A Proportional Standing Press?

Training Beginners
1

I’m trying to get my shoulders proportional in strength to the rest of my upper body. I’ve only been lifting since July but my shoulders have always been a weak point. I was never able to do standing presses because of a herniated disc, but its been feeling better so I tried them today.

My 1rm max on bench is 255. My 1rm on standing press today was 135 (done strict with no leg involvement)

How out of proportion is this? What would you typically expect a person with a 255 1rm to be able to press? I’m just trying to gauge where I need to be at. If its way off, I’ll do shoulders twice a week.

I have made some gains in shoulder strength on the dumbbells over the last 2 months. My 5x5 went from 30lbs to 50lbs. But they are still comparatively weak to the other guys in the gym who are smaller than me but using 60lb dumbbells.

2

I think Rippetoe and Kilgore use 65% of bench press to press. You would need a 165 lb press at 255 bench press.

Edit: Actually from the strength standards table it comes out to 60%.

3

The press is a strange thing. I’ve seen numbers all over the place. People pressing 135 but squatting 300+ and deadlifting 400+.

You can look at it as either you’re weak military presser or a strong bench presser. Just think that you bench more than you should…

I read a lot of threads with people posting 1RMs and being out of proportion seems much more common than people being in proportion in all the lifts.

4

My shoulder press to bench press ratio is about %60. I trained my press usually only once a week, while I benched two.

If you don’t train your press, I bet you could bring it up quickly, and possibly help with raising your bench a bit.

I wouldn’t sweat it, though.

5

OK, cool. 60-65% percent shouldn’t be that bad since got 135 up the first time ever trying. I’m going to alternate between dumbbell seated press and barbell standing presses until I get it up to par. Don’t think it’ll take that long.

6

Yeah, Ive read all over the place that a fully developed man should be able to press his bodyweight.

7

[quote]elano wrote:
Yeah, Ive read all over the place that a fully developed man should be able to press his bodyweight.[/quote]

That sounds about right. Take a 200# pound guy. A decent bench press would be 1.5x his bodyweight, which is 300#. 67% of 300# is about 200#. So… yeah.