Why floor press

Because the floor press involves less range of motion than a bench press, does not add excessive strain to the shoulders and isolates the chest and triceps it is a great tool for building a neurological connection. Building a neurological connection simply means targeting specific muscles you want to activate in an exercise. In doing so, you will be able to increase the number of muscle fibers recruited during each contraction.

This is highly beneficial for preventing training injuries and increasing shoulder stability for daily activity. BoxLife Magazine. Please enter your comment! Please enter your name here.

You have entered an incorrect email address! Do you wince with pain in your wrists when the barbell forces them back, swing a kettlebell overhead, or The Benefits of Training with a Weight Vest. The workout is named after Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, was killed Certain arenas require you to behave in a respectable manner.

You wear the appropriate work attire because you are a professional and you are It exposes weaknesses in flexibility, balance, Plus, a few tips to do them more efficiently. Experiment with different hand positions to figure out what feels best to you, but in general, utilizing a neutral grip with be easier on the shoulder joint.

This is what I recommend most of the time, so try it first. You can press with your legs straight or bend your knees. Neither way is necessarily better, but each will change the dynamic of the exercise slightly. Pressing with straight legs increases the core demand because it eliminates your ability to use leg drive. On the other hand, bending the knees may be a better option for folks with lower back pain. Try both and see what feels best. After you've done regular dumbbell floor presses for a while, you may reach a point where your progress starts to stall out, or you reach a strength level where you either max out the dumbbells at your gym or it just becomes too hard to get them into position.

This doesn't mean you have no choice other than heading back to barbells—which might not be an option if you've got jacked-up shoulders. Instead, try these more difficult variations, which decrease the stability or add isometric holds to allow you to get a great training effect with lighter loads. Perform a single-arm dumbbell floor press with your legs straight and raised slightly off the floor to increase the demand on the core. This may look like more of a core exercise than a press, but trust me, it's still a great upper-body strength builder.

Make sure to use a full range of motion on the press and try to keep your torso and legs as steady as possible for the duration of the set. These are much harder than they look, so start light! Perform five reps, followed by a five-second isometric hold in the bottom portion of the rep with the arms just off the floor.

From there, go straight into four reps followed by a four-second hold, then three, then two, and finally one. In all it comes out to 15 reps and 15 grueling seconds of isometric holds. Lie with your back on the floor under your bar and grasp it with an overhand grip and your hands around shoulder-width apart.

You can have your legs extended or bent with your feet planted — the former is better for ensuring the lift is powered purely by your upper body. When lifting the dumbells make sure you press them directly overhead, rather than letting them sway out to the sides or back over your head.

This exercise can be performed with a barbell or dumbbells and adds an extra dimension to your floor press by engaging your glutes, core and hamstrings. As you press the weight overhead, thrust your hips upwards as you would in a glute bridge.