“You still haven’t answered my question: I’m pushing 100kg on military press, if I read your book or enrol in one of your programmes how much strength am I likely to increase by?”
Cometh a question from a personal trainer fan of mine.
Answer:
I cannot possibly say.
Why?
I know nothing about this chap whatsoever.
His age, height, weight, training experience, health status, and injury history are a mystery.
As is the rest of his programming, how much time he can devote to training, why he wants to get his press up, and the form he is using to press (more on that in a moment).
All things any PT knows they need to ascertain before making so much as a guesstimate about what a client may or may not be able to achieve.
Returning to that point about form:
What constitutes a “military press” varies widely.
You have some who label any overhead press from standing as such and others who correctly identify the military press as a strict standing press starting with the forearms vertical and the bar sitting just above and slightly in front of the clavicles.
The latter is much more difficult to improve because it’s a pure “muscle” lift from a marginally disadvantaged starting position. Whereas the former includes the “Olympic press”, which is a highly technical movement using the hips to generate momentum to pop the bar off the shoulders while simultaneously aligning the pecs and delts into an optimal pressing position to drive the bar to lockout.
Hence, you can see tremendous increases in weight with form tweaks and a bunch of practice. (Yours Baldly went from grinding out 75kg for sets of 5 to 90kg for confident sets of 3 in a matter of weeks after grokking the transition between the first and second phases of the lift).
It’s important to note that these increases don’t represent an improvement in strength. Instead, what has happened is optimal form allows strength that already exists to be fully expressed.
A subtle, yet important distinction.
Anyway.
You won’t find me making specific results-based promises anywhere, anytime because I’m not afraid to admit I simply haven’t trained enough people to create statistically significant averages upon which to base those claims upon.
I will, however, happily promise to teach you “how to” do things.
Like in tonight’s 90-minute, live, online seminar:
“How to Write a Training Programme”
If you’d like to come, please hasten to the below-linked checkout page to purchase your ticket.
The seminar is tonight (16th), 1900-2030.
This is for UK residents only.
To make sure I don’t fall foul of the international taxmen, I am going to ask for your address at the checkout.
Any purchases from outside of the UK will be immediately refunded and the offender blacklisted for failing to comply with very simple instructions.
I may or may not run this event again, and it will not be recorded.
Book here:
https://cmtyreman.thrivecart.com/how-to-write-a-training-programme
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman