Starting Strength

produces tightness in the upper back and in the entire kinetic chain, making your connection to the ground more stable and improving your pressing mechanics overall.

    Figure 3-13. (A) The correct upper back position, providing a firm platform from which to drive the bar. (B) A relaxed upper back.

    When your elbows are up correctly and you have lifted your chest, you are ready to press the bar. The press is learned in two stages: First, you will put the bar where it is going to be in the finished position. This step consists of learning the lockout position and the anatomical and mechanical reasons for using it. Second, you will learn how to get the bar there correctly. This step consists of learning how to produce a mechanically efficient bar path and how to use your whole body to do it.
    Step 1: Take a big breath, hold it (our friend the Valsalva maneuver), and drive the bar up over your head. The vast majority of people will press the bar up to lockout but in a position just in front of the forehead. Make sure that you have the bar directly above the back of your neck, a point that should have the bar, the glenohumeral joint, and the mid-foot in a straight vertical line ( Figure 3-14 ). This is the position in which there is minimal leverage operating against the primary segments of the kinetic chain – the bar to the shoulder, and the shoulder down to the mid-foot. If the bar is directly plumb to the shoulder joints, the load applies no leverage to the shoulders. If the shoulders are plumb to the mid-foot, the back and legs apply no leverage to the balance point. If the bar is plumb to the mid-foot, the entire kinetic chain is in simple compression, with no leverage against the primary segments.

    Figure 3-14. The skeletal landmarks of the press. The lockout position is correct when there is a perfectly vertical relationship between the bar, the glenohumeral joint, and the mid-foot.

    Once the bar is over your head correctly, lock your elbows and shrug up your shoulders to support the bar. The bones of the arm are lined up in a column by the triceps and deltoids; the shoulders are shrugged up with the trapezius; and the arms and the traps must work together to support heavy weights overhead. Imagine someone behind you gently pushing your elbows together and pulling them up at the same time, as illustrated in Figure 3-15 . The combination of locking the elbows out and shrugging the traps up at lockout, with the bar directly over the ears, produces a very firm, stable position at the top that involves all of the shoulder-girdle muscles and prevents shoulder impingement.
    It is helpful to think about the lockout as a continuation of the upward drive, as though you are never finished pressing the bar upward. When the load is heavy, this cue provides the last little push necessary to get the bar into the lockout position. Think about pressing the bar up to the ceiling.

    Figure 3-15. Cues for the lockout position. (A) The bar is back in a position over the shoulder joints, a point that will be well behind the forehead if the neck is in the normal anatomical position. You might find it helpful to think of the bar being pulled back into this position from behind. (B) The bar is then supported in this position with the triceps, deltoids, and traps. To learn this position, you might find it helpful to feel a gentle upward and inward squeeze on the humerus from either side, along with hearing a reminder to “shrug” the bar up.

    Step 2: After this lockout position is correct, it is time to learn how to best drive the bar to this position. This step involves making the bar path correct and establishing the proper movement of your body in relation to the bar. Since the bar is sitting on your deltoids, in front of the neck, and it must move up to a position above the shoulder joints, several inches behind the starting position, there must be a relative lateral movement of several inches on the way up ( Figure 3-16 ). But barbells like to travel in straight vertical lines up and down, especially when they’re heavy. Our vertical bar path must therefore be produced in a way that takes the load from a position in front of the shoulders to the lockout position plumb to the shoulder joints. We do this with motion of the torso.

    Figure 3-16. The lateral distance between the initial position of the bar on the shoulders and the final position overhead. This distance is covered by the movement of the torso as it drives forward