The Press as a “Throw”

by Mark Rippetoe | August 29, 2023

The “Olympic Press” – the form of the overhead press we teach – uses a lot of whole-body movement to drive the bar overhead. It is essentially a “throw,” since it depends on momentum generated by the dynamic movement of the hips and legs to start the bar up off the shoulders. We use it because of the huge amount of muscle mass involved in the movement, which is in keeping with our philosophy of barbell strength training: 1.) the most muscle mass used 2.) over the longest effective range of motion that 3.) allows the use of the heaviest weights so that you 4.) can get stronger.

“Throwing” is a perfectly natural movement for the human body, even though it usually involves only one hand/arm. The kinetic chain starts at the ground and the whole body is involved in accelerating the thrown object. The press involves both hands, and is therefore an incrementally loadable movement pattern that fits the definition of strength training quite well.

We have described the bilaterally-loadable human movements as squatting down and standing back up (the squat), picking something up off the floor (the deadlift), pushing something overhead (the press), pushing something away (the bench press), pulling something toward you (the chin or the barbell row), and throwing something up (the power clean). The press – “pushing something overhead” – can be thought of as a “throw” in a way that makes teaching the dynamic movement of the body much easier.

People understand that throwing is fast, dynamic, and explosive. Telling them to throw the bar up and finish locking it out is a shortcut to the instructions we use for the use of the hips in the press. It is possible to teach it with just the movement details, but it is also possible to rely on the movement skills that most people already possess by tapping into the idea of “throwing” that we understand from just being active little kids. This movement pattern will have to be refined a little, since most people will use too much knee in the launch from the shoulders, but that is easy to correct if the general movement of the lower body is made understandable by this shortcut.

I have found that this trick saves a lot of time. Showing a new lifter the basics of the standing position, the grip, the elbow and shoulder positions, the shrug at lockout, and the hip movement are still taught in the introduction to the lift, but telling the lifter to “Just throw it up off your shoulders” immediately solves the coordination problem between hips and bar. Hips first, bar second is obvious if the model is a throw. You'll have to teach “tight knees” after a few reps, but that's no problem at all. Try it yourself and see how much time this saves.