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Vertical push · Barbell

Barbell overhead press

The press with nothing behind you. No bench, no backrest, no pad to shove against, so the whole body holds the ground while the arms do the work overhead. That is the lift, and it is why the weight is smaller than you expect.

Brace the ribs down, no leaning back.

The cue Reckoner puts on your wrist mid set.
Pattern
Vertical push
Trains
Front delts, triceps
Kit
Barbell, rack
Loading
A weight you choose
Reckoner prescribes
4 sets of 6 to 10 reps at RPE 8
Progression step
2.5 kg once the top of the range is clean
Bar
20 kg
Skill
Technical
Recovery cost
High
Not prescribed if you have declared
Shoulder, lower back, wrist, elbow, neck

Muscles worked

Primary
Front delts · Triceps
Secondary
Traps · Chest · Upper back

How to do it

  1. Take the bar on the front of the shoulders

    Hands just outside shoulder width, elbows in front of the bar, the bar resting on the front of the shoulders rather than held off them. If the wrists hurt, the bar is sitting in your palms instead of on your body.

  2. Brace before you press, not after

    Ribs pulled down, glutes tight, feet under the hips and pushing the floor apart. Standing rather than sitting is what puts the trunk into this lift: pressing seated has been measured at about eighty one per cent less rectus abdominis activity than pressing standing1.

  3. Move your head out of the way

    Press up, and the moment the bar clears your forehead push your head forward through the gap so the bar travels in a line rather than around your face. Pressing around the head is what makes the last third feel impossible.

  4. Finish with the shoulders under the bar

    At the top the arms are straight, the shoulders shrugged up, and the bar is over the middle of your foot. That shrug is not cheating. The shoulder blade rotates upward through an overhead press more than it does in a plain arm raise2, and the top of the lift is where that happens.

What goes wrong

How Reckoner progresses this lift

Six weeks of this lift, from 40 kg, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.

Barbell overhead press, six weeks
WeekPrescribedWhat it did
14 x 6 at 40 kgMore reps 6 → 7 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does.
24 x 7 at 40 kgMore reps 7 → 8 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does.
34 x 8 at 40 kgMore reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does.
44 x 9 at 40 kgMore reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does.
54 x 10 at 40 kgDeload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue.
62 x 10 at 40 kgLoad up 40 kg → 42.5 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 2.5 kg to 42.5 kg and reps reset to six. The lighter week is over, so this is back to four sets.

Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.

The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.

Questions people ask

Standing or seated?

Both are in the library and they answer different questions. Seated lets you move more weight: seated dumbbell pressing came out about ten per cent above standing dumbbell pressing in the same lifters3. Standing puts the trunk to work: rectus abdominis activity was about eighty one per cent lower seated than standing in the same comparison1. This page is the standing one.

Is pressing overhead bad for shoulders?

That is not a question this page can answer for your shoulder, and anyone who answers it for you without looking at you is guessing. What is measured is that the shoulder blade moves differently in an overhead press than in a plain arm raise: less internal rotation, more upward rotation and more posterior tilt2, which is why it is used as a rehabilitation exercise at all. Reckoner will not prescribe this movement to you if you have declared shoulder trouble in your profile, and the fact block at the top of this page lists every declaration that rules it out.

What does Reckoner do when this lift stalls?

It eases the load and lets you rebuild toward the weight you were stuck at. It cannot offer you a different movement instead, because this is the only barbell standing press in the library and there is nothing in its swap group to rotate to. The reset is the whole answer here.

Similar movements

Reckoner has no other movement in this swap group.

Nothing else in the library trains this the same way.

Sources

  1. Saeterbakken and Fimland, European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2012. Muscle activity of the core during bilateral, unilateral, seated and standing resistance exercise rectus abdominis activity being about eighty one per cent lower in the seated bilateral dumbbell shoulder press than in the standing version
  2. Ichihashi and colleagues, Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery, 2014. Kinematic characteristics of the scapula and clavicle during military press exercise and shoulder flexion the military press involving less scapular internal rotation, greater upward rotation and greater posterior tilt than loaded and unloaded shoulder flexion
  3. Saeterbakken and Fimland, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2013. Effects of body position and loading modality on muscle activity and strength in shoulder presses one repetition maximum in the standing dumbbell press being about seven per cent below the standing barbell press and about ten per cent below the seated dumbbell press