Lifting a heavy object from your shoulders to above your head is something that a lot of people have difficulty with, even those who are experienced lifters. We're going to give some explanations for why this might be, as well as what you can do to fix the problem and build up your strength for this move.
So, how do you improve your overhead press?
If you want to improve your overhead press, first improve your mobility and stability, then work on your technique, and finally build more muscle in your shoulders and triceps. After you have completed the basic overhead movements, you can add more difficult variations to improve problem areas.
Best Overhead Stability Exercises
Overhead Kettlebell Carry
The kettlebell overhead carry is a shoulder, triceps, and midline strength exercise that uses weight to test your body's stability. The kettlebell overhead carry is a move where you carry a kettlebell (if it is unilateral) or two (if it is bilateral) over your head. To keep your shoulder joint in place, you will need to keep your shoulder joint tight and the surrounding muscles flexed. Choose a light weight when you first start this exercise, and then gradually increase the load as you get more comfortable.
Benefits of the Overhead Kettlebell Carry
- Reinforce overhead muscular coordination (and therefore, stability) under loads, which translates into the enhanced ability to maintain lockout in jerks, snatches, and overhead presses.
- Improve core strength by forcing your body to balance offset loads.
- Increase muscle mass by adding major time under tension to your training regimen.
How to Do the Overhead Kettlebell Carry
Hold two kettlebells over your head so your arms are fully extended, your biceps are by your ears, and your wrists are neutral. When you are ready, lock your shoulder blades in place and contract your core. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, then take one small step forward, focusing on keeping your arms vertical and your elbows extended. Keep the kettlebells close to your body and resist the urge to let them swing out to the side.
Turkish Get-Up
The Turkish get-up is a very complicated exercise and is one of the most technical exercises that you can do. The movement starts with you lying on your back with the kettlebell overhead. You then stand up, holding the kettlebell overhead, and then return to the supine position. To do this move, you need to be strong in your core and legs, as well as have stable shoulders. and power as you age. If you keep your shoulder muscles strong as you age, they will become very endurance and powerful.
Benefits of the Turkish Get-Up
- Train your body to maintain shoulder integrity by engaging the scapular stabilizers, which will help improve shoulder health and overhead strength.
- Improve full-body coordination, which will help your body figure out how to work together during complex moves like clean & jerks, and snatches.
- Enhance overhead strength — because the get-up is such a slow, deliberate series of movements, the time under tension will be high even when you’re working with relatively light weights.
How to Do the Turkish Get-Up
While lying on your back, hold a kettlebell in your left hand with the arm extended so that it is perpendicular to the ground. Do a sit-up with your left leg bent and your right arm and both feet on the ground. Sit on your buttocks with the weight above you in an upright position.
Next, hip raise to slide your right leg underneath your body and place your right knee under your hips. Make sure that your left leg and right hand remain on the ground. From your current position, slowly stand up while keeping the weight overhead and stable. Raise your body up from the lunge position, keeping the load balanced overhead. Reverse the steps to move back to the ground. That’s one rep.
Pin Press
Overhead pin presses are similar to pin squats and pin bench presses, except they are done with an overhead bar. The overhead pin press is a partial range of motion movement that can help address muscle weaknesses and coordination by pressing loads into the overhead position. The pin press allows you to maintain control of the weight throughout the entire range of motion, which can help to improve muscular imbalances and thought coordination. Partial range of motion repetitions with overhead lifts often starts at the chin or eye level, instead of on the shoulders, in order to better target the upper muscles. Moving heavy weights for a shorter range of motion will make you less wobbly. The ability to increase the amount of weight you're pressing while still maintaining stability will eventually help improve your regular overhead presses.
Benefits of the Pin Press
If you want to improve your lifting, pay attention to the path of the bar. This will help you keep the bar on the right path during lifts that involve a full range of motion.
You can improve your strength for the overhead press by working on the areas that are hardest for you. This will help you to be able to complete the lift and lockout better.
Working through the pain of rehab injuries or sore muscles will only make the pain worse.
How to Do the Pin Press
Place safety racks or pins at eye level and position a barbell on them. Approach the barbell as you would when performing a strict overhead press. To complete the overhead press, brace your core, set your back, and press upwards to lock out the movement. Once you have established control of the weight overhead, lower the weights by coordinately lowering them with your arms, and set the barbell back on the pins in the rack. Do repetitions, making sure each one is slow and you are not using momentum or bouncing.
Handstand Holds and Strict Handstand Push-Ups
Doing handstand holds and strict handstand pushups not only looks badass, but it can be great for your shoulder health. You can think of them like overhead carries or presses, but instead of using a kettlebell or loaded barbell, you use your body weight. You don't need any external weights to do this exercise. Pressing your weight as opposed to pressing a heavy weight will always be safer for your joints. In addition to improving your arm strength, you will also develop better full-body control and balance. This is because both of these factors are essential for being able to do a handstand and handstand push-ups.
