The Press: Make the Bar Go DOWN?!

(If you like, you can scroll down to the end of this article and watch a video related to this topic.)

Becky in the start position (note the bar’s position relative to the horizontal barbell in the background)

Not sure about the hips movement in the press? Maybe you can “reach and bounce” just fine without the bar, but when you add the bar to the movement, everything turns to garbage. Perhaps you just don’t know what it’s supposed to look like. Let’s fix it with a simple cue.

The Bar Goes DOWN First
Cueing yourself to “reach and bounce” with your hips is a perfectly good approach, but if the timing of your hips and pressing is still off, trying using a bar cue instead of a body cue, i.e., try telling yourself what you want the bar to do, and let your body figure out the rest.

Becky demonstrates the initial downward movement of the bar (again, note the bar’s position relative to the horizontal barbell in the background)

When the hips reach forward, you get a bit shorter (since you’re no longer standing up straight), and since you are getting shorter - briefly - the bar should go down, so remind yourself of this. Simply tell yourself to make the bar go down before it goes up. When the hips go forward, the bar goes down, and as the hips bounce back into place (i.e., as you stand up), the bar starts to go up. The cue is: “Make the bar go down.” More simply, you can cue yourself: “Down-then-up.”

Try this out the next time you press and see if it helps. Additionally, watching this motion in action can be very helpful, so I’d recommend watching the video at the end of this article. In the meantime, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.

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