One of the least useful, but nonetheless entertaining themes during the programming lecture at the Starting Strength Seminar is about programming advancement and whether an athlete falls into the category of novice, intermediate, or advanced. The gist is that it depends on many factors and that the structures in and of themselves don't really matter, even if they are handy place-holders.

In a discussion with two other Starting Strength Coaches about the best next program change to implement for a late-intermediate athlete’s pressing, we came to various conclusions regarding the minimum effective change, then what to do after that. What follows in this article are the various points of those discussions and questions/scenarios considered by us, the coaching staff. It is our hope that you may follow along as we walk through this process of making iterative changes and considering the implications of several different options with respect, in this scenario, to the press.

As athletes, we don’t suddenly wake up one day and decide that we must now press four days a week at the first sign of boredom in the novice progression. And what follows will not work for an athlete who has not finished their novice linear progression. It is too complicated, specific, and individual. Although what follows may seem very sexy, novel, and chic, if you don’t need these levels of advancement in programming, then stay where you are. Adding weight to the bar more often is much sexier.

The athlete in question has progressed to some sort of Heavy-Light-Medium or Texas Method split spread over four days:

• Monday – Volume Press
• Tuesday – Volume Bench
• Thursday – Intensity Press
• Friday – Intensity Bench

The athlete’s primary coach asked us our thoughts on adding in a third press day – a determination deemed necessary by the coach and the athlete based on training goals and history: his press had plateaued and stalled, a sign of not enough exposure to stress. My first suggestion was to compress the intensity days into one day, thereby freeing up one of the four days for the third press variation. The compressed pressing method is discussed here, the punchline of which is that the upper body lifts – especially the press – like more exposure.

On the newly freed day, the athlete will pin press.

• Monday – Volume Bench
• Tuesday – Volume Press
• Thursday – Intensity Press and Intensity Bench
• Saturday – Pin Press (that’s the workout. Pin press and go home.)

We like the pin press because it overloads the movement, and because of where it positions the bar at the start position: somewhere between nose and forehead height. Here the athlete must solve a mechanical problem with his body right at the most difficult part of the range of motion – when we are attempting to recover the moment of the bar about the shoulder in the press, which first starts slightly forward of the shoulder in the rack position, and later when it is caught after the throw off of the chest, right at the height where we might set up the pin press.

To coach this in the press an athlete might be cued to “Throw it back and get under it,” to address both of these deviations from over mid-foot, respectively in the rack position and where the thrown bar is “caught.” The mechanical problem encountered at the start of the pin press lies in how to initiate the movement of the barbell, whereas in the press it is already moving up or has stopped/slowed down enough to get back under it and catch it; to do this the lifter will have to use bigger muscles than those of the arms or chest and get his shoulders forward over mid-foot and under the barbell.

In solving this problem, the hips must be pushed forward of the vertical line of the barbell. Heavy pin presses will not break off the pins using chest and triceps, but rather with a combination of the muscles of the trunk and the hips to pull the trunk and hips back into vertical alignment. These then hand off the work to the chest, shoulders, and arms to lock it out.

I have had success programming pressing five times a week, and I learned that it might be hard the day after the heavy bench, so pin presses could be scheduled on Saturday, putting a rest-day in between heavy bench and pin press. What might be a problem with the programming approach above is that benching and pressing a total of five times a week is a ton of work. According to the second coach, the athlete ought to press three times a week, and then the bench press takes the back seat, keeping general upper body strength maintained and assisting in driving the press up. This is a good point. More does not always equal more.

But that all really depends on the systemic stress incurred from the previous week and what was expected for Monday’s training load. It might also depend on the rep ranges used. I’ve had luck using 3x3 with the pin press, then running it out per the Texas Method, dropping rep ranges to three doubles, then a few singles. These suggestions prompt some questions, such as: would 3 sets of 3 of heavy pin presses affect the following Monday’s bench pressing in a detrimental way? Would Saturday pin presses be a productive workout with only one day of recovery after intensity bench press? How can I specialize the press and keep a bench press variation in the rotation? It might look like this:

• Monday – Volume Press
• Wednesday – Pin Press and Close-Grip Bench Press
• Friday – Intensity Press

The substitution of the close grip variation of the bench press keeps an assistance bench press movement (and therefore chest) more involved. It also trains the triceps very hard since there is more range of motion about the elbow. This is especially helpful for finishing the lockout. And importantly, because the close grip variation cannot be as heavy as the conventional bench press, systemic stress is not as high.

The second coach involved in the conversation also suggested cycling the pin press 1x5, 1x3, 1x1 over three weeks. While this is a more complicated and advanced programming move than sets across, it could mitigate fatigue (it is only one set, after all) and keep progress advancing for very long periods of time without changing programming. It certainly would last longer than sets across, but I am not sure it really matters that much, except when concerned with the minimum effective dose (as opposed to maximal recoverable volume).

