Overhead press exercises which muscles

To have a strong upper body you must master the overhead press. The overhead press is one of the big boys when it comes to compound exercises. The overhead press is an upper body exercise where you will press a barbell upward over your head while standing up straight.

The primary movers of the overhead press are the deltoids, triceps, and traps while other muscles like the pecs, serratus anterior and abs also play a role. The purpose of the overhead press is to strengthen the shoulders and triceps. The overhead press is included in pretty much every weightlifting program worth its salt that powerlifters or bodybuilders follow.

At the end of the day apart from the bench press there is no better test of upper body strength than the overhead press. Note: We will cover the all the muscles involved in the overhead press in this post as this is one of the biggest compound movements where multiple muscles contribute to lifting the weight above your head. There are multiple variations of the overhead press, such as the seated overhead press, push press, dumbbell press and more. The essential version of the overhead press is the standing overhead press.

In strength training the overhead press would be considered the main lift where as other variations of the overhead press like dumbbell presses and Arnold presses would be more of assistance lifts. We will get into the various overhead presses and the different tools you could use with them such as dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands and even combo of a barbell with bands and weight plates.

You should be able to apply many of these same form cues to other variations of the overhead press. Note: For the seated overhead press follow the same cues but make sure to sit on the bench with your core engaged and back straight throughout the movement. Stand Up Tall: Many people have the tendency to lean back when doing the overhead press. You should complete the entire lift with your back straight in a neutral position and with your core engaged.

To help stay completely upright keep your glutes contracted throughout the lift. Keep Core Tight: Keeping your core engaged throughout the overhead press helps you move more weight and maintains your spine in a neutral position.

It helps to inhale before starting to push the weight up so that your core stays tight. Look Straight Ahead: All too often people tilt their head up as they push the barbell overhead. To help with this you may want to fixate your eyes on an object in front of you before you begin the lift. Press Bar in Straight Line: By pressing the bar upwards in a straight line you will be able to lift heavier weight as the mechanics of the body can produce the most force while keeping your elbows directly under your wrists as you push up.

However, we will go over a similar exercise called the push press later on where you will be required to use your leg power. Properly Warmup: The shoulder joint is a complicated as it can move in such a wide range of motion so it is susceptible to injury. For your warm sets, start light and slowly increase the load.

Set Your Stance: Your legs should be locked in position to avoid using them to drive the weight upwards. Picture yourself screwing your feet into the ground before you start the lift. Set Your Grip: The grip you use when doing an overhead press can make or break the overall lift. You should use a full grip with your fingers wrapped around the bar so that you can squeeze the bar as you press up, this can add some strength to the lift by engaging your muscles more.

The bar should sit at the meaty part of your palms so that you can press directly up without having to worry about your wrists bending back. Your knuckles should be just behind your wrists with the bar resting on the meaty part of your palms, close to your forearms.

The goal here is to mitigate the possibility that your wrists bend back, while also allowing you to push straight up from your forearms into the bar. Use a shoulder width or slightly wider than shoulder width grip. Note: Some prefer using a Bulldog grip where the bar will sit in the heel of your palm like the full grip above but the fingers should be bent and pressing against the bar with your thumbs wrapped around the bar. Start with your elbows just in front of the bar.

Stay in Line: Your whole body should be in-line throughout the movement. From a side view your body should keep a vertical alignment. Keep your core tight by bracing for an imaginary punch to the gut. You can also try to use a weight lifting belt so that your abs have a surface to push against. Your lower back should remain in a neutral position throughout the movement to avoid hyper-extending it and causing injury.

Shrug Shoulders: Shrug your shoulders at the top of the movement to finish the lock out phase and activate the upper back muscles. Bigger Stronger Shoulders: The overhead press allows for the biggest load to be moved by your shoulders.

Through the concept of progressive overload , we know that we need to increase the stress placed on the muscles in order for them to grow, this is a great exercise to get that process underway.

This exercise improves shoulder health and can help prevent future injuries if done correctly. All three deltoids are activated in the shoulder press so you will be training your deltoids evenly. Oftentimes the lateral deltoids and posterior deltoids are under-trained when compared to the anterior deltoids so this can help to correct some muscle imbalance. However, we do advise to get some extra rear and side delt work added into your workout routine because the front delts get enough work in as they are involved in many ppressing exercises such as bench press.

