[quote]furo wrote:
Great job with the deadlift PR LoRez, I’m looking forward to seeing you get 405. I had to Google the Z press - I haven’t come across it before. What are it’s benefits? Also are you doing any direct back work? Take it easy bud.[/quote]
I think I outlined things before awhile back, but I’ll answer anew since I’ve been doing them for awhile now.
For me, one of my biggest problems with overhead pressing was my lower back would arch forward as the weight got heavier. With the z press, this simply isn’t an option and it helps strengthen core stability and balance.
It also forces you into learning a good pressing groove, since if you don’t, you’ll be knocked over one way or another. If you press it too far forward, you’ll fall backwards (as your arms fall forwards). If you press it too far backwards, you’ll fall backwards along with the bar.
From a hypertrophy and musculature standpoint, because you’re forced into doing everything “just right”, it then makes sure that you’re using all the right muscles in concert with each other. With a standard overhead press, you can get away with using mostly upper chest and front delts, but this forces everything to work in concert… from the triceps, upper traps, and all delt heads to move the bar, to the subscapularis, mid/lower traps, serratus anterior and rotator cuff muscles to stabilize everything.
For me, it’s working out to be very good as a remedial exercise to “fix” my shoulder impingement issues, and move away from a more hunched-forward posture.
As far as WHY I’m doing it… I was reading around some of the overhead press threads in the strongman section of this site and saw it mentioned a lot. Strongman is very overhead press focused. Zydrunas Savickas, “Big Z”, the guy who invented the lift, is one of the strongest pressers the world has ever known, and just recently set a world record with a 500+ lb log press a few months back.
I also found Mike Jenkins’ training log, another one of the world’s strongest overhead pressers, and he was using a basic template that consisted of 1) a vertical pressing movement – either z presses or push presses, 2) incline bench presses, and 3) a single tricep exercise. This pattern worked well for him.
I tried adopting it, but pulled a couple ribs out of alignment initially with the z press. Once I moved and got a basic gym space set up, I started back on them, with just the z presses.
My current routine is pretty much out of Pavel’s Power to the People book… the “Russian Bear” routine. As initially outlined in the book, it used just deadlifts and side press. Do a set of 5, a set of 5 at 90% of that, then 5-25+ sets of 5 at 80% with 30-90s rests (high-tension, high-volume, short rests; his “energetic theory of hypertrophy”). Stop when you can’t get a good 5 reps. Do it a couple times a week, increase weight over time.
So… I’m doing the same thing but with chain mat pulls (which are a very very full body movement for my leverages) and z press (for the above reasons). I’m pleased with where things are going.
As far as “back work”, I’m getting 20 to 25 tons of training load a week (sets x reps x weight) in a deadlift-like movement. I’m not really finding a need for anything else right now.
