Shoulder Press

Chris (Kempie) Kemp from CF Northeast England posted the following on the Crossfit Manchester Message Board. I'm stealing it for here so I can find it again more easily.
The original post is at http://crossfitmcr.proboards105.com/index.cgi?board=exercises&action=display&thread=1173663571

A max shoulder press is a bit of a yes or no situation. It will either get up past your eye level in which case it will almost certainly go all the way up, or it won't. Either way, very little risk of things going awry. I have plenty of experience at this particular lift and working it hard with plenty of weight (and plenty of fails) never came close to having a problem.

Your best best is to start light, reinforcing perfect form and incrementally increasing weight. Once you reach a point where the weight really slows down or you want to compromise form note that weight. This is around about where you will be working for a while.

Form points

Start position - make sure that the elbows are at least underneath the bar. If they are behind the bar, not unly are you badly set up to drive overhead but the bar will be sitting very low on your chest. Push the elbows forward a little and the bar will move up towards the shoulders.

Body tension - if your body is not locked tight, there is no way you will make a max lift. Grip the ground with your feet, flex your thighs and squeeze your glutes HARD!! First time I got this bit right, I didn't walk comfortably for days. This is similar to Pavel's irradiation technique. By squeezing a muscle hard, neighbouring muscle groups will tighten up and so on. Glutes will drag spinal erectors and abs into play really shoring up the mid-section.

Squeeze the bar up - As you approach max loads the press becomes like a deadlift - you just have to push and push until the d**n thing starts moving. You will need to lean back a little so your face is out of the bar path but limit this to a very small shift of weight to the heels. Do NOT lean back at the waist and arch the back. As the bar travels past the forehead and out of sight shift your weight back onto mid foot and get all that locked down structure beneath the bar and keep pushing. As the bar gets close to lock-out push your head through the "window" formed by your arms and the bar so it is all the way overhead.

Recovery - to get the bar back down tighten up again and slowly control the negative all the way down. If it is coming down fast, bend the knees a little as it hits your chest to soak up some of the impact.

Longer than I had planned but the overhead press is too important to miss out on. Maybe a true max will have to wait but you can definitely train towards it in the meantime.

Cheers, kempie