We've made a lot of headway talking about our barbell prescription for aging adults.

If you haven't seen our videos on the squat prescription or the deadlift prescription, please

go back and take a look.

Now it's time to move from the lower body to the upper body, at least nominally.

As we've seen, the squat and the deadlift aren't strictly lower body exercises,

and the same goes for the next two movements in our barbell prescription.

Today, we're going to talk about a powerful exercise that's misunderstood,

much maligned, incredibly powerful and healthy, and underutilized.

We're going to talk about the standing overhead press,

or as we prefer to call it, the press.

Hi, I'm Jonathan Sullivan and welcome back to Greysteel. Let's start where we started with the squat and the deadlift.

What exactly is a press?

A press is a movement in which a load is pushed away from the body.

So, in a leg press, you push a load away from your center with your legs.

In general, however, press refers to a load in the hands, which you then push away.

Most people will think of a bench press, in which a load is pushed away from the chest.

We'll cover the bench press soon because it's an important exercise.

But we don't think the bench is quite as important as the overhead press.

Sure, the bench allows more weight to be lifted, but it's just not quite as

comprehensive and doesn't hit quite as many fitness attributes.

That's because the press has a longer range of motion, demands greater mobility,

and is performed standing, heavily recruiting the abdominal and lower body musculature,

...