Starting Strength

after the bar crosses the level of the forehead on its way up.

    Lean back slightly by pushing your hips forward. This slight movement must not be produced by bending the knees or the lumbar spine. Rather, the movement is a function of only the hips. Without the bar and with your hands on your hips, push your pelvis forward and back a few times, keeping your knees and your low back locked in position. Try to do this rocking motion with just your hip joints. When the weight gets heavy, your abs will lock your low back and your quads will lock your knees, involving both of these muscle masses in the exercise isometrically. It’s easy unweighted, but later it becomes a huge part of this challenging exercise ( Figure 3-17 ).

    Figure 3-17. The hip movement used in the press. With hands on the hips, shove your pelvis forward and backward to simulate the torso movement used in the press. Do not unlock your knees or your lower back.

    When you understand this motion, take the bar out of the rack, making sure that your grip and elbow position are correct, and then push your hips forward and drive the bar up straight. As soon as it crosses the top of your forehead, get under the bar . Move your body forward under the bar and drive it to lockout. Don’t move the bar back – slam yourself forward under the bar ( Figure 3-18 ). When you do this correctly, you will find that the forward torso movement contributes to lockout at the top: as the shoulder drives forward, the contracting deltoid and tricep bring the upper arm and the forearm into alignment, thus driving up the bar.

    Figure 3-18. The torso drives forward as the bar drives up.

    Do this for a set of five, and rack the bar. Do as many sets as necessary with the empty bar to clarify the concept of moving yourself forward under the bar, as opposed to moving the bar back to the shoulder joint. Make sure you’re leaning back before you start to press, because it’s very common to start the press with a vertical torso and then lean back as the bar starts up. Hips-forward must occur before the press starts, or the bar will travel forward around your chin, not up in an efficient vertical path.

    Figure 3-19. The forward movement of the torso aids in the lockout. As the shoulder and the elbow extend, the forward motion of the shoulder drives the distal end of the humerus up, helping to straighten the elbow.

    To further reinforce the vertical bar path, think about keeping the bar close to your face on the way up. Aim for your nose as the bar leaves your shoulders. Then, as you lower the bar for the next rep, aim for your nose on the way down as well. You may actually hit yourself in the nose before you figure this out, but you’ll probably do it just once. By establishing a bar path close to your face on both the concentric and eccentric halves of the movement, you practice it starting from the very first sets of the exercise.
    After as much practice with the empty bar as is necessary, start up in 5-, 10-, or 20-pound jumps, whatever is appropriate for your age and strength, until the bar speed begins to slow markedly on the fifth rep of the set, and call it a workout.
    Faults and Corrections
     
    There won’t be nearly as many problems with the press as there are with the squat or deadlift, because there are fewer joints actively participating in the movement of the bar. Most problems are either starting position problems or bar path problems, and they result in a missed press for really just two reasons:
     
You fail to get the bar off your chest.
The distance between the shoulder and the bar becomes too long a moment arm to overcome: bar path problems.
    The first problem happens because you have lost your tightness in the start position due to breathing errors, positioning errors (chest not up, elbows not up, etc.), or a focus error or because you have just gotten tired or the weight is too heavy. The second problem occurs because you have produced an incorrect bar path . You pushed the bar forward instead of up, you failed to hold your position under the bar as you pushed it up, or you failed to get back under the bar after it crossed your forehead. Let’s look at the conditions under which these errors occur and figure out how to prevent them.
    Losing tightness
     
    There are two types of upper back looseness that commonly screw up the press. The first type, caused by letting the chest cave in so that the upper back rounds, is very common. Heavy weight on a press