Building Old School Shoulders for Warriors by Mark Hatmaker

 

Ready for an obvious statement?

Powerful shoulders are vital to the combat athlete and the Life-Warrior who chooses to interact with the planet rather than simply view National Geographic quality photos and allow that to suffice the soul.

Combat, survival, swimming, climbing, skulking in a low crawl while on an ambush, what have you, requires not only strength, but stamina and full use of the fluidity that this ball-and-socket joint can provide in its healthy state.

Often shoulder power is sought via weight-use only—and this is, indeed, not a bad way to go, but there are a few alternate considerations to ponder to see if old school thought can inform us how to better aid our own shoulder pursuits of the four attributes: strength, stamina, pliancy, and aesthetics.

One-Old school iron training can indeed fit the bill exclusively—countless examples can attest to that. Overhead pressing of many varieties are and have been used to do the deed, from see-saw presses, to Arnold presses, to old school military and continental presses but…

To many an old timer, iron-only was stopping short, and perhaps, akin to a child’s training wheels that are never taken off the performance bike that is or can be your shoulder girdle.

Two—Let us clarify, old school thought defines pressing as strict control throughout the entire movement, from concentric to eccentric along with two peak isometric holds at either extreme of full flexion and full extension.

Anything that concentrates on merely one or two aspects is falling short.

With this in mind, any “press” at speed is not a press at all, but, by definition a jerk or push.

Pushes and jerks were used to aid and abet maximum poundage lifts BUT they were not the primary builder of the musculature to develop the muscles in question.

For that we go back to S-T-R-I-C-T and C-O-N-T-R-O-L-L-E-D.

Three—It is to better aid and abet the strict control that movement alternate to iron was used side-by-side, which brings us to inversion training.

Four—Today “jacked” is often pursued to simply be “jacked” or to snag the oh, so, correctly lit Instagram image.

Old school thought sees the pursuit of strength, stamina, pliancy, and the accompanying quality of aesthetics as aids to the goal of performance.

Looking good? Hell, we all want that.

The ability to move big poundage?  Yes, that was pursued by many.

But, also a large part of many a physical culturist’s regimen were auxiliary goals, among them training to be a hand-balancer or equilibrist.

That is, one skilled in handstands, inversions, and a staggering variety of upside down feats.

Many an old time strongman was not merely a jacked specimen but a pursuer of many tails of the dragon.

Otto Arco, for example, was not only a superb physical specimen that would embarrass many an Instagramer never-leave-the-gymer, but also a noted wrestler, acrobat and noted hand-balancer.

Arco was not the exception—most early physical culturists trained the inversion.

Why?

One—Athletic ability. Exercise to exercise is often the only “sport” many engage in now, “getting ready” is now, for many, the goal itself.

Old school training was to aid and abet expanding human ability.

Two—Inversion training sans weight puts the shoulder girdle though a wider range of motion while under load creating supple strength throughout movement planes that iron-only training cannot address. In other words, true pliancy, or mobility in today’s pathological parlance.

Three—Inversion training allows one to train and emphasize the shoulders HARD without placing the lumbar spine in jeopardy.

Also, unloading the hips and knees while decompressing the spine to a degree was highly valued.

Otto Arco

Four—Inversion brings more musculature engagement to the table. A single standard handstand push-up engages the deltoids [primarily the anterior but also some of the lateral fibers] but the canny old-timers used a wide variety of tips and tricks to alter loads and positioning to increase muscle recruitment—in other words never seek to make the movement easier, but tweak leverage to “increase” what one would assume to be a static load [one’s own body.]

Also engaged are the triceps brachii, the serratus magnii, the middle portion of the trapezii, and there is far more forearm engagement than one encounters in the press.

The old-timers found that one adept in the inverted pressing position was also “bound to be a good overhead presser when standing on his feet and using a barbell, whether or not he has ever before trained with this invaluable apparatus.”

Are you getting that? These Hosses said the inversion allows one to make big gains in an “exercise/feat” they had never performed, whereas, the exercise itself [the press] does not confer like benefits to the inverted state.

Re-stated: Mastering strict state inverted pressing provides commensurate ability in weighted pressing, be that military, Olympic, kettlebell, dumbbell, or standard pressing variations.

Whereas, weighted pressing, no matter the numbers on the bar, in no way guarantees like or even near ability in the inverted state.

Inverted Pressing: There are few athletic endeavors that confer these cross-domain gains.

Weighted Pressing seems to conform to the standard rule of domain specificity; one gets good at the exercise itself with little transfer outside the ludic sphere.

Recall the difference between exercise to merely exercise and movement to be ready?

Five—The Leaning Effect. The heavier you are the harder the inverted press series—that is, as our bodyweight goes up, our effective performance goes down.

In weighted pressing, bodyweight holds little sway, in fact, often the bigger the athlete the more plates one may be able to add to the bar.

Often, it is found that as a strength athlete rises in weight [assuming training has been continuous] the numbers on the bar tick upward.

But…some of  these gains may be illusory as press-weight ratio to true bodyweight does not conform to a one-to-one relationship, that is, big boys should be pressing big numbers in comparison with smaller athletes. In weighted pressing, one would need to compare bodyweight to press totals and not merely “What’s your press 1RM?” to have a true gauge of individual strength.

Whereas, in inverted pressing the playing field is leveled; all are fighting the same constant—the self one carries around on this planet day in, day out.

In dedicated inversion work, the body seems to recognize the deficit when getting bigger tips the balance into no longer in control of one’s own self.

Inversion work allows one to keep a weather eye on the weight-scale in a way that weighted-pressing does not require.

Six—Strict inverted pressing, a form that abides by fluid and smooth eccentric, concentric, and two isometric pauses, that is, no inverted kipping [that inverted double kick used by some to hit high numbers—this is inertia to rise and has nothing to do with strength], this old school strict form is comparable to a strict military press.

Keep in mind the old school definition of military press is, yes, strict form but also, stand straight as an arrow, knees locked and heels together.

If one has only done the Olympic press [minus the jerk or push from the knees or shoulder width stance] give the true military press a try, it may humble you.

For those who desire to quantify their inversions, sports historian, strength athlete and statistician David P. Willoughby has kindly provided the following ratios.

To perform an inverted press from the floor is equivalent to doing a two-hand military press with 79% of the athlete’s bodyweight.

Once the athlete progresses to handstand pressing off of a low platform or low parallel bars, we move from 79% of bodyweight to military pressing the equivalent of 90% of bodyweight.

Once we progress to shoulders touching the parallel bars we have reached an astonishing 96% of bodyweight.

Stunning numbers!

One can train for strict shoulder strength, balance, fluidity, agility, all without placing the spine or shoulders into jeopardy.

“Mark, that’s neat but I can’t do a handstand push-up?”

Maybe not one of the varieties just described, but as Mr. Willoughby shows us—the loads are scalable as we regress the inversion.

Tented push-ups, band-assisted inversions, hell, even handstand shrugs with feet balanced against the wall moving only one or two inches quickly bring the skill within the grasp of the committed.

[BTW-The material on inversion training is staggering, we will offer a tamed and progressive version of this old school vocabulary along with a few adjunct dumbbell exercises in the Unleaded Conditioning volume titled The Shoulder Battery. For other Unleaded volumes see here.]

Old school strength, stamina, pliancy, and aesthetics gear free [well, a wall is a nice aid] and all at no risk to your lower back.

That’s a lot of upside for going upside down.

[For more Rough& Tumble history, Indigenous Ability hacks, and for pragmatic applications of old school tactics historically accurate and viciously verified see our RAW/Black Box Subscription Service.]

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