Press form check (and progression question)

[karthik]

Weight is 126 lbs, and the bar was all over the place. What do I change?

- If I have two videos, one of a set that I finish but is very wonky and the other of a set that goes fine until I fail, which is more useful for a form check? (I picked the wonky full set of five above.)

- My last few press sessions have gone as follows:

118 x 5,5,4
118 x 5,5,5

120 x 5,5,4,4
120 x 5,5,5

122 x 5,5,5

124 x 5,4,3
124 x 5,5,5

126 x 5,3,4
126 x 5,5,3

So I'm failing every other session. What should I do now?

(To answer the First Three Questions, it's 7-8 hours of sleep, ~3200 cals per day with 210 g of protein, and 5 minutes between press sets. I'm about four months into my novice LP. I'm 6'0", 214 and going up 3 lbs a month, and my other lifts are progressing without stalling. Except the squat, which I deloaded last week to fix knee cave-in).

[Michael Wolf]

It's a little hard to comment because there is some kind of weirdness going on with the video, it doesn't play smoothly so a few things look a little wonky but might just be the video.

Looks like your knees unlock just a bit when you reach forward. This isn't really a huge deal and my knees do the same thing sometimes, but you might want to tighten it up a bit. You're also over-extending your spine. Again, this is something some people knowingly do to get more layback and lift more weight. You need to be really sure your abs are clenching and bracing as hard as you can, and if lifting more weight is worth it to you, keep going. If you want to play it safer (but possibly have more difficulty at the same weight), then reign in the spinal over-extension a little.

As far as your progression: I take your comments to mean bench is still progressing, so moving to an intermediate pressing program may slow you down if you can still progress your bench linearly. Try using the top set + back-off approach that is so common at the end of the Advanced Novice LP for squats. On your press days, do one set of five at the new, higher weight (1-2lb jumps), and the other two sets at about 90-95%. Warm-up, then do the first set at 90-95%, the new top set, then the third set again at 90-95%. For your next workout, try 118 or 120, then 128, then 118-120 again. See how long you can keep progressing this way.