The Overhead Press Megathread

Content:
1. Biomechanics
2. Scapular-Humeral-Truncal Rhythm
3. Hip thrust during Rippetoe’s Press 2.0
4. Progression tips
5. Variations

1. Biomechanics of the OHP

>Primary movements: Shoulder Flexion, Shoulder Abduction, Elbow Extension, Scapular Upward Rotation
>Primary movers: Front delts, Clavicular Pec Major, Lateral delts, Triceps
>Secondary movers: Serratus Anterior, Trapezius (mainly Lower Traps), Sternal Pec Major, Supraspinatus & Rotator Cuff

Front Delts: Primary muscle, involved throughout the entire range of motion. Performs mainly shoulder flexion, but also helps a lot with abduction. Its strength increases after the initial drive up.

Clavicular Pec Major: Performs strong shoulder flexion. Its contribution to flexion increases as the bar moves up, peaking with an even higher flexion moment arm than the front delts. Also contributes, to a smaller degree, to abduction once the bar is high and the torso is moving forwards.

Lateral Delts: Involved mainly in shoulder abduction, specially once the elbows start flaring to the sides. Contribution goes up as the bar goes up. Also helps with shoulder flexion, but is weak during the initial drive up.

Sternal Pec Major: Involved in shoulder flexion, mainly during the initial drive up when the lower back is arched and the chest is presented to the ceiling. Contribution goes down as the bar goes up and the torso moves forward.

Triceps: Perform the elbow extension that completes the movement. As the long head of the triceps crosses the shoulder joint, it can act as a “passive tendon”, transferring some of the shoulder flexion force to help elbow extension (for more on this, check our article on fitsticky.com/articles/squats-hamstrings-lombard-paradox). Can often be a limiting muscle.

Other urls found in this thread:

fitsticky.com/novice-programs
fitsticky.com/faq
library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH2001/JSH2803/JSH2803d.pdf
fitsticky.com/lifts
startingstrength.com/site/article/the_quest_for_a_stronger_overhead_press
startingstrength.com/site/article/the_olympic-style_press
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2644775/
scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1413-35552009005000012&script=sci_arttext
desustorage.org/fit/search/text/solid/username/trappy-chan/
youtube.com/user/JDCav24/search?query=elbow
youtube.com/watch?v=J9yRiOeVvIM
youtube.com/watch?v=fAvOnpN7Shc
youtube.com/watch?v=kL3cIDFUafU
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Supraspinatus & Rotator Cuff: Helps mainly during the initial drive up, with a strong initial contribution to flexion, but also abduction to a smaller degree. Its contribution goes down sharply as the bar goes up. The subscapularis has a decent contribution to the initial flexion, but it goes down sharply as the angle increases. Infraspinatus has weak contribution to abduction, and acts mostly as a stabilizer. Teres minor has a minor contribution to flexion at the end of the movement.

Trapezius: Handles the scapular part of the movement. Its main function during the overhead press is of upward rotation, but also acts on a small amount of scapular elevation and retraction at the end of the movement. The most important fibres are the lower traps, the primary muscle responsible for upward rotation, along with the serratus. The middle traps help to a smaller extent to the upward rotation, but work mostly to stabilize the joints and offset the lateral translation of the serratus. The upper traps do not attach to the scapulae, but help with a small amount of elevation and retraction with its action on the clavicle, at the end of the movement.

Serratus Anterior: The serratus handles the upward rotation of the scapulae, with help from the traps. Its most active fibres are the lower and middle ones.

Lats: The lats perform the complete opposite of everything you’ve read above, acting antagonistically on both the shoulder and the scapulae, and thus are of no help to the OHP. I wouldn’t even be mentioning them here, but for some reason some people think training their lats can help increase their press. No.

This is fucking pathetic just put this shit in the new sticky or something.

Surely you mean military press

Implying your faggot ass can even press the bar.

Fuck off degenerate.

2. Scapular-Humeral-Truncal Rhythm
The OHP is a very complex movement that depends on the rhythmic motion and action of the scapulae, shoulder, and trunk.
The shoulder elevation is done by the coordinated movement between the glenohumeral (shoulder) and scapulothoracic joints, also known as the Scapulohumeral Rhythm.

The initial drive off the chest is primarily glenohumeral flexion, with very little (if any) scapular movement. This initial flexion has a lot of contribution from the supraspinatus and sternal pec major, working alongside the anterior delts and clavicular pec major.

As the bar rises, the strength for the anterior delts and clavicular pec major increases, the contribution from the supraspinatus and sternal pec major sharply decreases, the lateral delts start getting more involved in the movement – but most notably, the scapulae start rotating upwards, in a 2:1 ratio (glenohumeral: scapulothoracic) of angle increase.

