Barbell Shoulder Press
Trains the Shoulders.
- Equipment
- Barbell
- Mechanic
- Compound
- Force
- Push
- Level
- Intermediate
How to do it
- Set a barbell in a rack at roughly collarbone height and set an upright bench beneath it, or press standing.
- Grip the bar just outside shoulder-width and unrack it so it rests across the front of your shoulders.
- Point your elbows forward and slightly down rather than straight out to the sides.
- Brace your stomach and squeeze your glutes before the bar moves.
- Tuck your chin back so the bar has a clear path past your face.
- Press the bar straight up, then push your head forward through the gap once the bar clears it, finishing with the bar over the middle of your feet.
- Lower under control back to the front of your shoulders before the next repetition.
Common mistakes
- Leaving the head back so the bar has to travel around it. That pushes the bar forward of the shoulders at lockout, which is the least efficient place for it. Move the head through once the bar passes.
- Bouncing the bar off the shoulders. The rebound skips the hardest part of the press, which is starting from a dead stop at shoulder height.
- Arching the lower back to compensate for a shoulder that cannot get overhead. Brace hard, and treat the shoulder blade's upward rotation as something to train rather than to work around.
- Stopping short of full lockout. The last part of the range is where the shoulder blade rotates upward, which is what makes overhead pressing worth more than a machine press.