Kettlebell Best way to improve my press

[bluejeff]

Considering that you can do 30 pushups in seconds, I would wonder if you have some kind of muscle imbalances, form breakdown or "tension leakage" in your press. If I were you I would find a good trainer or physio to see if there is something going on like that (or post a video for a form check?). For me a strict form pike pushup was incredibly difficult until I firgured out what little tweak I needed to make to my form. Once I got it, I nearly doubled my max reps.

You could also make the press with the 12kg more challenging a few different ways:
-do bottoms-up presses
-do your presses with it in a half-kneeling position
-Look up Z-press, and simply switch out the barbell for your 12kg bell.
All of these basically isolate your shoulder girdle, making it have to work harder.

 

[miked]

This community is great, I saw this post this morning, but didn't have time to reply. Now that I get here, everything I was going to say was already covered:

To press a lot you need to press a lot. Check
S&T. Check
ROP. Check.
Eat a lot. Check.

I'll throw another program in the mix - something that fits into your lifestyle pretty easily. Originally @Blake Nelson told me about it. It's pretty simple, self-limiting, and fits into your day pretty easily. I'll let Blake clarify his approach, but here's what I do.

I do it as double presses, but it should work just fine with single bells too.

Start with a weight where you can do 5 set of 5. Stick with that bell until you finish.

Day 1: Press 8x1 - 8 sets of 1 (or 8 sets of 1/1 if you're doing single bells)
Day 2: Press 8x2
Day 3: Press 10x1
Day 4: Press 7x3
Day 5: Press 12x1
Day 6: Press 6x4
Day 7: Press 15x1
Day 8: Press 5x5

Once you finish Day 8, go up a bell and start over. If you fail any day, start over at day 1 with the same size bell. Perfect self-limiting program!

I just finished 6 weeks of this, doing presses MWF without missing a day. I had a very ugly 5x5 with double 32s, so I did a full cycle at double 32s, then upgraded and yesterday I just finished a full cycle at 5x5 of double 36s .

How I fit it into my day:

I have an informal group of neighbors who all come together to workout in my driveway every evening. Everyone has different goals, but we all want to work out together (properly social distanced), so I just set a timer a 1 minute timer to go for 30 minutes. Everyone does what they want every minute. So I'll split those presses out over the 30 minutes and then on the off minutes, I do a light set of goblet squats or single leg Romanian deadlifts. (see here: SBKB Outside Press Table)

On the non-press days, I'll do something like S&S or a Q&D or an A+A snatch, depends on what I'm in the mood for.

I will say, this is probably better if you have a bigger press, if you're at 12 kilo bells, it might make sense to double the volume just to get a little more stimulus.

 

[NormanOsborn]

One more vote for Rite of Passage.

Didn't Pavel himself say something along the lines of, "The Ladders never fail. People fail by giving up on them"?

 

[Molson]

Agree with everyone. ROP or S&T. Remember that ROP was the main thing before S&S came.

But. Buy that bloody 32kg. Even just for two hand swings. That’s when the magic of S&S only starts to happen.

Heavy swings will definitely help you build more muscles and strength without taxing the upper body, which ROP pressing does. Almost any KB lift benefits from heavy swinging.

 

[Eric Wilson]

But. Buy that bloody 32kg. Even just for two hand swings. That’s when the magic of S&S only starts to happen.

Maybe I'll do double swings with my two 16kg bells? Seems better than another $100 into my KB collection.

 

[barrak]

Maybe I'll do double swings with my two 16kg bells? Seems better than another $100 into my KB collection.

You can have a lot of fun with a pair of 16s in pursuit of your press goal; Long-Cycle Clean & Jerks. Learn to spear the double cleans to protect your fingers!

 

[watchnerd]

I typically can't press the 16kg more than once -- and I've never hit three reps at that weight.
I can press the 12kg at least 12 times, so the rep schemes of those programs would break down with so little weight. But like I said, 16kg is too much for me right now.

This is very consistent with a 1 RM calculation:

One Rep Max Calculator - Strength Level

Calculate your one-rep max (1RM) for any lift. Your one-rep max is the max weight you can lift for a single repetition for a given exercise.

strengthlevel.com

Percentage of 1RM	Lift Weight	Repetitions of 1RM
100%	16.8 kg	1
95%	16 kg	2
90%	15.1 kg	4
85%	14.3 kg	6
80%	13.4 kg	8
75%	12.6 kg	9
70%	11.8 kg	12

So the good news...

• You're not a statistical outlier with something truly strange going on.
• This chart gives you a progressive overload table to use for programming.

The less-than-good news...

• It's not a barbell, so adding small increments to a KB isn't easy.

