This article is dedicated to powerful Joe M.

Texting and pressing

The Beast is in flux. I keep meaning to write about it, but I never seem to have enough hours in the day. I promise I'll pen the tale soon for those who are interested. It will definitely be a worthy read (although I may be biased), but it’s a project that’s simply too considerable for me to tackle this week.

In the meantime, I leave you with the attached, a much shorter tale akin to plucking the low hanging fruit. Yet I have no doubt that there's value here, too.

I always like to hear from athletes we’ve trained in the past. I receive texts, emails, and Facebook messages from time to time. They always seem to cheer me up, regardless of content. I don’t know why. I guess it’s the satisfaction of making a difference no matter how small.

It’s 5:49 a.m. on Monday, July 15, 2013. I received the following text from Joe, an athlete we spent some time with at the Beast. Many of you may know him, although I doubt you realize it. He haunts the elitefts™ Twitter chats and Facebook page in a relentless pursuit of lifting information. I’ve seen him many times and always appreciate when he hash tags "Beasttraining."

Joe’s text read, "Erik, how did you develop massive shoulders?"

Fortunately, I was already up and getting ready for work. I had dressed and showered and was trying to motivate myself to get to the car for an early departure in order to miss the lion’s share of traffic. I didn’t have time to respond, but I made a note to respond that evening. Perhaps the nice compliment helped ensure the follow up (i.e. how did you develop massive shoulders).

Later that evening, I responded with a text of my own. I sent a YouTube video link without any explanation other than the video itself. I wasn’t trying to be a smart ass; sometimes questions have simple answers.

Following my text, an exchange ensued:

Joe: Actually watched this video this morning. That’s where my question came from.

Me: So your question was rhetorical? LOL

It’s strange. When posting a variety of videos on YouTube, you never know which ones are going to garner the most attention and inquiry. For some reason, the above video has accumulated a fair amount of attention. Maybe the standing military press is a lost art. Perhaps a lot of trainees just don’t want to do it and instead settle for another session of the bench press.

I don’t claim to be the best overhead presser or even a great overhead presser for that matter, but I've learned some things along the way. Although nothing in my own training is earth-shatteringly different from any other program I’ve seen, I think my story, as it relates to shoulder training, is at least somewhat interesting. It's illustrative of the fact that you can make tremendous gains starting from a relatively very low strength threshold.

Toward the end of my high school football career, my shoulders were pretty banged up. During my senior year, I reluctantly went to see a physician specializing in sports medicine to have him take a serious look. I can’t even recall the exact diagnosis. I think it was a bruised/damaged acromioclavicular joint (AC joint). I remember the doctor asking me if I was going to play football beyond high school. I asked him to elaborate on the question and he suggested that if I was going to play beyond high school, he recommended surgery. If not, he recommended that I complete my senior year and “play with the pain.” I knew I didn’t have much of a future in football (I'm five feet, ten inches tall and slower than a dead cow), so I elected to play with the pain.

Following that season, I set about rehabilitating my shoulders and reestablishing my shoulder strength. At the time, I was a big proponent of the seated press behind the neck. I remember reading an article published in Muscle & Fitness (probably a reprint of a Powerlifting USA piece) about Ted Arcidi, a bench press champion at the time. The article indicated that Arcidi was a big proponent of the behind the neck press. He suggested that it had tremendous carry over to bench press strength, which I viewed as an added benefit. I decided that if it was good enough for Arcidi, it was good enough for me.

I performed a fair amount of my training in my parent’s garage at that time. My shoulders were initially so beat up and weak that I couldn't press an empty Olympic bar over my head. Instead, I had to start with a standard barbell that weighed only 20 pounds. I started doing seated presses behind the neck in sets of ten reps without any back support.

Every week, I patiently suffered through four or five sets of 10 repetitions with only the bar (at first), slowly adding weight until I could handle a regulation Olympic barbell. The press behind the neck always worked well for me. The shoulder position when performing the lift, while uncomfortable for many, never seemed to aggravate my shoulders.

I think doing all those sets with really light weight helped me rebuild the foundation of my shoulder strength. Remember, although the weight was “light,” it was challenging relative to my shoulder strength and stability at the time.

Once I worked my way back up to the empty Olympic bar, I recall that my strength increases began to accelerate. I also added standing military presses to the workout and a few sets of upright rows for good measure.

Here is an actual excerpt from my training log from July 21, 2013:

Standing Military press:

  • 5 X 95
  • 5 X 95
  • 3 X 135
  • 3 X 185
  • 2 X 225 (last warm-up set)
  • 11 X 225 (was shooting for 12—see video link below)
  • 1 X 275 (see video link below)
  • 10 X 200
  • 10 X 200

Kettlebell single arm press (seated):

  • 3 X 15 X 24 kg (52.8 pounds)

Barbell curls:

  • 5 sets

Incline rear delt raises:

  • 2 X 15 X 12 pounds

The bottom line is you don’t need a fancy program to build big, strong shoulders. It takes persistence, hard work, and sometimes patience. I’ve recently eliminated the seated behind the neck press from my training. If you don’t have a reliable partner, there are too many challenges with set up and spotting. In addition, I prefer the total body work aspect of the standing press. It’s a great exercise for increasing your overall torso strength.

Be sure to start with a weight that allows you to perform the reps with good form. Keep your elbows in tight when lowering the weight and try to use your lats as a platform from which to push off of. Frequently, my lats are sore the following day. However, I’ve definitely become more adept at using them to support the barbell over the years.

Squeeze the bar tight and perform all your repetitions with compensatory acceleration (i.e. push the bar as hard and as fast as you’re able while maintaining good form). Keep the programming simple, and just continue to work very hard with as much weight as you can handle.