Increasing miserable shoulder strength

telemachus

I just got back into a regular routine in late January after traveling here and there for a year and never having access to a gym and while nothing stellar i'm happy enough with my progress which most importantly to me is steadily increasing, the only thing is my shoulder press is seriously pathetic in proportion to the other big compounds I judge each area in and i'm really finding it slow going.

I'd like to spend a couple of months really focusing on it so if anyone has any advice on what sort of auxiliary exercises and frequency i'd really apreciate it (annoyingly my shoulders seem to be one of my slowest areas to recover and i'm forever tweaking them when I try and push it).

Currently i'm about 87 kilos at 6"1 and at 3x5 bench 95 , squat 130 , deadlift 150 and (rather depressingly ) standing press 50 kilos. I lift every second day and would alternate squat/bench/d-lift and squat/press/cleans similar to starting strength with dips (which I like alot) chins and kneeling or bent over rows depending on how i'm feeling. Unlike starting strength I do vary reps/sets occasionly because I find rigidly sticking to 3x5 means i get stuck more often and the odd higher rep day with more time under the bar works for me. Like I said, while not enormously impressive i'm happy with nearly all my lifts going up a kilo or two every couple of weeks or so, but i'm really struggling to make any progress on the standing press.

itsallaboutheL

telemachus wrote: »

I just got back into a regular routine in late January after traveling here and there for a year and never having access to a gym and while nothing stellar i'm happy enough with my progress which most importantly to me is steadily increasing, the only thing is my shoulder press is seriously pathetic in proportion to the other big compounds I judge each area in and i'm really finding it slow going.

I'd like to spend a couple of months really focusing on it so if anyone has any advice on what sort of auxiliary exercises and frequency i'd really apreciate it (annoyingly my shoulders seem to be one of my slowest areas to recover and i'm forever tweaking them when I try and push it).

Currently i'm about 87 kilos at 6"1 and at 3x5 bench 95 , squat 130 , deadlift 150 and (rather depressingly ) standing press 50 kilos. I lift every second day and would alternate squat/bench/d-lift and squat/press/cleans similar to starting strength with dips (which I like alot) chins and kneeling or bent over rows depending on how i'm feeling. Unlike starting strength I do vary reps/sets occasionly because I find rigidly sticking to 3x5 means i get stuck more often and the odd higher rep day with more time under the bar works for me. Like I said, while not enormously impressive i'm happy with nearly all my lifts going up a kilo or two every couple of weeks or so, but i'm really struggling to make any progress on the standing press.

Sit Down for a while.

No seriously try seated presses for a while, i find with standing presses that when i start to struggle my form becomes shocking..... turns into half a bent press/incline bench!

I think if u were to shake it up a bit and do seated presses it would help, theres much less chance of cheating and u can really grind out hard reps!! also whats ur core and back strenght like?? if your having trouble stabilising urself while standing it could be impacting on ur ability to press more weight.....

kevpants

itsallaboutheL wrote: »

whats ur core and back strenght like??

Yip. Core strength is important with shoulder pressing so get stronger there.

If I was in that situation I'd drop back the weight and increase the reps then slowly increase the weight over a few weeks, the amount of reps you can get will tail off but hopefully in 2 months time you'll be pressing a lot more than you were. Build up some momentum and break through your current sticking point basically.

rubadub

Try dumbbells, one arm at a time. I can lift more than half with a single dumbbell. e.g. I think I lift 24kg for about 8 reps, yet could not lift 48kg for 8 reps with a barbell. Also you can push presses which are sort of like negatives, when the the bar is coming down bend your knees slightly, then pushup up your legs at the same time as your arms so they weight shoots up aided by momentum, now let it come down again nice and slow again.

telemachus

Cheers all, I might try the dumbells and seated variants, and the push press definitely looks interesting, I often find with a spotter or partial movement on the compounds it can help just to get a feel for the heavier weight, maybe it's more in my head but it helps make the current sticking weight feel less overpowering.

