I do a average amount of weightlifting. Through research and experimentation, I found what works for me etc. However, I seem to have hit a plateau and my (weight) numbers has dropped. Most significantly my shoulder workouts. Seated Shoulder Press however has always been the bane in my life. I generally use the Oly Bar for this, and when there's no weight to it (bar being 20kg) I can have it nearly touch my chest and then go back up. But as soon as I put a teeny amount of weight on (10kg total) I can't drop the bar lower than my eyeline, lest it just end up resting on my chest. So, rather than bother @Fish Of Doom (again) , I open this question to the forum, in hopes that other's are suffering the same issues and can help. Am I simply weak? Is it a body mechanics thing? (ie - not flexible) Any and all suggestions welcome.
Are you limited to seated shoulder press because of your knee? I made better progress when doing a standing press, but I guess that weight bearing through the leg is off your list I hit a plateau on the shoulder press for a while, always a hard one to progress. 3 main items I adjusted which helped: grip - I brought my grip in as it was too wide causing my elbows to flare out, and turned my palms inwards slightly, the bar then goes slightly diagonally across the palm, this also helped stopping my elbows flare out, so that the elbow stay under the hand. head position: I'm not sure how this works in seated, but I expect the mechanics would be similar - when the bar starts on your upper chest with your head behind the lift line, as the bar goes up your head comes underneath the bar so that all your deltoid muscles becomes engaged to lock above your head. volume/frequency: I was following 531 at the time so only pressing once a week, I upped this to 2 times with 1 being the "hard" lift and the second time being a maintenance lift, I imagine that can be adjusting depending how your body reacts, but as it's a small muscle group it recovers quicker than the big lifts. I also increased the volume, so I was doing a standard increment of weight for each set of 5 or 3, then finishing with 5x10 for volume, the maintenance day I would just do the 5x10 volume at a lower weight after bench press. generally speaking I would say it's a hard one to progress - I haven't OHP much for a while, but I was stuck barely able to squeeze out 60kg for a long time, then after adjusting it took about 3 months to get a good form with 72.5 kg (i.e. not push press )
Some good advice above, overhead works takes a long time to come better and it responds better to volume both in terms of higher numbers of reps and sets and numbers of days pressing as mentioned above. Work your triceps hard as well and do some high reps isolation work for the shoulders as well
Currently yes, however usually I would be doing it standing. But I always found that I would end up arching my back (backwards) too much. So seated was always my preferred because it would keep my back straight and focus more on my shoulders. That's my problem. My lifting section is literally between my upper lip and onwards. Anything lower and I can't push off. Or at least I end up using all my energy on the push off between the chest and chin. Coincidentally, I am now trying the 531. I am forcing from the chest onwards still and getting screamed at by my training bud. I'm on week 2. So don't know if it's working as well.....yet.
My Barbell press got better as I added a high volume of dumbbell pressing, on top of doing 5x5. As above I ended up with two days of OH press, and managed to take mine up to 50kg. I THINK it got better because it means you can't compensate for one arms weakness when you use dumbbells. I've currently been doing 1 set of 12, 1 of 10, 2 of 8, then 1 of 6, with some pre-exhaust work. Good luck!
For barbell OHP (bullet points for ease of reading): -Learn to front rack: https://www.catalystathletics.com/articles/images/Clean-Rack-Full-Hand.jpg (chest UP, not out, and shoulders FORWARS and UP, with bar resting on deltoids; ability to full-grip will depend on shoulder external rotation mobility, and contribute to lessening wrist and elbow stress, so worth developing). -Are your elbows directly underneath the bar at all times? If they are in front, your triceps get terrible leverage, and if they are behind, same for your shoulders, as you basically have to depend on your hinging strength at the elbow. Keep those elbows below the bar, and push it hard from directly underneath. -Similarly, how far do you let the bar drift in front from your center of gravity. It's common to let it drift out and/or lean back, in the same way it's common for the butt to shoot up and back on a squat or DL: you're completing the main pushing bit (extending the joints moved by the exercise's prime movers), but without actually lifting the weight that much further up (think of it like the middle bit of a spring shooting off sideways rather than lifting whatever is compressing it). Go strict strict strict, keep the bar close to your face -Strength can be angle/ROM-specific, so you may well be strong at the top but unable to exert force at the bottom. You fix this by spending time under load at the ROMs where you are weak (think of it as "teaching" your body how to exert potential strength that it already has), so I recommend not only pressing off the front rack whenever possible, or at least on the very first rep and returning to it on the last one, but also very controlled eccentrics, trying to resist the bar as much and as long as possible. -If pressing without returning to the front rack in between reps, try both pausing at the bottom (literally stopping dead for at least one second, without relaxing, before pressing again), and trying to switch from a controlled eccentric to the most explosive concentric possible, as immediately as possible (ie a hard upwards acceleration that interrupts the descent rather than following it) For overhead work in general: -I've made my best shoulder improvements (both strength and appearance-wise, still N=1 and not something intrinsically applicable to everyone) with high frequency and greater exercise variety (including pressing, Olympic lift variants, lat/trap BBing, and deltoid BBing), with moderate to slightly high per-session volume giving a high total volume spread out throughout the week. The others have all given very