Movement Mastery – How to Overhead Press

Image: Eastside CrossFit

The overhead press probably has more athletic benefits than any other upper body exercise.  Despite what you may have believed growing up in a culture that reveres big biceps and bench press numbers, the challenge of pressing heavy weights over one’s head is one of the most rewarding exercises possible.  You gain strength in the shoulders, arms and upper back, not to mention the abs, lower back and entire torso.  One reason many people incur injuries whilst benching is because they’re imbalanced, but ensuring that your overhead press is at least 2/3 of your bench will alleviate most if not all of these problems.  The key with pressing, as with all exercises, is to utilize correct form to both a) maximize your biomechanical advantage and therefore strength, and b) to prevent injuries.  Let’s discuss how to do it the right way:

1.    Set the hooks in a rack to mid-chest height.  This is the same height you’d use while setting up for squats, so if you’re following a basic barbell training method like Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength, you can simply leave the hooks where you placed them for your squats.
2.    Approach the bar with a shoulder-width stance.  Touch the bar with your chest and grab at equal distance on either side so that your hands are just outside your shoulders.  Push the bar down into the pad of your hand, just as with the bench press.  We want to be holding the bar with a vice-tight grip as close to the wrist as possible, not up near the fingers.  Also, the wrists must stay straight.  There’s going to be a slight angle between your hand and forearm, but it must stay just like that.  We want to remember to keep the forearms under the bar at all times, so make a fist right now and notice how your hand points up ever so slightly, and how you will position the forearm and wrist so that the bar is resting on the heel of the palm and pad below the thumb as an extension of the forearm.  In other words, the bar should be right on top of the middle of your wrist.
3.    Push your chest up and elbows forward.  As I mentioned above, the forearms must be vertical under the bar at all times, which makes the elbow slightly in front of the bar when it’s resting on your chest.  Look forward at a fixed spot on the wall in front of you.  I like to use a piece of chalk to mark a spot on the wall that I stare at for the entire set.  If you absolutely have to press in front of a mirror, get a piece of paper and tape it to the mirror so that you have something static to stare at during the press.  DO NOT LOOK INTO THE MIRROR WHILST PRESSING!
4.    Bend your knees slightly and dip under the bar, then stand up straight, take a step back and resume the shoulder-width stance.
5.    We want to have the bar travel in a vertical path, so you’ll need to lean back ever so slightly.  Instead of hyperextending the back to lean backwards, we like to think of shifting ever so slightly from the hips and/or ankles.  Either way, the legs must remain locked throughout the entire movement.  Using your knees to bounce the bar up is a push press, and for our purposes in overhead pressing is cheating.  With your legs locked, you can lean back just a little bit so that your face is out of the way of the bar as you press it up.  Take a deep breath and hold it as you push the bar straight up.
6.    As the bar clears your head, push your entire body forward under it.  You are not bending forward at the waste, pushing your head forward or anything else.  It’s as simple as pushing the body forward under the bar.  This will add stability to the lift and put you in the proper position for finishing the press.
7.    As you get ready to lock your arms out, you should have pushed your body through to the point where the bar is pressed directly overhead, in line with your spine.  It’s important to push the body through rather than simply pushing the bar backwards.  At lockout, shrug up powerfully, as though the movement never ends and you’re going to keep pushing it up forever.  In actuality, you just need to push it up as high as you can, including a shrug, and hold it there long enough to take in a deep breath.
8.    Let the bar descend in a controlled fashion and lean back slightly to accommodate the vertical bar path down to your chest.  As with the bench press, you lowered the weight from lockout, so you can utilize the stretch reflex to make the reps from the second onward more powerful than the first.  Though we call it a ‘bounce’, be careful to stay tight and don’t do this sloppily.  A good rule of thumb is to let the bar touch your chest no harder than you’d want to drop it on you if your chest were made of glass.

So that’s the (overhead) press.  It’s critical to master this exercise in order to balance your upper body and ensure healthy shoulders.  You might not see too many other people doing this at your gym, but then again, you might not ever have to go to the hospital for a torn pec, either.