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Old Forum Barbell military press with reverse grip

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elmuerto

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I was doing some curls with barbell on my warm-up yesterday and just had a brain ^*#% of trying to press the barbell from the rack position.

Surprisingly it felt very natural and pretty strong for me also.

Are there any benefits or dangers doing military press like this?

Thanks in advance!
 
Benefits are that it might be easier on the shoulders. I know people reverse grip bench for that reason and I've heard of at least one person who said he can only go overhead without pain by doing reverse grip.

Dangers, naturally, are the risk of the bar dropping on your head. It seems to be a tad harder to get a good hold in the reverse grip, and if it slips out it slips towards you rather than away from you. Other downsides are that generally you won't be able to go as heavy, and it might beat up your wrists a little bit. On the other hand, it might improve wrist flexibility a little if you have a slight deficit in that position.

As a general comment, it would shift even more emphasis to the anterior delts and hit the lateral delts less. If that matters to you at all.
 
I competed in powerlifting  for a few years with a reverse grip in the bench press. In fact one year I had missed my first two attempts with a conventional grip, switched it for my last attempt and made it!( 325 at 181).

It felt much easier on my damaged right shoulder at the time, as the external rotation   proved to be more stable and the press was, HAD to be, in a straight line, as opposed to "back" over the face with the conventional grip.
BUT it is dangerous. Especially in the flat bench as once it goes over the face there is no return.
I imagine the same problem overhead ( it could land on the back of your neck!)But there is less internal rotation of the shoulder and it uses the triceps more.

 
 
I experimented a lot with these last summer. They really hit the front delts and triceps harder than normal overhead presses, because you can't really flare your shoulders out to bring the whole shoulder into play.

Some things to think about--they are not an easily grooved lift; even doing them often I found it hard to 'practice' them. If you're after pure brute strength increases this is a good thing. Also, they don't have a ton of carryover to normal (pronated grip) strict presses, at least not by themselves. They build a ton of strength at the sticking points at both the start and middle of the lift. So, after getting back to normal OHPs when I practiced them for a while I felt like I had fewer limiting factors at those sticking points.

Other stuff--you can't press back behind your head obviously, if you have to grind it out leaning back slightly is probably the way to go. Pushing your head through the hole/pressing up and back just can't be done here unless you have incredibly flexible shoulders.

You don't have to worry about dropping the bar on your head. I'd say start out trying a slightly wider grip than you usually would on strict presses. I think that pavel's recommendation for 'elbow friendly barbell curls' in 'beyond bodybuilding' applies to grip width here. Also, try to spread the bar across your palm, not just a straight up supinated grip but push your wrists back so that the bar can rest on the meaty spot on the base of your palm; same as a kettlebell. Keep the weight there and you won't have to worry about dropping it.

One final thing--I have tiny wrists and normal strict presses sometimes don't feel so great. Reverse grips do not give me any sort of wrist trouble. Also, I could be wrong but the underhand grip may help you get your lats more into play at the bottom if you've been having trouble with that.

I'd say primarily use it as an assistance exercise for any sort of strict overhead pressing (bb/db/kb/odd object) you might do, especially if you don't do horizontal press variants.

I'm not an amazing presser nor do I have a ton of experience with these, but a few months of hard work helped me get up to the 'bodyweight press' barrier for the second time, and very slightly past it for the first time.
 
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