Strict Overhead Press - weak off the shoulders

I have simply been pressing hard and heavy as hell lately and my Military Press has just taken off. I hit 235x1 in strict fashion. I'm doing nothing other than flat benches for pressing. I think doing the lift that you want to get good at may have some merit but now a day everyone is looking for a special exercise when they haven't even really worked the main lift to the bone.
 
EZA,

Would the same rationale hold true for the antagonist movement? Do you prescribe pullups/chins for MMA or football athletes?

I'd say the vast majority of the S&P citizenry here are following a powerlifting routine, dabble in oly movements and strongman, and are not active fighters (the demographic your speaking to).
 
The antagonistic movements are not compressive to the shoulder joint capsule and they help strengthen and stabilize the muscles that decelerate the humerus during ballistic actions so yes I use a lot of pulling movements with fighters, football players, and most athletes in general. I use a lot of pull-ups, dumbbell and barbell rows, sled pulls and drags, and quite a bit of pulling work all the way around.

As far as injury prevention goes, all of those movements will go a long way towards keeping the shoulders healthy. I use pulling movements, manual resistance shoulder exercises, various sled dragging drills, and a great rotator cuff program I've used for years that we all used at the University of Washinton and with the Seahawks.

I have a copy of the rotator cuff program in .pdf so if anyone wants it send me a PM with your email and I'll send it to you.

Also, if anyone's shoulders are hurting due to any impingement try taking a jumpstretch band and using it to traction the shoulder from different positions. When you see how much better it feels when the joint is tractioned and the relief you'll feel, you will quickly understand why you generally want to limit or avoid exercises like the overhead press that compress the joint. Give it a try.
 
Well from my personal experience I think OH pressing is great. I have dislocated both my shoulders playing Rugby, and my left should has come out many times since the orginal injury. Since I found this forum, I haven't had a single dislocation and my shoulders feel MUCH more stable and a hell of a lot stronger. With propper warm up and not pushing my limits too far I find OHP much easier on my bad shoulder then benching."

And in MMA if this guy couldn't OHP is own body weight we wouldn't see a sweet KO like this.



Yes of course, if you've dislocated your shoulders this means you have tremendous joint laxity and instability so the compressive actions of the overhead press would be beneficial. This is one example where the movement would actually helpful, but I certainly wouldn't recommend going particularly heavy either. Also, if you try incorporating a powerlifting style bench press with elbows adducted into your sides you should find it places much less stress on your shoulder as well.
 
So far I personally have had no shoulder problems from OHP. Bench press inflammates my shoulders and I feel uncomfortable doing it. I would think that strickt behind the neck press would do the things you, EZA, descpibe.
Also the stability is much different. When benching, your shoulders are over the bench, your upperback is supported but the shoulder area is over nothing but your muscles and tendons. With OHP your whole body is supporting you.
 
OHP is very hard on the shoulder joint, I wouldn't advise doing a whole lot of it, at least not very heavy, if you're also training in MMA. Over the long run it will increase your risk of impingement and it's not exactly a movement patter that is particularly important in MMA or many sports anyway.

Would you mind elaborating on this point with respect to (a) alternative strength exercises that more closely replicate movement patterns (what movement patterns are we speaking of?) relevant to MMA (b) the question why we should be interested in closely replicating ring/cage movement patterns in the weight room.
 
If we could get Rippetoe on this thread it would be a debate for the ages. Anyone think they could talk him into commin over here from strengthmill.com for a minute? Id ask but im afraid of him.
 
Would you mind elaborating on this point with respect to (a) alternative strength exercises that more closely replicate movement patterns (what movement patterns are we speaking of?) relevant to MMA (b) the question why we should be interested in closely replicating ring/cage movement patterns in the weight room.

I can't answer such a complex question about the principles of specificity in a single post. There are many types of specificity, i.e. specifity of motor pattern and direction of force application, ****bolic specificity, strength specificy, etc. so this would take several pages to answer properly. At some point I'll write an article to elaborate on this topic because it obviously needs to be explored on here.

If you read my original post I simply said I wouldn't advise doing a lot of heavy overhead presses if you're a fighter. I never said it can't be done at all or that it has no place in training whatsoever, I simply said it's a hard movement on the joint and it's not particularly transferable into the skills of MMA anyway.

A lower level athlete could use it in the GPP block of training, but for higher level athletes or for more specific phases of training there are other more specific exercises should be used in training. It is also a biomechanical fact that due to the compressive force it places on the shoulder joint because of the humeral abducation inherent in the exercise it can increase your risk of shoulder impingement.

So no, I'm not saying the overhead press is the worst exercise of all time or can never be used by anyone, I'm saying it has limited application in the use of most sports specific programs and it is certainly not the single most important upper body exercise of all time as was suggested on here. I have rarely seen it used in the programs of elite level athletes and many world records have been set without it so it is by no means some terribly important exercise that can't be lived without.

Somehow when the topc of specificity comes up people either make the argument that you should be doing a bunch of stupid exercises that are supposed to mimic the actual skills of the sport (this is what the functional training crowd pushes) or they think there is not really any such thing as specificity and you should just get strong as hell and participate in your sport and that's all that's necessary. The reality is that neither of these views is correct and specificity and the transfer of training is much more complicated than either of those answers provide for.

To thoroughly understand specificity and apply the principles correctly you have to have a thorough knowledge of the specific adaptations the type of training you are doing will result in. Most coaches and athletes have no real clue of the actual physiological adaptations they are stimulating through their methods so how could they understand if they'll transfer into the sport or not? Transfer of training or dynamic correspondance as Verkhoshansky calls it, is probably the most complex subject in all of strength and conditioning and is rarely applied correctly.

