Press: Why Aren’t We Looking Up?

[Savage44]

Just rereading Blue Book section on press and this popped into my head after reading and hearing Rip rip on looking up during the squat and/or DL then use the example of picking up a heavy box of shit in the garage and looking at the ceiling while doing it. Yeah, that dumb. But isn’t equally dumb to think that it’s unnatural to lift said box up to an overhead shelf without looking at where the load is going? That we’d just shove the head through the shoulders looking straight ahead and blindly hope the box clears and lands on the shelf? I’d love to hear Rip discuss what occurs to the anatomy of the neck and shoulders when looking up at the bar. This seems to occur to some extent on extremely heavy presses during layback …

[Mark Rippetoe]

You don't understand the difference between setting an object on a shelf and shrugging a barbell into lockout directly overhead and then lowering it?

[Cole Gorton]

same reason you dont use a dumbell to mimick a throwing motion when training a baseball player. you train for the general strength adaptation...to get stronger, so that you can put the box on the top shelf. the most efficient technique on a barbell press is not to look up for various reasons, loss of balance being one. you shouldnt need to practice the techinique of putting a box on a shelf. you should just be strong enought to do it.

[Maybach]

The dangers of naturalist rhetoric rear their ugly head at last.

I’d love to hear Rip discuss what occurs to the anatomy of the neck and shoulders when looking up at the bar. This seems to occur to some extent on extremely heavy presses during layback …

A discussion of this appears in the Blue Book chapter on the press. If the head is not shoved forward, the traps cannot fully raise the scapula, which will lead to impingement of the acromion process onto the rotator cuff. This is a bad deal.

A laid back press still finishes with the head forward of the shoulder joint so the scapula can be raised into the lockout position. This has to be done before the arms are locked out: starting from a locked out layback and "rotating" the trunk forward along the spine will be in the best case, extremely painful, and the worst case, impossible as the traps cannot be squeezed through the channel between the head and shoulder as they contract, nor can the deltoid and arm muscles support the weight of the bar alone as the traps need to stop holding the bar up to be wiggled into place. Watch an olympic weightlifter fail a lift due to slow head movement and you will see what happens.

[Savage44]

You don't understand the difference between setting an object on a shelf and shrugging a barbell into lockout directly overhead and then lowering it?

Sure, I could see the difference. But where and why does the “box of stuff in the garage” analogy (which I’ve heard you use several times in arguing that one should look at the floor when squatting and DL’ing) end? We’re moving a load to a target. My question for you is an anatomy one: would it be so terrible for the neck to look at this target during the movement? It seems natural (in the box analogy) to do so.

[Mark Rippetoe]

What is the "target" in a press?

[Matt James]

1)"Heavy boxes of shit" don't go on high shelves.
2) Looking up interferes with the final lockout of the press.
3) Setting the gaze on a fixed reference point at or below eye level helps maintain balance and stability through the movement.

All of this should be obvious.

[Maybach]

My question for you is an anatomy one: would it be so terrible for the neck to look at this target during the movement? It seems natural (in the box analogy) to do so.

It's in the damn blue book. If the neck is craned back, it is in the way of the shoulders. Locking a weight out overhead is probably the best studied movement in the history of lifting heavy things.

[Cole Gorton]

1)
"Heavy boxes of shit" don't go on high shelves.

LOL to this