Pennsylvania’s Strongest Man

Craig Pfisterer’s competes at Pennsylvania’s Strongest Man at 253 lbs (115 kg) and does pretty good despite having a chest cold – watch him pass out on the Conan’s Wheel;

Press!

Presses are not something I am good at so I perked up on seeing this thread;

http://powerandbulk.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=44372

Here’s a few of the posts;

Henry_Adolfo

Some tips that has helped me:

1. If you know how to clean…you’ll press more.

2. Train with more volume and frequency than “regular” lifts.

3. Lift mostly submax weights, a lot of low rep sets.

4. Pull-ups and rows help some…single DB presses are the king of assistance lifts.

5. Invest some time to find your best stance, grip, and body position to press..this will pay off in the long run. Also, learn some proper technique…you know, push head through when locking out, keeping elbows slightly in front of the bar, learning how to set the arms at the beginning of the lift, how to tense your legs and hips, etc.

6. Building some muscle overall will help a lot…overhead pressing is not a lift for skinny bastards.

Strongmac

Basically, the template is this:

Start with ~75% of 1RM for 2×5
add 10 pounds, do 2×4
add 5 pounds, do 3×3
add another 5 pounds, do 3×2
Drop back down to starting weight and do 1×6

It’s tough (39 presses over 11 sets) but it works. Probably only want to use it once a week for 3-4 weeks.

An excellent routine, and one i return to occasionally. 220×2 and 200×6 were my pr’s after following this for a month or so.
The OHP is a very fucking tempremental lift though. I lose strength quickly on it if i don’t keep up the effort.

privateviking

I agree with what others have said, I really need a lot of “practice” in the strict press. Weights that I can handle, to kind of “grease the groove.”

If you feel like you need some heavier work, you can always do push presses, or jerks and kind of overload the pressing muscles. That way you, you can get the heavy work in, without frying yourself on the strict press.

In the past, I’ve messed around with seated presses in the power rack from eyebrow level, right where my sticking point is. They are another exercise that you can push and grunt through, so you can work heavy and not mess up your military press from/technique.

As far as work for the triceps, you could try skullcrushers or even better, JM presses. I find that the elbow postion at the bottom of the JM press is sorta similar to where my elbows are at the bottom of a strict press.

As for a plan, when I was into Strongman, I’d do this for the overhead.

Monday (Heavy)

Push Press, sets of 5 working to a max set of 5.

Seated Press from Pins in Power Rack. 4 sets of 5, working up to a tough set.

JM Press. 5 or so sets of 6-10. Just sorta went till i had a nice pump.

Wednesday (Light)

Strict Press. 5×5, with 65% of max

Dumbell Press. 4-6 sets of 6-10. work up to a moderately hard set.

Dumbell Tricep Extension. 4-5 sets of 8-12. Just to get a good pump.

Friday (Medium)

Press. 5×5, with 75% of max.

Skull Crushers. What ever.

Friday was by far the hardest, and sometimes it took a long time to get all the sets in. Wednesday was super easy, and I’d try to do the sets as quickly as possible, with as little rest as possible.

I didn’t get to anal about the precentages. Days I felt bad, I used a little less weight. Days I felt good I used a little more.

Retard Smart

One of the pages I am subscribed to is fellow Power & Bulker Craig Pfisterer’s Justgetstrong Blog. It has many excellent videos and the routines are clearly laid out.

Craig is retard-smart and young… as a result he is very tall and making very fast progress. Craig’s aim is to be a professional strongman… and I have a feeling he will achieve that.

If I was to go back in time this is how I should have trained, I would have been a lot taller and stronger as a result;

Big Bad Beef

John McKean, posted the following here;

I just had the pleasure of watching big Ernie (Beef) set 6 official IAWA world records at our club’s annual “record day” meet. In the presence of 6 long time international officials, the big man did a rack push press of 381 pounds as easily as most of us can do with a bare bar! He just barely missed 401 at the top of lockout, but, in my opinion, will far exceed this with further meet experience and his sound training methods!

Here is the video;

And here are the lifts;

1	Press	0.03	315 lbs
2	Press	0.16	351 lbs
3	Press	0.29	366 lbs
4	Press	0.49	381 lbs
5	Clean+BN Press	1.07	231 lbs
6	Clean+BN Press	1.22	241 lbs
7	Clean+BN Press	1.40	251 lbs
8	BN Press	2.01	251 lbs
9	BN Press	2.17	261 lbs
10	BN Press	2.30	271 lbs
11	Alternate Press	2.45	??? lbs
12	Reverse Press	3.01	??? lbs

More details of Ernie Beath’s efforts can be found here.

Ivan Abadjiev

I came across an interesting article on Ivan Abadjiev.

It basically says that his lifters concentrated all their efforts on the clean & jerk, snatch and front squat with near maximal (for the day) weights. Lifters also trained every day, several times a day. ”Assistance” exercises are not performed because a lifter only has limited recovery and needs to put all his efforts into the primary lifts.

But that is not the most interesting thing… the interesting thing is that at the end of the article thanks are given to amongst others, Brian Hamill – and here is a story which I will relate to you;

Hamill is a BAWLA fellow and many years ago (circa 1989) I was in one of Hamill’s classes where he was demonstrating ‘correct’ spotting technique for the front squat. Hamill seemed pretty clueless but was front squatting with about 50 lbs using an ordinary non-Olympic bar with cast iron plates of about an inch thickness.

His spotters consisted of a girl (a student) and a man (Hamill’s assistant) both of who clearly had no clue as to what they were doing. Hamill squatted down and then literally threw the barbell forward, the girl manage to catch one end allowing the other end to smash down with sledge hammer force so that the cast iron plate impacted directly onto the man’s toes.

We all felt the man’s horrifying pain as his toes were crushed to pulp and he screamed incoherently… I enquired of Hamill if this technique wasn’t in fact a bit dangerous.