Overhead Pressing for Athletes

This is a very controversial topic in the strength and conditioning field, so I wanted to let you know how I feel about the movement with our athletes. All our athletes use overhead lifting with their hands in a neutral grip; we do this with a log, dumbbell, or a swiss bar. There are only a few exceptions to this rule. Any throwers or people with shoulder injuries do not perform these movements, for them we work on internal and external rotations accompanied with a lot of upper back movements. The reason we have our guys do overhead presses with a neutral grip is because it does not put your shoulder joint in a compromised position as a regular pronated grip. Also almost all of are overhead movements are done with a dip and press which alleviates the initial stress of the press. The initial press is where the main problems come from because that is were most of the stress originates from, so by adding the explosive movement of the dip and press the focus shifts from the anterior delt and goes to the triceps. Which is what you want to focus on developing, plus the dip adds an extra benefit with explosive hip development.


Overhead pressing is a great way to strengthen all the muscles around the shoulder and in a violent game of football you need a strong pair of shoulders. Along with these we focus a lot on upper and mid back, this provides an overall solid base of stabilization for the shoulder joint. Here is a video of a few of our guys performing some log clean and presses for time. This is great for conditioning, hip power, and shoulder hypertrophy.