Fitness And Nutrition General

For barbell shoulder presses, I've typically done them seated. How much more benefit does standing offer versus seated, if any?

Thread: Standing Military Press VS. Seated Barbell Shoulder Press

I tried to do them standing yesterday I didn't a problem keeping my core tight and back straight. The thread above says that seated presses build mass better? I'd think it be the opposite.

I do it standing. It's an awesome feeling when you get used to it, standing there pressing a whole lotta weight above your head. I don't believe one would add mass more than the other. I started doing it standing after I maxed out my dumbbells and didn't feel like shelling out 100+ bucks every time I wanted to bump it up 5 pounds. It can be a little tough on lower back sometimes; kind of compressing my lower spine.

Edit: most mass I gain on my shoulders I think comes from high rep and light weight front an lateral dumbbell raises. I superset 12 to the side, drop weight 5 pounds then 12 to the front. I do that 3x after I'm done with military.

Ninja Edit: I look at it like, irl when are you gonna be sitting upright pressing something heavy above your head? Standing military is more of a natural movement for your whole body. Seems better all around to me.

Every time I do standing military presses, I feel like my head is gonna explode

Agreed.

In a good way?

Shouldn't be

That is why I prefer seat presses! Especially when you get past 225lbs mark.

It's only when I do it heavy. 225 is my dream but it's when I rep 185 I notice it.

I noticed most plp do kind of a push press when they are standing also.

I keep by legs pretty rigid. I try not to use momentum to get it up. Not sure if this is proper or not.

I guess it is just instinctive body movements for most folks to push off.

I'm just saying, if you get low back pain, it's probably because you're arching your back to get the bar around the chin. But you can lean the whole body back (starting from the feet with the abs and quads very tight) and keep the low back straight for that portion of the exercise.

Anyway, Rip has a video about the way he's been teaching/coaching the press in SS 2.0 that I thought was pretty interesting. I don't do it exactly as he prescribes (I use more of a SS 1.0 approach) but I'm guessing he made the changes due to folks having trouble with lowback and shoulder impingement.

I'll check it out. I don't really have anyone checking my form for me on that.

My advice is to only incorporate it to some extent, because the lie-back he coaches is pretty extreme and easy to *** up if you're trying to do it by yourself (as illustrated by the countless folks in his class that keep *** it up). But I'm just a dude on the internet. Either way, I bet you can eliminate your back soreness with some tweaks.

His grip is so close on that bar, is that proper form for seated also?This is typically the forearm distance I use on shoulder presses.

I keep it alot more narrow than my bench grip. Feels awkward out wide on military like some badness is happening. My hands come diwn just outside my shoulders at bottom of rep. Feels good for me.

The grip Rip coaches achieves a vertical forearm in all planes, which is clearly the most stable and easier on the joints, but he'd also argue that it translates into the most efficient press since all force is going upwards. Again though, he is pretty purely a strength training guy and you might want to take a wider grip at lower intensity for some aesthetic reason.

I also wanted to mention that Rip's press as described in this video is getting fairly close to the 3-part press that was removed from the olympics in 1972. So it's obviously not a strict military press, but it begs the debate about the virtues of each from both a strength and shoulder health perspective.

nope. Its like all the pressure is on my head and face. Idk what it is, maybe my breathing is not good on presses. I get the same feeling when I do handstand pushups. Overall, I'm actually significantly weaker on shoulders and traps than I am with lower body, which causes me to really hate overhead presses.

Usually do them seated for this reason so I can isolate my upper body rather than using my feet to give me support. Either way, its not my favorite workout to do. And I never do them behind the neck.

Edit: and when I say significantly weaker, I'm not comparing squat numbers to bench/shoulder numbers. I'm saying whatever the average for a person my size and strength should be, I'm likely well below that. I was never blessed with upper body strength.

I've been having this conversation a lot lately. One of the guys at the office has started working out again and was commenting that he'd never lost the upper body muscle but his legs have gone to hell. He knows I'm a cyclist, so his immediate reaction to my stating the inverse was to point that out. But I maintained a huge proportion of my lower body muscle mass even while being largely sedentary for 3 years (not coincidentally, this was the same time I was playing FFXI the most heavily).

It leads me to think that people retain certain muscle better. I'd be interested to know if it is genetic or habitual. Virtually every form of exercise I've ever undertaken has been lower-body-centric (bicycling, running, ballet and other forms of dance), so it hardly seems surprising that my thighs and calves have been consistently huge since I was a teenager. Perhaps if I'd gotten obsessed with vanity muscles (chest and arms) as a kid, I'd have a different habitual shape?

Calves are vanity muscles if anything is! Huge calves take more commitment and effort than anything else in the weight room and they are very often completely neglected due to the suckiness of training them.

It's not vanity to want to be your best and "obsessed" is how lazy people refer to "committed" people. So don't say obsessed!

I think there is a line between motivated and obsessed.

lol not for me since my hobby is the working out itself. Has nada to do with motivation; I just have fun in the gym/on the bike/at my obstacle course.

That said, I don't take roids either, so yea lol. The fun is in the lifting itself, not necessarily so much the results (Was at some point obviously but right now I'm fine with a slower progression if it means being able to have more liberty/fun w/ my workouts)

You forgot quads too! It astounds me how many guys ignore their quads. It's a 5 day split of upper-body for so many guys at my gym.

