For the first three quarters of the 20th century if you wanted to inquire about a young man’s strength the question was – “How much can you press?”. The overhead press was a relatively simple way to compare strength between individuals as it required little instruction. Simply pick a weight off the floor or walk up to a power rack and push it over your head if you wanted to see who was stronger than whom.
Initially, for maximum development and comparative results the press was performed in a strict ‘military style’; hence it’s name the ‘military press’. The lifter was to keep a military posture with straight legs and back, locked knees while pressing the weight overhead. This kept the stress of the load on the shoulders. In 1928 because of it’s popularity, the overhead movement become one of the three movements in weightlifting competition in the Olympics.
Competitions, coaching, seeking an edge, along with the worldwide desire for countries to win caused the lift to lose it’s militray form as lifters used every means and technique to circumvent the rules to place the weight overhead. Lean-back techniques, grip spacing, a slight hitching movement with ones’ knees and the exercise turned into a quick push-press to accelerate and move rather than lift weight. Forgiveness in rules and the excessive body bend began to become acceptable. In 1972 the overhead press could no longer fairly be judged and was removed from Olympic competition.
In the 1960’s Powerlifting, which required less skill became more and more prevalent. Those who had spent their time military pressing as part of their training, rather than bench pressing quickly found when they converted to the bench press exercise they were extremely strong even though they had never performed a bench press exercise in training.
The trainees that remained and continued as Olympic lifters, even though the overhead press was eliminated from competition, still found it necessary to continue the use of the overhead press in their training in order to excel in the clean and jerk.
Rogers Athletic recognized the value of this shoulder exercise and developed the Pendulum Shoulder/Incline. The machine takes away the leverage advantages that athletes use to push rather than truly press weight overhead. And just as importantly the Pendulum Shoulder/Incline is constructed to ensure the lifters humerus is rotated properly during the movement making it a truly effective deltoid developer.
To build extremely powerful shoulder muscles and Get Strong choose this machine from Pendulum. It answers the question, “How much can you press?”.