The primary coach wondered what percentages to start pin presses with, and we concluded to titrate it per the Blue Book, then base it off of bar speed and technique. It also depended on what the previous week’s set of five looked like, then to make a decision as to what the following week’s triple should be. We guessed about 10% increase for each reduction in rep range. To that end, we have seen good results programming like this:

• Monday – Volume Press
• Tuesday – CGBP 3x5
• Thursday – Pin Press 5/3/1
• Friday – Intensity Press

Depending on the advancement of the athlete, the bench (or close grip variation) progression could run out 3x5s, then cycle over three weeks 3x5, 4x4, 5x3 to keep it moving, while still keeping it in the back seat so it does not eat into recovery. Likewise, the pin press might be able to be run out at 3x3 to 3x2, then 3x1, then cycled as weekly 3/2/1 or 5/3/1. This is similar to how Practical Programming maps out cycling the intensity day of the Texas Method. But this decision depends on the stress incurred by the athlete over the latest part of his training cycle. If bench and pin press are both progressed hard in sets across, and then run-out in the the 5s, then 3s, and 1s, instead of cycled right away, then that could be too much stress from which to recover. It depends on the capacity of the athlete to recover. It’s final mutation might look something like this:

• Monday – Volume Press
• Wednesday – Pin Press and Close Grip Bench Press
• Friday – Intensity Press

Ultimately, we want the intensity of the press to increase over long periods of time. We care about the singles. At the beginning of pressing in this way, sets of singles across are generally prescribed, with more sets for less talented pressers. I am one of these terrible pressers and have been prescribed 10 singles for months on end. That is a long pressing session that was meant to teach me to groove the bar more consistently.

It is not long before working in a range becomes preferable, maybe within 10% or so. The intention is to raise the floor and ceiling of that 10% range, because there may be days when it is just plain hard to groove the thing. Be wary of racking up a bunch of misses though – you are just practicing bad technique. If you begin missing, go down in the load range until the technique is back together again. Then work back up if you can. Next week try to get at least one of those sets better, starting with the bottom of the range. This will require diligent note taking in your training log. It might look like this:

Intensity Press day: program calls for 10x1 @ 225-235

• 225 x1 (first set moved fast; add 5lbs)
• 230 x1 (a 5lb increase from last week’s single, beginning to raise the bottom of the range)
• 235 x miss (may have been too heavy a jump; perhaps just +2.5lbs next week)
• 235 x miss (back off on next set to “re-groove”)
• 230 x1
• 230 x1
• 232.5 x1 (supports previous suspicion that a 5lb jump was too much)
• 235 x1 (a 5lb increase from last week’s heaviest single; very fast)
• 235 x1
• 240 x1 (PR, but was a grind and you know it won’t go for a second attempt)
• 230 x1
• 230 x1

In such situations, when the iron is hot it is often time to strike. So if you are smoking your heavy singles, ascend them. There are many times when I’ve witnessed this happening with one of my athletes and sneaked microplates on their barbells to surprise him with a new PR without him realizing it.

But you might be wondering, why would someone ever want to or need to press so much and so often. The press, at maximal weights, is generally closer to bodyweight than the other barbell movements. A deadlift, on the other hand, at maximal weight might be 2.5 or 3+ times bodyweight. And it had better move in a straight, vertical line over mid-foot otherwise it will not go. So we arrange the mechanics of our body to make that happen. And because the press is lighter and because of the long kinetic chain, it must be practiced often and very heavy to keep the technique in order. For this reason, we need to approach the press much more like the Olympic movements, due to the practice element. This is an important distinction between training and practice.

We oughtn’t practice the press at light weights, since light weights can be done with an inaccurate bar path and not be suitable practice for heavy attempts that require mechanical correctness. Heavy presses require both strength and accuracy, and accuracy must be practiced under actual performance conditions. The training stimulus from light movements is minimal, and light presses do not constitute practice for heavy presses.

There is both a training and practice aspect to the press that is not present in the deadlift. The deadlift bar path is short and guided by contact with the legs, and is therefore far less practice-dependent than the press. But the press is the most technically complicated of the slow barbell lifts, and is far more subject to deviation from the most effective bar path, so practice with heavy weights is as necessary as training with heavy weights.

When our deadlift is 600lb, we could get a valuable training effect from 2 sets of 5 at 85% (510). A 200lb press, on the other hand, will not gain much training or practice benefit from working sets at 140lb. But pressing 5x5 at 180lb (90%) would be a valuable training and practice stimulus. A 600lb deadlifter, on the other hand, using 540 (90%) for multiple sets of 5 is probably not a good idea, since this much workload requires an enormous recovery capacity. This is also why we can press 10 singles, but at a much higher percentage than the deadlift with respect to maximal weight.

You might surprise yourself when your practice and training come together and you experience a sustained increase in performance, even when your coach knew it was going to happen because of the programming anyway. If your programming is not facilitating this end, then something needs to change. No one cares about your 5x5 press or your heaviest set of 5 pin presses, even though that might be a cool bit of training history.

As our conversation wound down, our conclusion was thus: “None of these are right or wrong. They are based on personal preferences, as well as many years and athletes of experience, and the very specific, individual, and complicated case in question.” So it doesn’t matter, except for when it does. And when it does, it depends on a bunch of factors.

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Thanks to Jordan Burnett SSC, Victoria Diaz SSC, and Mark Rippetoe for contributing to this article.

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