Agree!


Disagree. Some people really are so vain it becomes an obesession with self. It's not about being the best you can be anymore. And those people are scary.

Edit: Think Jersey Shore stereotype here.

Framing and putting this plaque on my wall, as it is pretty much my life story in the weight room and my entire philosophy.


That's not the best example to use of a person who is obsessed vs being the best. Those guys were going on television and knew the cameras would be rolling when they took their shirts off, so yeah, they juiced up and hit the gym like crazy so they would looks ripped during the show. But watch the reunion show and you'll see that Ronnie is as fat as a whale and the other cast doesn't look nearly as "fit" as they did when they were on the show.

So I won't say those meatheads weren't necessarily "obsessed" with their bodies, but rather the attention it would get them while on tv. after that was over, they went back to their normal body physiques.

And just as a side point, I've always felt the people who are concerned more about appearance over performance tend to have the lower quality work ethic overall. People who do it because they love it and enjoy the challenge always seem to be more advanced in their lifting than the fanboys who want a little beachside attention here and there. But I digress.

Not disputing a thing you just said.

Point of order: I've never watched a single minute of Jersey Shore. I just know of them and their behavior and I've seen commercials/promos. But just as with women airbrushed on magazines, as it goes for men in the weight room; some of them see that ideal and become obsessed with themselves over it.

And obviously, those guys are stereotyped images at this point anyhow. But they are out there. And there's a couple in every gym.

Dedication = healthy. Losing fat, being your best = very healthy.

Being so caught up in your own image to the exclusion of other things = obsessed, problematic.

That's all I'm saying.

And that's also not to say that Amandarius isn't right sometimes too. Sometimes less-motivated people dismiss dedication as obsession to sooth themselves about their own situation. It's all relative in the end, I suppose.

I watched the first few episodes until I realized it had nothing to do with Jersey at all, was extremely profane and sexual in nature, and, oh, no black people were ever showed in all of jersey shore. I thought that was silly.

In any event, (and don't take the following personal) what another man or woman chooses to put on a pedestal is of no concern to you, me, or anyone else. Some people, from what I have personally witnessed, suffer from a HUGE attention-lacking disorder (some call it being insecure). They have lower self-esteem and they need the reassurance from people complimenting them on their body and appearance to make them feel better about themselves. I have also noticed these same people spend over half their time in the gym walking around looking at girls, curling in front of the mirror, and staring at themselves in the mirror. In any case, what they choose to exalt as important, whether it be obsession or just strange addiction is their own business.

I wouldn't label individuals solely off of their appearance and their behavior, because ultimately I don't know what that person is thinking. And yes, there are lots of these people in gyms nowadays (most view gyms as social clubs to show off and attract others).

But the bottom line I have noticed is, the people who "obsess" (and I use this word loosely, due to difference of meaning) over fitness and vanity in terms of exercise tend to have a good chunk of deficiency elsewhere in their life, and this activity seems to overcompensate for whatever issues they make be having that are invisible to others.

TL;DR - Don't worry about those people. They are largely a distraction to you and others and probably do not have much to share in terms of advice you can gain anything from.



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNDDDD I got off topic again. Sorry!

Tell me about it. And they take up all the parking spots! *shakefist*

But yeah. I dunno. I just kinda feel "obsessed" isn't the worst word to use about some things.

On topic, took a couple of weeks off the gym for a variety of personal and social obligations and got back into going again this past weekend with an adjusted routine. It's sort of kicking my ***, but gauged on the things dicussed here and conversations with a couple friends who were in similar situations to me and have managed to lose weight and put on muscle, it should be a bit better. Still using the lifting machines for now, but I'll be attempting to transition to the freeweights as soon as I'm a bit more comfortable not making an *** out of myself.

Hopefully will have good things to report going forward.

Oh, hurrah, I started an argument.

Do you use that hypertrophic muscle to do something? Then it's not a vanity muscle.

The definition of "do" is fairly flexible, but it refers to:

* Competing in a sporting competition, professionally or as an amateur, even if it is just the office softball league.
* Performing job functions that demand such a level of fitness (so lifting that 5 lb. ream of copy paper doesn't count).
* Seeking to amuse yourself by achieving a particular goal (reference Tigerwoods's comment above).
* Modeling for a skin mag or otherwise portraying a certain physique for compensation (like actors who bulk up for roles).
* Practically anything other than lifting weights in a gym unless you are a competitive lifter.

My experience of teenage boys (which means the kids I went to school with, so who knows what has changed since the late 90s) was that they wanted to work on their biceps and chest muscles to impress girls. That's the behavior I was referring to: the stupid kid attitude of "This will get me laid" instead of giving two damns about using the muscle or even figuring out how to build it correctly.

lol I never understood that mentality. I'd have stopped lifting a long time ago if that were me. I haven't been on a date in over 5 years (and I've only been lifting for 3 lol)

Only 3? I distinctly remember talking about getting in shape with you on KI and that had to be at least 5 years ago now.

... ye gods, I think it really was at least that long, too. When did I blink and it turned into 2014?