I have tried cycling back the weight and building momentum, and doing this while increasing reps is actually something I find works great with all my other lifts, it got the bench over 85 and allowed me to keep going beyond, but for some reason my shoulder press just doesn't respond as well, i'd maybe grind out an extra 2.5 when back to the weight and then instantly hit the wall again. I've worked on the core a bit and it does make a difference, i'm now much more solid during the press and driving forward under it whereas before I was just like itsallaboutheL described, hyperextending backwards and performing a bastard press/standing bench while buggering my back.

kevpants

And also to point out your shoulder press isn't that bad. It's a tough lift, it doesn't stand out as a major weakpoint looking at your numbers.

BobbyOLeary

I'd disagree with Kev, your press is significantly down compared with the rest of your lifts (it's not low, the others are just high).

I was in a similar spot as yourself and got stuck with 3x5 @ 50kg. My solution was to go up in smaller increments. I made partial plates of 0.25kg and 0.5kg, enabling me to make jumps of 0.5kg and 1.0kg depending on the day. Using this I managed to get up to 55kg for 3x5 before I finished up my stint on SS and went back to CrossFit. The press is a finicky bitch. Patience is key, a fail will set you back further than with the other lifts. Stick with it and you'll move on up! The feeling of getting my first 60kg press was amazing!

Good luck!

Hanley

My press is utterly miserable too. I bench about 1.75x my press. My shoulders have always been embarrasingly weak as well. It's something I'm hoping will improve over the next few months.

telemachus

That's probably a good idea Bobby, I do find that after resetting and working up I increase 2.5 grind it out and instantly get stuck again, it might be worth increasing the same amount over the same time but gradually a kilo at a time instead of all at once and hopefully keep the progress going beyond that for a while.

On the plus side if even Hanley struggles with the press (albeit "struggle" being a relative term in this case :P ) I feel slightly less frustrated. I guess I just need to be patient to a degree, it's always been something of a weak point, back a few years when I trained completely cluelessly I can't count the amount of times i'd put myself out of the gym for a week tweaking something with lateral/front raises and upright rows etc.

DM-BM

Hanley wrote: »

My shoulders have always been embarrasingly weak as well.

Do you think they really are weak, or just "undertrained" relative to your bench?

I think you recently told someone here, if they want a bigger bench, bench more.

itsallaboutheL

DM-BM wrote: »

Do you think they really are weak, or just "undertrained" relative to your bench?

I think you recently told someone here, if they want a bigger bench, bench more.

+1

BrianD3

I also struggle with the standing overhead press but also with the bench press. My 1RM PRs are 79 kg for the overhead and 102.5 kg for the bench. Anyhow, progress in the overhead press has always been painfully slow. I have never found push presses to do any good, quite the opposite, I seem to lose any groove that have for the overhead press if I've been doing push presses.

One thing that did seem to help my overhead press at one point was overhead squatting so maybe you could try that.

Something I'm going to do in the next while is incorporate some specific rotator cuff exercises into my routine. There is an article by Eric Cressey on t-nation that describes a few rotator cuff exercises such as the Cuban press.

Hanley

DM-BM wrote: »

Do you think they really are weak, or just "undertrained" relative to your bench?

I think you recently told someone here, if they want a bigger bench, bench more.

Weakness is relative really.... in my opinion, for a guy of my strength on the big 3, it should be much higher. My best is 70kg x11 I think. Which when you consider my weight at the time (105-107kg), it's fairly sh!t. Once I got started on DoggCrapp my shoulder strength picked up cos I was training them frequently, but it's still much below where it should be. It's one of those brutal moves that when you're strong on it, you're just plain strong all over ya know? THere's no faking it.

RE: press more to press more, while I'd like to have a bigger press, it's not enoguh of a priority for me to sacrifice other areas of my training for it ya know?? So I'll be training it 1x a week along with some assistance stuff, but the time I'd spend on a second or third day with it are better spent elsewhere when it comes to increasing my total....

So for now I'll just bitch and moan about it, while not really doing everything within my power to improve it. Sorta like my cardio thread