Full Body Exercise: Even though the overhead press is considered an upper body exercise it works several muscles throughout your body. Besides your shoulders the overhead press requires your triceps, upper chest and back to actually move the weight while your core and lower body muscles need to be contracted without moving isostatically contracted throughout the movement to keep your body stabilized.

To really execute the overhead press in the most powerful and efficient manner, the glutes and core play large roles in keeping proper form with your body in alignment. Transfer of Strength: The overhead press transfers gains made over to the bench press because many of the same muscles are at play. Your bench also improves because the overhead press trains your body on enhancing the lockout portion of the lift. At the top of the overhead press, you should lock out your elbows to finish the move in the same way you would in a bench press.

Say goodbye to getting stuck at those last few inches next time you hit the bench press. Improved Overall Functionality: Just going through daily life involves bending, twisting and lifting things.

The overhead press helps to improve our core strength resulting in better body stability while it also aids in building power and strength in the shoulders which translates to being able to perform some activities better like lifting objects over our heads when putting things away. The overhead press boosts core stability, supports correct posture and keeps the shoulder joints healthy and mobile.

Bone Density: Weight bearing exercises are the only way we know of that maintains our bone density as we age. With the overhead press being one of the best weight bearing exercises for the upper body it is not to be skipped. Lift strong loads build stronger bones, enough said. Testosterone: The overhead press enables us to press heavy weights which can have the affect of boosting natural testosterone.

This is why you'll often hear people in the fitness world say it's vital to perform big lifts like bench press, squats and deadlifts. The more testosterone your body produces the more muscle and strength you can gain. This study conducted in Norway compared the standing and seated barbell overhead press with the standing and seated dumbbell overhead press by measuring electromyographic activity EMG when doing the exercise for a 1RM. The participants were 15 healthy men with an average of 5 years of strength training.

The initial theory was that if the exercise required more stability standing dumbbell overhead press compared to seated barbell press that the 1RM would be lower but the EMG would be similar in the shoulder muscles.

The EMG was tested on all three deltoids anterior, lateral, and posterior , triceps brachii and biceps. There was a total of four testing sessions that were separated by days of rest. Each session had the following goals:. If you want to build big broad shoulders then the overhead press is a must do exercise. The front and side delts are the main movers during the overhead press vs the rear delt which acts as more of a stabilizer muscle.

Your fitness level and ends goals will determine how to best program overhead press into your training routine. For beginners most training programs will include the compound lifts like overhead press and employ sets and reps that are consistent but the load variable will change as you progress. This linear progression is perfect for beginners as the gains should come a little faster and easier compared to intermediate and advanced lifters who might need to frequently switch up their sets, reps and loads to get past stall out periods.

At the end of the day progressive overload is needed for all lifters to see any type of strength or muscle gain. Intermediate and advanced lifters may need to change things up with sets, reps and loads to break through plateaus or to hit specific goals.

The original standing overhead press has a plethora of possible variations that you can change up from time to time in order to make your training more interesting and in some cases more efficient depending on your end goals. The training variables that can determine various overhead press exercises are:.

Just remember the main lift and king of the shoulder exercises is the overhead press and that other variations of it can act as assistance lifts to improve your OHP. Variations of the overhead press can be used to target and strengthen specific muscles that need the extra work to make your overall musculature function better as a cohesive unit.

The stance you use can range from the standard feet shoulder width apart or Military press style with your feet next to each other. Doing the overhead press while standing will force you to use more stabilizing muscles to keep your body in the correct form. You might be able to lift heavier weight when doing a seated overhead press but you will stimulate your muscles more if done standing as they have to work harder to complete the lift.

By changing your grip, you will elicit a different response from different muscles some of which we will cover below in the overhead press exercise variations. To dig a little deeper, in a small study of EMG activity in 15 participants, published in the July issue of the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research , researchers found that doing a shoulder press with dumbbells provoked more deltoid activity than doing a shoulder press with barbells.

They also tested the exerciser's positioning and found that doing a standing dumbbell overhead press provoked more shoulder activity than doing the same exercise seated. It's not surprising that the researchers found this exercise — which forced the exerciser to do the most work stabilizing the weight — to have the lowest maximum lift weight of the exercises tested, despite it provoking the most neuromuscular activity.

