Hey man, everything looks strong so far. Good job.

For the OHP's, it also took me a little while to get the form down perfect. My advice is a wider than shoulder-width stance. I don't recommend putting one foot in front of the other like some people I see do. It becomes impossible to control the bar once the weight starts getting really heavy and also gives you greater freedom to lean further back...Which is naughty! The biggest factor for success with these IMO is that the bar should come all the way down to rest on your upper clavicular area. This is the advantage of doing military presses standing vs. seated. For seated, you really cannot bring the bar down past your chin. So after a slight negative bringing the weight down, once it [the bar] passes below your chin, look forward as it rests on your upper chest. For the ascent, slightly use your legs in the lift as you look up towards the sky. Once the bar passes past your head, again, look forward as you drive the weight up to almost lockout. I say use your legs more for gaining momentum to push the weight past your head so you have less of a chance for injury. This differs greatly from push presses, which is dominated by the use of legs. I've always done OHP's and in my experience, trying to press the weight up from a dead stop on your upper chest without using your legs really aggrevates your shoulder girdle. I perform strict OHP's the first two weeks of the 5x5, then I switch to using slightly more legs so my delts won't get injured, and especially because after a single day of rest, you're doing incline barbell for 5x5!

So, the successful form of this lift lies in your head movement and having the bar land on your [upper] chest. This will elliminate any unnecessary movement of the bar. It will also ensure you aren't leaning too far back, thus making the lift more of a incline bench movement, taking some of the focus away from your anterior delts. The best way to practice this is to throw 25 plates on the bar so you have a little resistance.

*Also, if you want to try it, I recommend holding the bar at lockout for as long as possibly on your final rep of your last set...Talk about burn. Reaching lockout really just targets your delts, not triceps. I love it. As you look in the mirror you see the bar waving back and forth thereby destroying your delts. One nice long static hold. That's a trick John Parrillo teaches. :cool:

One more question for you: Is there a reason why you chose not to do straight 5x5 sets with the same weight vs. doing the first few sets as a pyramid scheme? Nothing at all wrong with it, just curious.

__________________

To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


I can be found at
To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.