Look through my article in the discussion forum to get an idea of how exercises should be used and the progression from general to specific should take place.
 
If we could get Rippetoe on this thread it would be a debate for the ages. Anyone think they could talk him into commin over here from strengthmill.com for a minute? Id ask but im afraid of him.
afraid? why?
 
No problem, I think my next article will be on understanding specificity and the transfer of training so people can get a better idea of what it's really all about.
 
I thought this was an MMA Strength & Power board yet everyone on here is talking about Olympic lifting and Strongman. If people think that the strength and conditioning for an olympic lifter, a strongman competitor, and an MMA fighter should be the same they are greatly misinformed.

There's been more fighters on here lately, and I think most people in S&P train in some form of MA, even if they dont compete. While you have a valid point about competition preparation, I'd say that a fighter looking to gain strength (well out from a fight) would be served a lot better by trainin' Oly or PL, while continuing fight trainin', than to lift in the BB manner that many currently do.


For athletes in MMA, football, and several other sports that put tremendous stress on the shoulder joint capsule because of the skill involved, there are much safer, more effective, and smarter ways to train the shoudler than a lot of heavy overhead pressing.

Would you care to expand on this? You say that you think there's better ways to train the shoulder, but give no indication of what they are.
 
John,although I am not EZA. I don't believe he was saying to train like a BBer either.
 
afraid? why?

Heh not literally. Read some of his posts over at strengthmill.com and you will understand. Rippetoe is known for tearing into people, in a semi nice way.
 
If we could get Rippetoe on this thread it would be a debate for the ages. Anyone think they could talk him into commin over here from strengthmill.com for a minute? Id ask but im afraid of him.

I don't think there is much of a debate, just a couple different camps with different ways thought. No one ever said that is a bad thing.
 
John,although I am not EZA. I don't believe he was saying to train like a BBer either.

I didn't say he was, just that it seems a lot of guys do, and that there's better ways to train strength for a fighter than that.
 
No one ever argued that point in this thread. So why even bring it up?
 
Heh not literally. Read some of his posts over at strengthmill.com and you will understand. Rippetoe is known for tearing into people, in a semi nice way.
oh yeah, i thought thats what you might've meant. i agree, but usually the people who he tears up are the people who ask stupid questions
 
No one ever argued that point in this thread. So why even bring it up?

Just so used to that comin' up at some point in arguments like this that I was thinkin' ahead. :icon_chee He was talkin' about alternate trainin' methods, and other than Oly and PL, I can't think of too many legitimate strength trainin' methods, altho BBin' gets confused with strength training so often.
 
The problem with the majority of sports specific strength and conditioning programs in this country is that they are built around a framework and understanding of the principles used for either Olympic Weightlifting, Powerliftting, Bodybuilding, or Rehabilitation.

The Powerlifting group believes all you have to do is get an athlete's max strength as high as possible using the major powerlifting movements and accessory lifts and this max strength and power will all transfer into the sport. They think that anybody who doesn't believe in getting an athlete as strong as hell doesn't know what they are talking about. If it was really just all about max strength and a high level was really a prerequisite for success then all elite level athletes would posses great max strength but the reality is that they do not. I've worked in the NFL and at the D-1 level and I can tell you there are several athletes who do not posses great max strength at all and yet they have great exposive power and a high level of skill. The truth is that max strength is only as important as its ability to transfer into higher speeds of movement and power. In sports with high external resistance max strength is much more important than in sports with low external resistance. So yes max strength is important but it's context dependent and its development needs to be specific to the sport not just general all the time.

The Weightlifting group thinks everything revolves around the major olympic lifting movements and their accessories and it's all about power development and "triple extension." While it is true that explosive power is important and needs to be developed for most sports, all the force application used in the olympic lifts is vertical and there is less transfer into horizontal power than people believe. The olympic lifts themseves are also very technical lifts and the amount of time it takes to learn them properly and perform them is also time that could be better spent doing lifts that are more power specific. There is also generally speaking a total lack of understanding of the importance of properly developing the energy systems in the olympic lifting community because you don't need much development when all of your lifting is based around the olympic lifts.

I don't think I need to go into great detail on the problems with using a bodybuilding style approach of the rehabilitation methods used by the functional training crowd. It seems like most people on this board have a pretty good understranding why the methods used to bodybuild or rehab injured people ae not the same ones that should be used to improve performance.

My point is that the methods of powerlifting were designed to make you a better powerlifter, the methods of olympic lifting were designed to make you a better Weightlifter, the bodybuilding methods will make you bigger, and the rehabilitation methods will help you come back from an injury. None of the frameworks that these methods were built upon offer a complete model of human performance and they all leave many important components out and grossly overexaggerate the importance of other aspects. You don't need to have an elite total, be lean and look like a bodybuilder, be able to snatch 150kg, or do a bunch of dumbass exercises on balance boards and disks to be a successful athlete and you shouldn't base your entire training philosophy around the methods used to do such things.

The framework used to develop athletes and improve performance needs to be based around understanding the adaptations that different methods stimulate and the specific developments needed for success in a given sport. When you understand physiologically speaking what is necessary for success in a given sport and you understand exactly which methods can target the systems and motor abilities in a specific way. you can create programs that will create the adaptations necessary for each individual in each sport to improve their performance. This is much more complex than just using a framework that is used to make someone stronger in a particular lift or set of specific lifts such as in weightlifting and powerlifting.

I'll post more on this later
 
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