#2 Kettlebell Pressing Variation You’ve (Probably) Never Tried

In the world of kettlebell training, the undisputed king of lifts is the overhead press.

In fact, in the “olden days”, long before the bench press was the apple of any gym rat’s eye, the clean and press was THE measure of upper body strength. Still is, as far as I’m concerned.

However!

All too often people take this tidbit of information as their mandate to make their upper body pressing centered ONLY around overhead pressing. And that makes me sad — not just for their strength gains, but also for their shoulder health.

The reality is, you need more than *just* overhead pressing to get a strong upper body, and the more intelligent variety you include in your training (at least periodically throughout the year, doesn’t have to be always) the better off you’ll be in terms of strength, muscle development, and resilience.

So with that said, I have a number of exercises I like to use to help me increase my military press, but over the past few years or so one of my favorites has become the bridge floor press.

The bridge floor press has 3 major advantages in helping you improve your kettlebell military press

#1: It allows you to use heavier weight

To spur new strength, you have to go heavy/hard. While the military press is definitely a sexier exercise, it has a few drawbacks.

One is that it requires a lot of volume with light to moderate weights in order to make any real improvements in it. It’s what you might call a “local” exercise (strengthens the smaller shoulder muscles and triceps) while the bridge floor press is more “regional” (strengthens the chest, the shoulders, the triceps, and so forth).

What’s more, you can usually at least double the number of reps you can do in a military press in this move.

So if you have a pair of heavy kettlebells that you can do 5 reps with, you will more than likely hit at least 10 with this.

This is important, because heavy pressing efforts like this work wonders to more properly develop the long head of the triceps, which usually take a smoke break and lets the other two heads of the muscle do all the work until the effort gets heavy — and strong triceps are essential for upper body pressing strength.

#2: It strengthens your back in an oft-untrained position: the bridge

A solid back bridge is necessary for a healthy and resilient back, but because it takes a long time and requires a great deal of patience, most people simply never train it, and thus end up inching toward a stiff and less bendy spine (which is bad) and then find their backs more prone to injury (also bad, obviously).

The floor press from the bridge requires you to hold and strengthen the most fundamental and basic progression of the back bridge –the hip bridge — which also strengthens your glutes, your hips, and your legs. So now we’re up to strengthening the chest, shoulders, triceps, spinal erectors, hips, glutes, legs, and abs, which also get in on the game very heavily. So far, so good.

#3: It fills one of the most ignored pressing gaps: the decline press

For whatever reason, a lot of weight lifters like to make fun of the decline press and treat it as completely pointless. It’s maybe not as sexy as a heavy bench or overhead press, but I can assure you it’s a fundamental pressing angle, AND because you can go heavier here than you can with other pressing positions, it will allow you not only to build more strength and muscle at all angles, but it will also get your body used to handling heavier weight and thus make the leap to heavier pressing at all positions. Win/win.

Best of all, you can fit it into your current routine, so you don’t have to get rid of your military presses; simply add in 2–3 sets of 8–12 reps of these bad boys at the end of your regular pressing routines and you’re golden.

I’ve got a video right here to show you not only how to do it, but how to most safely and effectively get the kettlebells into position:

After you do them, be sure to stretch your pecs, shoulders, and triceps well, and drop me a line to let me know how you like them. Within a few weeks, you’ll likely notice that your heaviest kettlebells won’t feel so scary heavy anymore, and your military press will likely start feeling a bit more solid.

On that note, if you like training that:

• Gives you more strength than it takes from you
• Improves your stamina and resilience simultaneously
• Powers-up every nook, cranny, crevice, and corner of your Soft Machine

Then you just might like my 9-Minute Kettlebell and Bodyweight Challenge.

As the name indicates, it’s just 9 minutes long, and it’s designed to be done WITH your current workouts — NOT instead of them.

Even cooler:

Many find that it actually amplifies their strength in their favorite kettlebell and bodyweight moves, like presses, squats, pullups, and more.

And best of all, it’s free.

How free?

I’m talkin’ freer than the 4th of July, my friend.

Get thee thine own copy here => http://www.9MinuteChallenge.com

Have fun and happy training!

Aleks Salkin