How you choose to address it (step-loading via volume, buy an intermediate bell, or get a KB add-on weight) is really a personal decision based on your preferences.

Lastly, before you address it at the bell level, try doing a lot of ab work. I mean a lot. Making your core stronger can improve your pressing. It certainly helped mine.

Full disclosure: I do dead clean + press 3x a week, following a heavy/light/medium programming model.

 

[william bad butt]

Get strong, eat healthy, and sleep well. Everything else will take care of itself.

I like sets of 5 with double kbell clean and military press. So 1 clean followed by 5 presses. And, double front squats. Uneven bells are fine, you dont need 2 of each bell. Over time, increase the bell size. 3 days per week. Maybe do some light kbell swings twice a week on separate days. This is what I would do in your situation.

Maybe increase caloric intake by a few hundred calories per day. Get the right macros (more carbs than you would think).

Good luck! You have a lot of good advice here.

Regards,

Eric

 

[watchnerd]

@Eric Wilson can you push-press the 16 kg bell?

If you can do it at least 3-5 times, you can do eccentric reps.

 

[Eric Wilson]

@Eric Wilson can you push-press the 16 kg bell?

If you can do it at least 3-5 times, you can do eccentric reps.

Yes, push pressing it should be no trouble, good thought.

 

[Alexander Halford]

Great article by @Mike Torres, I second that. Don't drop S&S though, neither replace tgu with press. There are enough ways to make it work together. Solid volume of tgu is one of the most underrated strength foundation exercises. Unless you do barbell deadlift.

 

[watchnerd]

Great article by @Mike Torres, I second that. Don't drop S&S though, neither replace tgu with press. There are enough ways to make it work together. Solid volume of tgu is one of the most underrated strength foundation exercises. Unless you do barbell deadlift.

And/or barbell squats.

And, more arguably, BB OHP, bench, and power clean.

The TGU is certainly beneficial, but I wouldn't place it higher on the foundational strength pyramid than the big barbell lifts.

Contact team sport and strength athletes do a lot of BB lifts because they've been shown over decades to work well.

 

[Molson]

@Eric Wilson,

Looking at all mentioned above and the understandable aim of using what you have, ROP, followed by Strong! or other double bell program seems like a great fit.

ROP done with a lighter bell can allow you to do presses, snatches, swings and tgu and pull-ups, which seem to be what you are already doing. You can start it with 12kg bell and retest your 1RM press after a month down the program. You could also try starting it with 5 sets from the start.

Two- three cycles of ROP can set you for doing Strong! with 2x16kg bells. Or you could try other double bell programs if you don’t want to go minimalist.

 

[Eric Wilson]

@Eric Wilson,

Looking at all mentioned above and the understandable aim of using what you have, ROP, followed by Strong! or other double bell program seems like a great fit.

ROP done with a lighter bell can allow you to do presses, snatches, swings and tgu and pull-ups, which seem to be what you are already doing. You can start it with 12kg bell and retest your 1RM press after a month down the program. You could also try starting it with 5 sets from the start.

Two- three cycles of ROP can set you for doing Strong! with 2x16kg bells. Or you could try other double bell programs if you don’t want to go minimalist.

Thanks all for the advice. At this point, here is my plan.

First I'll do a Dan John Easy Strength / 40 day program. I'll probably work with 12kg + 5lbs for my presses, since I have a tiny KB that I can hold along with a bigger one, and it gets me in the right rep range. Loaded carries will also be a part of this program, and I expect to benefit from rack carries, waiter walks, overhead carries, bottoms up carries, etc. I'll also be working on double front squats with two 20kg bells, which should probably help me fill a big gap, as I've never done squats beyond goblet squats for warm up. (I know 88 lbs isn't much of a squat, but it's enough to get my attention, and I probably can't yet safely double clean with 24kg.)

After those eight weeks are up, I'll try ROP. I'll decide at that time if I want to do it with the 12kg, maybe starting at the point of five ladders to three, or maybe using the 16kg with push press (making the most of the eccentric) until I can get to three ladders of three strictly. Or maybe in the 40 day program I'll have made enough progress to start the ROP at 16kg normally? We'll see.

One way or another, my hope is that 16kg can be my normal working weight for presses three months from now.

 

[pet']

Hello,

@Eric Wilson
I guess I am laye but here is something interesting to increase the press. It does not 'replace' but transfers well to vertical push:


In the same logic, there is also this protocol on SF:

Strength in Numbers: A Case for Pushup Endurance Training | StrongFirst

With push-up endurance training I maintain absolute strength without having to train it on a regular basis. This keeps us strong without the risk of injury.

www.strongfirst.com

I used to do very high repetition calisthenics. It increased my HSPU strength without really working on it. Of course there is a point of diminishing returns so one has to use progressively harder variations to keep gaining strength and endurance.

