Fix Your Press - Part 2: Your Hideous Wrists
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This is the second article in our series on helping you improve your press. Today’s topic - the correct positioning of the wrists. In this article, you’ll also find a couple of videos related to this issue.
You’ve read the book, you’ve watched the videos, and you’re ready to press. You walk up to the bar and take a nice narrow grip - you’ve even pronated your hands slightly to make sure that the bar is being supported on the base of the palms (i.e., over the bones of the forearm). On top of this, you’ve got relatively neutral wrists - roughly 10-15 degrees of extension - which is great.
And then it happens. You rotate your elbows forward and under the bar, and somehow, you end up with your wrists bent backward in extreme extension or, on the opposite end of things, you try unracking the bar with your wrists flexed over the top of the bar (watch the “Fix your Weak Wrists…” video to see examples of each error). Both are inefficient positions from which to press, and the latter position makes it practically impossible to even support the bar.
Let’s fix this.
The first solution is to remember that once you’ve grabbed the bar with neutral wrists, you must make your wrists behave as if they’re in a cast. Don’t let them change shape after this point - treat them as if they don’t exist anymore - that joint has been permanently fused into its current shape, and you’re going to hold that shape as you unrack the bar and while you press.
The second solution is to allow the bar to rotate when you bring your elbows forward and under the bar. You’re rotating your elbows forward, so be sure to let the bar rotate in the rack as well - the bar should rotate with you as you prepare to unrack it. Dip down with your legs as low as you need to so that you’ve got room to rotate your elbows forward and under the bar while maintaining those “frozen” wrists (again, watch the video above to see these solutions in action).
If you notice that you’ve still allowed your wrists to change shape, don’t unrack the bar. Fix the wrist position now - before you’ve unracked it - because fixing it while supporting a heavy bar in your hands is much tougher to accomplish. Once the wrists are correctly positioned, you can then stand the bar up and back out from the rack to begin pressing.
As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.
At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Would you like to get quality coaching from a Starting Strength Coach?
Fix Your Press - Part 1: The Awful Timing of Your Hips
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(In this article, you’ll also find a couple of videos related to today’s topic.)
Today’s article is the first in a series of articles designed to help you improve various aspects of your press. Today’s topic - the timing of the hips movement.
The problem of incorrectly timing the hips movement shows up quite a bit with lifters as they’re learning the press. You’ve read the book, you’ve watched the videos, you’ve even done a couple of reps pretty decently, and then something suddenly gets off with the timing of your lift. What gives?
When we initiate the press, the hips should go forward first, and then they simply bounce back into place, i.e., we reach forward with our hips and then stand back up again. As we stand back up again (as the hips come back into place), we want to then use that upward momentum to start driving the bar upward as well. In other words, the hips should bounce first, and then we press, but the mistake we often see is that of reaching with the hips and trying to press upward at the same time (watch the video above for an example of this as well as how to do it correctly). When this happens, it will usually feel extremely weird, but it can be difficult to figure out what’s actually happened unless you have a coach watching, so this is where recording yourself on video can be a useful approach.
To solve this timing problem, simply cue yourself, “Hips then press,” or if that doesn’t work, you can remind yourself that the bar needs to go down first (not up) as you start the movement. In other words, we want the bar to dip downward a few inches as the hips reach forward, and the mistake you’ve made is that of trying to press it upward as the hips reach forward, so simply cue yourself “The bar goes down first.”
As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.
At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Would you like to get quality coaching from a Starting Strength Coach?
Shakira and the Press: Hips Don't Lie
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(If you like, you can scroll down to the end of this article and watch a video related to this topic.)
A common problem in the press is that - instead of reaching forward with the hips and using the rebound this creates - a lifter will accidentally reach backwards with the shoulders. The two movements - reaching forward with the hips and reaching backward with the shoulders - look almost the same, but one makes for a stronger press while the other absolutely hinders the press.
Reaching forward with the hips helps us in two ways - first, that nice rebound out of the hips gives us a nice launch at the beginning of the movement, and second, it helps clear our face back out of the way of the bar (a natural countermovement). However, if you reach backward with your shoulders instead, you’ll still clear your head out of the way of the bar, but you won’t get any sort of launch or rebound from the hips, and indeed, it will actually make for a much harder and weaker press.
In the photo at left, Becky correctly reaches forward with her hips. In the photo at right, Becky incorrectly reaches backward with her shoulders. For comparison, check the position of the bar with respect to the squat stand in the background.
To check whether or not you’re making this error, ask yourself, “Where am I feeling my balance?” when you reach forward with your hips. If you feel your weight shift momentarily to the balls of your feet, you’re on the right track, but if you feel your weight shift to your heels, then you know that you’re accidentally reaching backwards with your shoulders instead of forward with your hips.
Remind yourself of this the next time you press. Simply make your balance shift briefly to the balls of your feet as you reach with your hips, and you’ll be off to an excellent start.
To see this in action as it’s being explained, check out one of the short videos below. As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.
At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Would you like to get quality coaching from a Starting Strength Coach?
The Press: Make the Bar Go DOWN?!
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(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.
At Testify, we offer small group training, private coaching (in-person or remotely via Zoom), online coaching, and form checks. Would you like to get quality coaching from a Starting Strength Coach?
Diamond Grip for the Press and Bench Press
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When learning to press or bench press, getting the correct grip can be tricky at first. A very common error is to take a grip that carries the bar back in the fingers (Figure 1).
Figure 1: This is no good.
Let’s fix this.
When we press or bench press, we’d like the barbell to be supported directly over the bones of the forearms, and to do this, we pronate our grip so that the bar sits on the heel of the palm. This provides for excellent force transfer between our arms and hands and the bar, whereas holding the bar back in the fingers with wrists in full extension creates a very weak and flimsy position.
Pronating your grip (Figure 2) simply means that you’re going to rotate your thumbs down toward your feet, and after that, you squeeze the bar tightly with your fingers (“crush the bar” is a good cue).
Figure 2: This . . . is much better.
With this said, new lifters sometimes screw up the pronation step, either rotating their hands the wrong way or spinning their hands on top of the bar (in the press). If this is you, take the “diamond grip” approach as shown in Figure 3:
Figure 3: The Diamond Grip approach
Step 1
Place your palms on the bar - palms will face the wall (not the floor) with thumbs below the bar and in contact with each other.
Step 2
Rotate your hands so that your index fingers are now in contact with each other (above the bar). The gap between your hands will make a diamond if you’ve done this correctly.
Step 3
Slide your hands away from each other until you reach the correct grip width - narrow for the press (about shoulder width) and about a hand-width wider than that for the bench press.
Step 4
Squeeze the bar tightly with your fingers.
Make a diamond with your hands and then slide your hands outward - it’s that simple.
We hope this helps you get stronger and live better!
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