Reply With QuoteSteve, I suggest dips. I picked up this suggestion a little while ago and I get results. I also suggest giving yourself sufficient rest time between the sets of overhead press. Good luck.
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Overhead Press Stuck
I will be turning 60 in a few weeks, I’m 5’10 and 180lbs and about 15% body fat. On a positive side I’ve gained about 20lbs over the last 18 months or so and have never been stronger. I would like to gain another 10 to 15lbs but I have to balance that against my pre-diabetes and that is being controlled through diet. I am not going to allow myself to move into full blown diabetes.
I work out twice a week, Wednesdays is heavy squat and press. Saturday’s is 93% squats (I found after a comment on a previous post I made regarding back off percentages that I was able to move my squat back off from 90 to 93%), bench press and Deadlifts.
I think my overhead press is stalling at 123lbs as over the last three weeks I’ve only been able to do 2 reps at that weight followed by the back off sets which I’ve had to lower the weight on to achieve 5 reps for those two back offs. I have not had to do that for any of the previous work set weights. I also suspect my bench is not far behind at 194lbs from getting stuck either. I’ve been following the rep progression program in PP3rd edition page 233. It’s been working really well for quite a while on all my lifts but I don’t want wait too long like I did moving on from the novice program. It took an article from Andy Baker for me to realize it was time to let the novice SS program go and move on. I don’t really care to program hop either but I will say the Biphasic Quantum Interdimensional Myocyet Superposition program looks interesting but not sure I could follow the physics.
I’ve been using rack pulls and haltings for my deadlift and while that’s slow going I have managed to get my DL to 335lbs and I don’t see that stopping it just takes about eight weeks to go up another 5lbs. As an aside does anyone increase their DL by only 2.5lbs?
I’m now pouring through The Barbell Prescription to see where I want to take my press programing next but I don’t really know which would be a good place to start. I find the Dynamic Effort Method interesting but not sure that can be implemented on two day a week program. I may very well be retiring early next year and if that happens my whole week opens up for other possibilities. I just had one thought. I could probably move upper body work to more than twice a week if that helps.
Anyone with thoughts on how a 60 year old can unstick his overhead press?
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Steve, I suggest dips. I picked up this suggestion a little while ago and I get results. I also suggest giving yourself sufficient rest time between the sets of overhead press. Good luck.
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With dips are you doing weighted dips? How many reps are you shooting for and number of sets?Originally Posted by pkelly54
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You need to press more than once a week. Try two times a week. One day of 3 sets of heavy triples, the other day doing 3 sets of 8 for hypertrophy.
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You may get some good ideas from Any Baker's press blog article.
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Good stuff here and above. I'll read through all this and develop a plan.
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I am a full figured geezer. I still do assisted dips using the machine in the gym. I am up to three sets of 5 or 6 will 20 pound assist.
I try to add a rep until I get to 7 or 8 reps. Then i reduce the assist. I figure I should be doing unassisted dips for reps around Christmas.
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I forgot to ask how your bench press is going. Getting my bench dialed in and progressing probably helped my overhead press more than anything.
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I think my bench is getting close to stalling as well. I've watched Rip's videos on Dips and Lying Tricep Extensions. I had rotator cuff surgery about eight years ago and I think I actually tore it when doing weighted dips (this is when I actually thought I was strength training based on what the YMCA was telling me...sigh). Based on that and watching the video I'm going to shy away from dips and work the tricep extensions into my program and see how that goes.
I'm also toying with the idea of a light bench on press day and a light press on bench day but now that I'm 60 I also don't want to over train. I actually got overtrained once with cycling. Man it can take a while to recover from an over trained state, it's very frustrating. But I'm still learning about strength training and what is really needed vs too much to drive adaptation.
I wish there was a GreySteel in my area!
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Where are you?
If you haven't, check out Andy Baker's YouTube channel. He has a good video on tricep focused assistance exercises.
LTEs are a great exercise, but you'll really want to go slow with them at first if you've had shoulder problems. The r.o.m. can be tough for some to dial in.
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