How Often Do You Overhead Press?

jth375 · June 17, 2019, 6:45pm

Hey all,

I was just wondering how often you guys incorporate overhead presses into your training?

rustymetal85 · June 17, 2019, 7:00pm

I do them on my secondary bench day before close grip banded pin presses

jth375 · June 17, 2019, 7:02pm

So once a week? I was trying to do them every bench session (2-3 x week) but felt like it might be overkill. Lol.

rustymetal85 · June 17, 2019, 7:04pm

yeah, once a week is plenty. Its fairly common for power-lifters to skip them all together and focus on improving bench.

corstijeir · June 17, 2019, 7:09pm

I’ll do DB shoulder press on DE upper days every few weeks for a cycle of 2-3 weeks.

oldbeancam · June 17, 2019, 7:29pm

Yeah that’s way too much. I’m sure it’d be a good thing for off season work to build on if your shoulders are a super weak point for you, but otherwise I’d say once a week is sufficient. Your main focus in powerlifting is building the bench, not the overhead press.

isdatnutty · June 17, 2019, 7:35pm

I do them 2x a week. But my focus isn’t powerlifting.

PRESS BIG WEIGHTS OVERHEAD BABY!!!

jth375 · June 17, 2019, 7:40pm

This is true! I’ll definitely keep them to just once a week then. Don’t wanna burn out my shoulders too much.

chris_ottawa · June 17, 2019, 8:44pm

I do 2-3 work sets once a week, after benching. I was told by Josh Bryant (who coaches more than a few of the top bench pressers) that you should aim to get your overhead press to around 70% of your bench. If it’s significantly behind that then it’s likely that your shoulders are holding your bench back.

plinnyc88 · June 18, 2019, 1:50am

I do 3x8-10 seated barbell on DE upper. I feel it’s necessary to balance out all the horizontal pressing.

noahripstein · June 18, 2019, 6:17am

Wow I’m alarmingly behind that, I guess I know my weak point now!

weightliftingwithoutlimits · June 18, 2019, 6:36am

Dude, your hair in that mini profile pic of yours. Fucking epic. Gotta dye my hair blond for meets.

noahripstein · June 18, 2019, 2:14pm

Haha thank you😂

SOUL_FIGHTER · June 18, 2019, 5:45pm

1x a week - def need more

tasty_nate · June 18, 2019, 9:21pm

I overhead press once I’ve gone long enough without overhead pressing to feel excessive shame for neglecting it.

paules · June 19, 2019, 1:32am

Since my new goal is to overhead press my own body weight, I might be the only guy on this thread whose plan is to put the weight over my head twice a week and only bench once. I didn’t say “overhead press” because I’m including Olympic lifting variations; getting by body weight down is as important to this goal and strengthening muscles.

chris_ottawa · June 19, 2019, 12:32pm

The thing is that this is a powerlifting forum so overhead pressing is just a means to an end, which is a bigger bench press. If you want to focus on OHP rather than bench that’s cool, but that’s not what is going on here.

strongmangoals · June 19, 2019, 1:24pm

I didn’t say “overhead press” because

Eh?

paules · June 21, 2019, 1:32am

Oh, yeah, I see my mistake. My goal is concerning the overhead press, but there are a lot of ways to strengthen the shoulders so I might be doing clean and press, or over head shrugs, or behind the head presses, etc, etc.

muscle_g · August 11, 2019, 7:30pm

I seldom ever do Shoulder presses