You Should Do This: Floor Press

The Floor Press: It's nothing more than a bench press without the bench. <---like you couldn't figure that one out.  Why It's Awesome: Limits the range of motion at the shoulder joint. It's pretty hard to "dump" (approximation the Humerus) the shoulder forward with these. MUCH easier on the lower back than the bench press cause the legs are out of the equation. The floor provides MUCH better feedback than the bench for maintaining shoulder tightness (packing) and driving the shoulders down into the ground to press the weight. Full Pause or Touch and Go?  Either.... Full Pause Floor presses are GREAT for building speed, starting strength and … [Read more...]

Doing it Better: Shoulder Pressing

You Probably Shouldn't be Overhead Pressing... Super Strong...but serious Lumbar Compensation here. I allow only about 10% of my clients to overhead press, and even then it's limited. That means 90% are foreboden from ever putting a weight over their head. Jim Wendler and Mark Rippetoe be damned. Fact is the vast, vast, vast majority of people I've trained should NOT overhead press for one or many of a variety of reasons: Lack of subacromial space. Poor humeral/ scapular rhythm (scapular depression). Poor Thoracic extension. In my experience most people (Not ALL, jackass) just can't overhead press correctly without grinding tissues down and creating … [Read more...]