Why My Overhead Press Sucks (And What I’m Doing About It)

Photo of Author about to fail a 125lbs shoulder press

Strict standing barbell shoulder press, also known as press, also known as strict press, also known as overhead press, also known as OHP…

…is historically and universally one of the hardest exercises to get strong and lift a lot of weight with.

And unfortunately in my current state, I am no exception to this rule.

However, I will be as long as I follow what I’m about to share because it’s worked for me in the past quite well.

And for the sake of the rest of this article, we’ll refer to this kind of shoulder press as OHP.

First, let’s talk about why I suck at this lift right now:

The most obvious reason is because I haven’t trained the barbell OHP consistently, especially before I got my home gym set up.

I’ve talked about this many times before, but I quit the gym back in June of 2023 because my wife and I were about to have our second baby and I decided to workout at home instead so I could be close to everyone.

It was definitely the best decision overall, but as far as my workouts were concerned, my raw strength took a major hit.

I mean it makes sense…