Introducing any sort of instability commonly decreases the amount of weight you can lift, not because your muscles are working less, but because they're responsible for doing multiple things at once both pushing the weight and stabilizing it. Or, to put it another way, how much weight you can lift isn't always the best measure of how much work you're doing during an exercise. The overhead press appears frequently in kettlebell workouts too, with the exerciser holding the kettlebell's handle with his palm facing forward and the weight of the kettlebell sitting slightly behind him, resting against the back of his hand.

It's interesting to note that, in a issue of the International Journal of Exercise Science , researchers conducted another small EMG test, this time using 21 subjects, and discovered that using the more stable implement, dumbbells, provoked a slightly greater increase in anterior deltoid muscle activity Although the researchers did deem that difference to be statistically significant, it's not huge.

Ultimately, if you like doing your overhead presses with kettlebells and have adequate shoulder stability to do so, there's absolutely no reason not to. Any exercise that fits readily into your workouts so that it's done consistently is preferable to one dubbed the "best" that's never done. Read more: 8 of the Best Bodyweight Shoulder Exercises. Speaking of the "best" designation, here's more good news about the overhead press.

In a small, independent study sponsored by the American Council on Exercise , exercise scientists from the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse recruited 16 volunteers and monitored their EMG activity while doing 10 of the most popular shoulder exercises.

Of these, the dumbbell shoulder press — essentially, a dumbbell overhead press — was found to produce significantly more activity in the anterior deltoid than the other exercises. The shoulder press produced 74 percent activity when compared to the same exerciser's "maximum voluntary contraction" or MVC, a baseline contraction the exerciser demonstrated before beginning the exercises.

The next closest follower for anterior deltoid activity, the dumbbell front raise, produced just 57 percent activity compared to the MVC, followed by battle ropes at 49 percent. That doesn't mean the overhead press is the only shoulder exercise you should do; in fact, the researchers make it a point to note that neglecting the medial and posterior deltoids can lead to shoulder dysfunction that affects up to 69 percent of people at some point in their life.

The overhead press is good for your deltoids too, generating a nice, middle-of-the-pack result at 62 percent of MVC. The top exercise for medial deltoid activity was the degree incline row, at 84 percent of MVC. But the shoulder press's activity in the posterior deltoid is minimal, at 10 percent of MVC — compared to 73 percent MVC for seated rear lateral raises, the top workout for your posterior or rear deltoid.

In addition to seated rear lateral raises, some of the other effective exercises you can include in your workouts to strengthen your rear deltoids include the degree incline row which generated 69 percent of MVC in the rear deltoids , followed at a great distance by battle ropes at 38 percent of MVC. Finally, even if the overhead press is your favorite exercise for the anterior deltoids, it's good to shake up your workouts every once in a while — so don't be afraid to sample some of the other exercises already mentioned.

Part of this is for mental variety, but exposing your body to new stimuli will also cause it to adapt in response — or, in other words, it helps keep you from getting stuck at a fitness "plateau. It can be tempting to focus on muscles like your shoulders — especially the fronts of your shoulders — because they're readily visible in the mirror and can have a real impact not just on your appearance but on everyday activities, too. Still, don't forget to work all your other major muscle groups , including your chest, back, arms, core, hips, quads, thighs and calves.

It is possible to injure your shoulders when doing this exercise, especially if you are using heavy weights or poor technique. If you feel any pain during the exercise, slowly lower the weights and end the exercise. Only use a weight you can press with good form. Aim to do 8 to 12 repetitions. Beginners should pick a light weight to start, increasing it until you find a weight that you can lift for 10 repetitions you should feel fatigued at the final rep.

Women might start with 5-pound dumbbells and men with pound dumbbells. Incorporate this move and similar ones into one of these popular workouts:. Get exercise tips to make your workouts less work and more fun. Can common measures of core stability distinguish performance in a shoulder pressing task under stable and unstable conditions? J Strength Cond Res. Stability of resistance training implement alters EMG activity during the overhead press.

Int J Exerc Sci. McCall P. Muscle imbalance: 6 things to know about muscle imbalances. American Council on Exercise. Published May 6, Saeterbakken A, Fimland M. Muscle activity of the core during bilateral, unilateral, seated and standing resistance exercise. Eur J Appl Physiol. McKean M, Burkett B.

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