Starting Strength, 3rd Edition - Mark Rippetoe [49]
One of the reasons the press was eliminated from Olympic weightlifting was the difficulty most judges had in bringing themselves to red-light an excessively weird press. Referred to by the term “Olympic press,” the form of this movement that developed over the last few years of its presence in the meet was such that the bar was driven up from the shoulders by the use of a combination of a sharp hip flexion from overextension and a shrug of the traps. Some very adept practitioners could lean back to a point almost equivalent to a bench press, rendering the description of the lift as a “press from the shoulders” rather inaccurate. An inexperienced or unconditioned lifter attempting this movement ran the risk of a spinal hyperextension injury, although such injuries were not that common: experienced, conditioned lifters had very strong abs.
Figure 3-2. Tommy Suggs demonstrates a moderate amount of layback in this 1968 National Championships photo. The press was eliminated from Olympic competition due to “judging difficulties” – a reluctance on the part of the international governing body to establish and enforce adequate criteria about layback. It is likely that the press was actually eliminated due to a desire to shorten the meet and to avoid the political complications that arose from the lack of uniformly applied judging standards.
The press is the most useful upper-body exercise for sports conditioning, primarily because it is not just an upper-body exercise. Except for powerlifting and swimming, all sports that require the use of upper-body strength transmit that force along a kinetic chain that starts at the ground. Any time an athlete pushes against an opponent, throws an implement, uses a racquet or club on a ball, or transmits force to an object, that force starts at the feet against the ground. In a press, the kinetic chain – the components of the musculoskeletal system involved in the production and transmission of force between the base of support and the load being moved – starts at the ground and ends at the bar in the hands.
The kinetic chain in a bench press, in contrast, begins at the point on the bench where the upper back contacts it directly under the bar, and ends at the bar in the hands. Proficient bench pressers involve their legs all the way down to the ground, using their lower body as a brace for the kinetic chain. But this does not mean that the kinetic chain extends to the ground, since the bench press can be performed with the feet on the bench or even up in the air. As in the squat, where the hands are an important component of the exercise but do not actually move the bar, the lower body is an important part of the bench press without actually being part of the kinetic chain. Even a very proficient bench presser, using the trunk and legs as efficiently as possible, is still pushing against a bench, not balancing the load with his feet and not using his entire body against the ground as he presses. For the press, using the whole body as the kinetic chain is inherent in the movement.
Basic bench press performance is different from the press in that it is primarily an upper-body exercise. It is an unusual thing in sports to actually place the back against an immovable object and use it to push against something else; it happens after the play is dead in American football if you’re under the