This scapular movement is important for many reasons, including mainly:

- Impingement prevention: By rotating upwards, the scapulae create more space inside the glenohumeral joint for the tendons to move under high flexion/abduction angles – without getting impinged at the acromion.

- Stabilization of the load: The involvement of the traps and serratus helps by “carrying” part of the load that’s overhead with the upperback, thus allowing the shoulders to “hold less and press more”.

Would cum instantly if you gave me a blowjob

The rhythm of the torso is also majorly important for the OHP. During the initial drive up, the trunk should be arched (“presenting the chest to the ceiling”) for maximising the contribution of the chest during the initial angles of flexion (when your shoulder muscles aren’t as strong). As the bar starts rising, however, the sternal portion of the chest isn’t as helpful anymore (its flexion strength sharply decreases, as the angle of flexion increases). It’s also during this part that the scapulae will want to start rotating. Thus, it’s beneficial for the lifter to move his torso forwards as the bar goes up. This will allow the upperback to help the shoulders with holding the load more efficiently, allow your scapulae to properly rotate, and your trunk will be more stable with a neutral spine.

3. Hip thrust during Rippetoe’s Press 2.0

Around 2012, Rippetoe introduced what he calls “Press 2.0” to his seminars and books. It’s the same lift, but it has an initial hip thrust (inspired by the Olympic Press, more on this later) before the actual pressing.

The point of doing the hip thrust is that is simply fixes a lot of mistakes novices make, and thus makes it easier for Rip to teach the lift to absolute beginners, with less cues and less time spent fixing their form.
The main benefits of doing the hip thrust is:

- It helps improve bar path: Biggest issue - most beginners, and even lots of intermediate lifters, will start pushing the bar forwards instead of up. By learning to arch or hinge properly, the lifter gets in the best position to push straight up.

- Prevents people with no experience from hitting themselves in the chin with the bar.

- It tightens up your glutes, legs and core: A common mistake people often make - without a strong kinetic chain you won't be able to press as much as weight, as some of the force that should be used to push the bar upwards will be lost with the “loose contact” of your body with the ground. When doing the hip thrust, the lifter will contract all these muscles, and thus have to worry less about this issue.

- It creates an arch so that your chest is in a stronger position to help drive the bar off at the start of it: When performing a regular press, like Klokov in the vid, this arch is created by flexing at the spine - with the hip thrust, your spine doesn't need to be as flexed as you're hinging at the hip joint instead. This prevents beginners from snapping their shit up.

- Helps the trainee learn the proper rhythm: It’s easier for beginners to get the rhythm of the movement, as your torso will naturally “want” to move forwards in order to return your hips to the anatomical position.

However, this initial hip thrust does not change the mechanics of the lift (as in, it’s not “cheating”). Unlike a Push Press, where the quads create momentum upwards to help drive the bar upwards, the glutes and hamstrings only create a momentum forwards when doing this hip thrust.

This forward momentum is of marginal (if any) help (as the actual line of pressing is strictly vertical), and it's countered by the detriment of not using the stretch reflex (unless you do it really fast, or don't use the hip thrust on the later reps, but this is not what Rip teaches). But for beginners, or people with the issues mentioned above, learning to press correctly is more important than getting the extra strength from the stretch reflex.

As the trainee gets more experienced, and has already mastered the technique, he may find he prefers to drop the hip thrust in favour of flexing with the lower back, as that allows him to go faster from one rep to the next - and thus lose less of the strength bonus from the stretch reflex of his delts, chest, and triceps. For less experienced lifters, however, the benefits of fixing all the issues mentioned above far outweighs the benefit of the stretch reflex, and thus the hip thrust will help them press heavier weights.

4. Progression Tips

>Lateral Raises

The lateral delts are often overlooked when it comes to pressing strength. This is due to the bench press having a very small abduction component to it. While the bench is great for developing the whole chest, anterior delts, and triceps, it doesn’t really utilize much of your lateral delts at all. So when routines focus on the OHP and the bench to strengthen each other, your lateral delts can end up lagging behind hard. This is a major factor in why people tend to have so much difficulty progressing with the OHP - they are not strengthening their abduction strength enough.

Heavy lateral raises are an excellent ancillary exercise to build shoulder abduction strength. They are a great way of overloading your lateral and front delts, and also getting some work for your traps, while still being light and specific enough that it shouldn’t negatively affect recovery (if used within reason).

For shoulder health, it’s important that you keep your humerus externally rotated during the movement (thumbs higher than pinky is a good queue), and let your scapulae rotate freely. This will prevent impingement issues.