Anyway, hope you will build up your press !

Kind regards,

Pet'

 

[LejonBrames]

This community is great, I saw this post this morning, but didn't have time to reply. Now that I get here, everything I was going to say was already covered:

To press a lot you need to press a lot. Check
S&T. Check
ROP. Check.
Eat a lot. Check.

I'll throw another program in the mix - something that fits into your lifestyle pretty easily. Originally @Blake Nelson told me about it. It's pretty simple, self-limiting, and fits into your day pretty easily. I'll let Blake clarify his approach, but here's what I do.

I do it as double presses, but it should work just fine with single bells too.

Start with a weight where you can do 5 set of 5. Stick with that bell until you finish.

Day 1: Press 8x1 - 8 sets of 1 (or 8 sets of 1/1 if you're doing single bells)
Day 2: Press 8x2
Day 3: Press 10x1
Day 4: Press 7x3
Day 5: Press 12x1
Day 6: Press 6x4
Day 7: Press 15x1
Day 8: Press 5x5

Once you finish Day 8, go up a bell and start over. If you fail any day, start over at day 1 with the same size bell. Perfect self-limiting program!

I just finished 6 weeks of this, doing presses MWF without missing a day. I had a very ugly 5x5 with double 32s, so I did a full cycle at double 32s, then upgraded and yesterday I just finished a full cycle at 5x5 of double 36s .

How I fit it into my day:

I have an informal group of neighbors who all come together to workout in my driveway every evening. Everyone has different goals, but we all want to work out together (properly social distanced), so I just set a timer a 1 minute timer to go for 30 minutes. Everyone does what they want every minute. So I'll split those presses out over the 30 minutes and then on the off minutes, I do a light set of goblet squats or single leg Romanian deadlifts. (see here: SBKB Outside Press Table)

On the non-press days, I'll do something like S&S or a Q&D or an A+A snatch, depends on what I'm in the mood for.

I will say, this is probably better if you have a bigger press, if you're at 12 kilo bells, it might make sense to double the volume just to get a little more stimulus.

Thank you for this program, this is awesome! Sounds like exactly what I need to try so I don't tax my shoulder.

Does this program have a name or history behind it I can read more about? I think I'll start this soon....

 

[miked]

Thank you for this program, this is awesome! Sounds like exactly what I need to try so I don't tax my shoulder.

Does this program have a name or history behind it I can read more about? I think I'll start this soon....

Well, the history is very fuzzy...I was in the gym early getting my workout done before class started, I was talking to @Blake Nelson about a program he had one of his clients on and he had it written out on the board. I thought it sounded like a great approach but I was in the middle of one of my own programs so I didn't get to it right away. Then COVID lockdown started and I wanted something simple to do. I tried to remember the rep scheme, I asked Blake about it, he couldn't remember either, so I tried to recreate it from memory. So it's really my fuzzy recreation of something probably more thought-out.

But if you look at it, it makes sense, The odd days increase at a delta-20ish rate and the odd->even day is almost a doubling of the volume. It a nice sawtooth pattern that gives you enough stimulus and enough recovery.

Edit to add: I wasn’t clear - this is Blake’s original work. He should get all of the credit (or blame)

 

[Steve Freides]

@Eric Wilson, I have a simple suggestion for you - work with an SFG. My guess is that technique is your issue.

-S-

 

[Eric Wilson]

Why do you guess that? I'm honestly curious.

I assumed that I was simply weaker than most men because:
- I'm small and very thin
- I've always been one of the weakest and slowest
- I've been pretty sedentary for the last quarter-century
- I'm nearly 50 years old
- I'm pretty new to weight training.

I guess that you are saying that even with all of these factors considered, you would expect me to be able to press the 16kg for reps, so it must be technique? I'm not discounting what you are saying, but just curious how you come to that conclusion.

 

[Mike Torres]

Why do you guess that? I'm honestly curious.

I assumed that I was simply weaker than most men because:
- I'm small and very thin
- I've always been one of the weakest and slowest
- I've been pretty sedentary for the last quarter-century
- I'm nearly 50 years old
- I'm pretty new to weight training.

I guess that you are saying that even with all of these factors considered, you would expect me to be able to press the 16kg for reps, so it must be technique? I'm not discounting what you are saying, but just curious how you come to that conclusion.

Everyone is different. But technique can make a 4-8kg difference for sure. Strength is a skill, and having "eyes on" & coaching by an SFG is the best way to develop the skill to unlock higher levels of strength. I've seen upwards of 40% of already-very-strong SFG candidates achieve a new 1RM after just 30 minutes of learning how to apply the StrongFirst principles.