good advice too. -There's a lot to be said for holding weight both overhead and in the hang (DL, row, etc). Lat activation with the bar in the hang will involve the rear deltoids and to a slight degree the triceps, and a proper overhead position with active shoulders/shrug finish (which itself is the consequence of physically lifting the weight as high up as possible and maintaining a steady maximal push on it: https://5b58b124e99a27aafddaa36f-pz...een-Shot-2016-06-14-at-1.06.05-PM-696x425.png) will activate the entire shoulder complex pretty much indiscriminately. -Active shoulder implicitly requires a forwards lean at the end, so on seated pressing motions it will require not making use of the backrest. It will also make the top bit of most OH lifts basically homogeneous barring grip width differences, so unless you want or need to work something really specific, choose the 2-3 you find most fun/comfortable/awesome-looking, and have at it; dumbbells, barbell, kettlebells, strict presses, push presses, holds for time, OH squats, front moves, behind the neck moves, "Sots" variants, bent presses, whatever. Supplement your presses with some pulling moves and some flyes and you're golden. -Press with violence and hate! RAWR! Also squeeze the bar/DB/KB to stabilize the wrists and keep the weight slightly more on top of the elbows, but always prioritize lifting the weight higher (too much of a deathgrip can bork elbow extension, like when you get armbend while deadlifting) -Be honest with yourself about your capacity to actually move the weights you try to move, rather than move your body but not the weight. Keep the strict moves strict, and that includes minimizing torso movement, even if it turns something into a maximal effort that you could otherwise rep-out. Your core will thank you as well
The overhead press has always been a bane of mine. I found that with my grip at the appropriate width my forearms arms jam into my biceps, and my upper arms jam into my lats. That keeps my forearms vertical under the bar. I usually struggle with lockout so I find that if I have trouble at the beginning it's one of two things: 1. I'm not creating enough pressure with my breath and stabilizing my core appropriately. Easily fixed once noticed. 2. I'm not engaging enough at the start and it ends up really sluggish from the bottom. I find this happens because I know the weight is heavy and I'm subconsciously trying to save energy for the following reps. I counteract this by really imagining there's zero load and it seems to effectively trick my body into firing fully right from the start of the lift.
re: 1: Fill with air first, then draw belly in WITHOUT releasing air, to drive it into the chest. This lets you fill the ribcage and lift the chest without actually losing abdominal pressure (ie it's not like an ab vacuum or an exhale, just switching most of the pressure up into the thorax). Also helps get a better shelf for the bar, generally. re: 2: Speed kills. Muscles do their thing more or less automatically depending on what movement is intended (same intention concept as in martial arts, technically called attentional focus). If you intend to lift the weight as fast, as far, and for as long as you can, effective immediately, your body will generally sort itself out and you will like like a boss without needing to overly focus on much (the trick is in knowing the correct things to intend to do, ie "make the bar rise" rather than "extend elbows", etc).
I know what to do, for some reason I just tend to get a little more lax on OHP than other lifts. Well that's kind of why I pretend there's no weight. It seems to result in a more natural drive out of the bottom. It's not actually a problem with speed, as the lift ends up really being the same speed through the rest of the lift. I just don't tend to drive hard enough in the initial portion of the lift as the weight gets heavy and this seems to resolve that.
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I was told by a shoulder surgeon that the shoulder press puts unhealthy stress on the joint. He advised against the shoulder press altogether. Perhaps it’s not worth worrying about increasing weight on the seated shoulder press. Maybe alternate shoulder exercises would be healthier or switching to high reps/low weight. Maybe there’s a healthcare professional on here who could comment.
Your shoulder surgeon [EDIT: is unaware of] correct shoulder press technique (he would most certainly understand it, being a shoulder surgeon ). People who do it incorrectly do tend to bork their shoulders, usually because they are either pressing from the front and not letting their shoulder blades move, or pressing behind the neck without keeping their shoulder-blades retracted, or because they lack the necessary strength to perform whatever movement they're trying to perform with a given load and adequate joint stabilization, resulting in aberrant movements (a strong rotator cuff is a must for all heavy upper body lifting). If the overhead position was anywhere remotely near as injurious as is sometimes touted, the sport of Olympic weightlifting could not exist (being that it is entirely predicated on putting a barbell overhead across two different competition events).
Overhead pressing can be bad if you are involved in contact sports, and if you are like 2/3s off the general population when it comes to how your shoulder joint is made see the below I wrote a while ago Actually I do have something against shoulder pressing lol the position overhead press puts the joint in is not great for 2/3s of the population: there are 3 types of acromin spurr, a.flat, b.beaked and c.hooked. If you have A overhead pressing wont bother you, if you have the other 2 it might, and with all the impact striking and grappling has on the shoulders they are already getting massively beat up is it worth the risk, will it really improve your sports performance? Buddy Morris former NFL coach in the stats did a lot of work over a decade on shoulder health in athletes involved in high impact sports (his was American football but is also applies equally to combat sports) and he came to the conclusion OH pressing was too much of a risk when it didn’t really improve athletic performance persay
Now neutral grip presses like with dumbbells, football bard or logs are easier on all types of shoulder joints
