looking at, I just, one day I was thinking about the press. I started thinking about, I was thinking about Alexeyev and I was thinking about Pitera and I was thinking about Reading, which are the three guys that are officially pressed. I believe those are the only three guys that officially pressed over 500 pounds. And I'm watching, I mean, I'm watching the Tommy Suggs, the kind of infamous picture we have at Tommy Suggs, where he's laying back and that bar is across those delts and he's super tight. His grip is so wide. It's not as wide as you think it is. We'll look at it again in a minute. As a matter of fact, it's another thing we should put in the show notes. And on every one of those guys, that bar is sitting on the meat of their delts. They're doing it because they're getting all that play. They're getting all that throw from their lower body. And they need 100% of the energy to go from the lower body throw into the actual barbell. Anything, any hover is going to be some energy leak in the same way that it's an energy leak when I'm trying to hold my back tight in a squad or a deadlift. And my back goes from from extension to a little bit of flexion. That's an energy leak, right? It just is. So it's the same thing here. Now, it doesn't mean that you still can't get a really good rebound with a hover on a press 2.0. You can. And it doesn't mean I also think in general, if you're not a competitive lifter, I don't really know there's any reason to do an Olympic press. Like, yeah, you want to screw around with it. It's fine. It's the same thing. But I suck. Yeah, I press 205 just strict. Yeah, sure. One with almost nothing. Yeah, 205. Sure. And then I've been thinking about it. Okay, let's debate it. Pressing it out of the rack is a big part of the problem. That power clean must be an enormous accessory to the press. Why do you think it's an accessory? Like, you think it actually makes the press go up? It must. Like, all the work that it does on your, on your, on your traps and lats and stuff. I think they're used to, I think what it is. Okay, I'll tell you, here's how, here's what I'll debate. The other movement that's a contested movement in Olympic weightlifting is the push jerk, the clean, right? So they, the clean and jerk. And so with a jerk, the bar is clearly sitting on your shoulders like it has to be, right, sitting on your shoulders. And so with a, with a clean and jerk, they clean the bar first, usually with a close, a relatively close grip. Yeah. And then you'll watch them, they stand up as they stand up out of their front squat at the very top of their front squat, they throw the bar off their shoulders, slide their hands out and take a wider grip. Now, why are they doing that? Well, it cuts down their range of motion. They have to go helps them get under it. If I'm going to jerk and get the bar, get it underneath me, the, the less distance that bar has to move, the, you know, the better. And so they take that wide grip. So I think some of it is probably the fact that they're used to throwing weight as hard as they can off of their shoulders anyway, with the jerk. So it's probably, I would argue that it would be an effect more of the jerk pushing up the press and the press pushing up the jerk, rather than the clean pushing either one of those things up. Although, you know, like obviously the clean is a, is a massive, especially upper back and traps back. And yeah, you can voluntarily shrug in that clean. Yeah. If you haven't cleaned heavy and if you've, if you've cleaned at some point and you're decently strong and then you have a guy like me, decently strong, I've cleaned in the past. I'm not cleaning right now. I go into a heavy clean day. Dude, my traps are super sore next couple of days, way more than a heavy deadlift. Think about this. So I would think about this clean aspect. Almost anybody with practice, even if they're not very explosive, if they're under 40 and they're not explosive, can clean their heaviest press single. That's sure. That's about the number though. Yeah, that's probably all right. You know, it ought to be a little bit more, but, but yeah, any, but even for somebody that's not athletic, you should be able to clean what you can press. Yeah. That's fair. For sure. So they seem to be related. Yeah, that's probably true. You know, in a clean and jerk, which obviously you can jerk more than you can press anybody that knows how to jerk, jerks more than you press, right? Just like anybody who knows how to push press with actually with their knees can push press more than they press, more than they strict press, right? In the Olympics, you watch or like international competition and weightlifting, you watch guys do the clean and jerk and they're always trying to tell you which one is the one they struggle with. Right. So that's pretty close. So some of those guys can clean anything. They miss the jerk. And then some of the guys are like, okay, they got the clean. The clean is then the limiting factor for some of them. So like if they clean it, they're like, oh, they're definitely getting it. They can jerk anything. So it seems to be pretty close as well between some of the guys are like, well, they can clean it, but they might not be able to jerk it, or they can jerk it, but they might not be able to clean it. Anyway, that's the press. I love the press. Man, there's something cool about what the press does to your body as well, make build the great big giant shoulders and just give you that cool look of those old time bodybuilders and powerlifters and Olympic lifters. And they all kind of did the same thing. They all competed at all that stuff. And they had these giant shoulders on them and press a ton of weight. If you look at some of these guys, I'm going to get the numbers wrong. But like Bob Bednarski, I believe he was a double bodyweight presser. Now think about that. That's awful. A double bodyweight presser was like, he was like a 242 and press like 484. I know that's close. And I'm sure I'm going to get letters saying it wasn't quite, it may not be quite, but it was right there by Bednarski. And so that's so mind boggling. Now here's a guy who was and who looked like a bodybuilder was a bodybuilder looking dude. And man, just just pressed a ton. So presses are awesome. By the way, for my competitive powerlifters that I start to coach who are already competitive powerlifters, I get somebody, they come in and they start working with me and they're already at least a middle intermediate guy. They'd never been pressing. And I start pressing them every single time they hit Bench Press PR at the end of the cycle, every time. Had a guy, I've talked about him several times on the podcast, Nick Hammer came in, he's got a bench press a little over 400 pounds. And we first started pressing him and it was like 175 was a struggle. And the guys bench pressing over 400. And I was like, dude, we got to get that up. You know, and so now, and now he's pressing 250 and 275 is coming. Well, 275 press like even if the guy didn't get his press to 300 pounds. And so it sounds like you will, though, we took him through his first kind of advanced cycle. You know, I started him just like I do with most people. I started him on kind of a short little novice progression run and added one step and one step and one step and we we put him through a kind of a simple block sort of program. And he told me and we, he just finished it. He's just finished his D load week this week. And so and hit his PRs. And he said, man, I have never in my life done a done a cycle where I bench pressed over 400 pounds for as many reps as I did over those last couple of weeks. It's like, I just I could, I can bench press 400 pounds in my sleep now. And it's because of the press. It's because his press has finally gotten strong. So he doesn't have that big weak point. So that's the barbell logic podcast. I'm Scott Hamburg. You can and well, don't follow me. Our show is at barbell logic. You can email the show at barbell logic podcast at gmail.com. Please go to iTunes and give us those ratings. Those are such a big help to us. Google play in particular right now. That's a giant help. I mean, we're just excited to put this content out there for you. And if you're able to take that and use it on your own in your own garage with your own training partners and your own reading groups with your own rounded table with a bunch of guys, like do it. That'd be great. No, that's, that's actually what I want to happen. By the way, you should have whiskey too, right? Like you tell them, like you should have whiskey at this. IOP doesn't work without whiskey. It works a whole lot better. But you damn sure need to have like good groceries. You need like the best cheese you can get, you know, goat cheese. Yeah. Not to Laggio. Yeah. You got to get these people coming back for more. Yeah. So thanks for listening.