4 ERRORS Beginners Make that Experienced Lifters NEVER Do | Part 2 - The Press
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In this multi-part series, we cover four mistakes that lifters often make when starting out. In part 1, we covered the squat.
Today, we’re covering the press, and specifically, we’re talking about the mistake of having to make unnecessary wrist and elbow adjustments. This error shows up in two different ways, so let’s identify and fix them.
Version #1: The Unracking Process
You begin to set up correctly – you take a relatively narrow grip and pronate your hands slightly to place the base of the palms firmly against the bar. Then, as you move to unrack the bar, everything goes to garbage, and you end up with elbows behind the bar and wrists bent back in full extension (Figure 1).
figure 1: Terrible elbows and terrible wrists . . . terrible all around.
As a result, you now have to fix these issues by making adjustments that shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place – you have to move your elbows forward, and you have to straighten your wrists to the point where the bar is sitting in the base of the palm (and not way back on the pads at the base of your fingers).
Of course, this isn’t difficult to do with an empty bar, but it’s a big problem at heavy weights, and it’s also a waste of time and effort.
The solution is to make sure that your elbows and wrists are correctly positioned before you unrack the bar.
When you take your grip, squeeze the bar as tightly as possible – “crush the bar” is a useful cue here – so that the muscles in your forearms tense up, which makes it easier to keep your wrists fixed in one position.
Also, dip down with your legs farther than you think so that your wrists don’t have to bend backward as you get under the bar. Remember that you unrack the bar with your legs, so dip down a lot as you rotate your elbows forward.
Dipping down farther is supremely easy to do, but many people simply don’t do it. Don’t be them. Bend your legs – this is why you have knees.
Here’s your check – after you stand the bar up from the hooks and step back from the rack, if you have to adjust anything from the waist upward, you messed up the unracking process.
Rack the bar. Fix it. Then unrack the bar again.
Watch the video below to see the solution to this problem in action.
Version #2: Post-rep
After you’ve successfully locked out a rep overhead, it’s easy to lower the bar casually and lazily to the wrong position, and once again, as with version #1 of today’s error, the wrists are bent backward and the elbows are behind the bar (Figure 2).
Don’t be that guy. Or gal.
figure 2: This fool lowered the bar in a careless manner . . . and it shows.
The solution is to visualize the start position and then move your body and the bar back to exactly that position.
Lead with elbows as you start the descent (i.e., keep the elbows slightly in front of the bar) and keep your wrists relatively straight as you lower the bar.
Finish the lowering process precisely where you started the previous rep.
Watch the video below to see this in action.
As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.
-Phil
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