Benefits of Handstand Holds and Strict Handstand Push-Ups
This text is about how improving coordination and engagement of the muscles can help you lift more efficiently.
Activate your shoulders, core, upper back, and triceps muscles simultaneously to improve strength and force output.
If you want to feel more comfortable when you are doing complex lifts like presses, jerks, and snatches, you should try to become more aware of your position. This will help you to stay in control even when you are in an upside down position.
How to Do Strict Handstand Push-Ups
Standing 8-12 inches away from a wall, place your hands against the wall so that your palms are facing the wall. Kick your feet up so that your body is in a handstand position against the wall. Remain here to become more comfortable and stronger while you're still learning the basics.
When you are doing a handstand push up, let your elbows go in a little bit at the bottom. Maintain upper back and core stability. To do a wall press, stand with your back against a wall and press yourself up using your shoulders, triceps, and upper back. Keep your legs pressed together and your core contracted. Don’t forget to breathe!
Tips To Improve Your Overhead Press
This article provides tips on how to improve your overhead press by addressing some of the main reasons why it may be weak. These tips can be incorporated into your existing workout program to improve your press.
Build Stronger Scapular Stabilizers
The muscles that stabilize the shoulders are the scapular stabilizers and the muscles in the back of the shoulder (the rotator cuff muscles). If you frequently overhead press, you could benefit from improving the strength of your rotator cuff muscles and scapular muscles.
If your shoulders aren't stable, it can cause stress and strain on the smaller muscles in your shoulder, or make it hard to lift heavy things over your head without injuring yourself.
Crawling, arm bars, Turkish get-ups, and band pull-parst are all exercises that help to stabilize the scapula and shoulder during overhead pressing positions.
Stretch the Lats and Triceps
If you're struggling to overhead press, it might be because you lack shoulder mobility.
The reason why lifters are unable to place a load overhead in a stable position is usually because their triceps and lats are tight. If you are struggling to lift the load above your head, you may find it helpful to do some basic triceps and lat stretches.
Stretching your lats and triceps allows you to place a load overhead in a more stable position, which can improve your ability to press loads overhead without as much wear and tear on your shoulder.
It is also important to keep your lats and triceps loose in order to have better shoulder stability and to minimize injury. This will be necessary if you plan on training your overhead press, shoulders, and triceps more frequently.
Train Your Sticking Point
Sticking points are points where we are weakest and cannot continue moving the load upwards.
If you are having trouble with the range of motion in the bottom part of your body, work on it more often. Do the opposite if you're strong in the top-end range of motion.
There are various ways to train your sticking point and make yourself stronger, such as pauses, partial range of motion repetitions, and overhead press variations like pin presses.
You can also increase the resistance of your overhead presses by using resistance bands or chains. Accommodating resistance is a training style that is very effective at increasing the rate of force production and strength.
Build Stronger Triceps
The triceps help with the last part of the overhead press, and can be trained with more specific triceps exercises after doing overhead presses. The triceps muscles are responsible for elbow extension and, like the bench press, are highly involved with the back half of the repetition.
If you find that you can't complete a lift or that you get stuck in the middle of the lift, it is probably a sign that your triceps need to be stronger. To fix this, you should do partial presses and more isolation exercises for your triceps.
Improve Your Posture
Bad posture can not only make you look bad, but it can also cause problems with your mechanics when you press overhead, and can lead to injuries.
A poor posture will make it difficult to keep your back straight during the press and/or limit your movement when reaching overhead, unless you arch your back. There are two main ways to adjust your training to improve your upper back and mobility.
There are some easy ways to improve your stability when overhead, such as doing overhead presses, Z presses, and carrying things overhead. Additionally, by not sacrificing form or posture while training the overhead press, you can help strengthen many of the postural muscles of the upper back and shoulders.
Control the Eccentric
If you want to build a stronger lift, you can improve your control over the full range of motion and learn how to make your muscles contract and produce force throughout that range.
You can also increase time under tension and train the posterior shoulder and back muscles by controlling the lowering phase of the overhead press. This will help you to pattern the muscles in a complimentary way for a successful and strong overhead press.
To train this, simply lower the loads slowly while making sure you feel the engagement of the back muscles and posterior shoulder muscles. They should be working to support the load eccentrically as you bring it back down to the body.
Do Overhead Presses More Frequently
If you want to get better at overhead pressing, you should practice the movement more often so your body can learn how to do it better.
If you want to increase your lift, you can try variations like partial reps, bands, chains, tempo, etc. Doing the lift more frequently can also help.
When you train a movement more frequently, you allow the nervous system and motor units to optimize the movement and become more efficient in taking loads overhead. This also provides your mind with more opportunities to fine-tune the movements.
