Bri­an Chin Le­ung

?Some­times, the best ex­er­cis­es are the ones that ap­pear to be very ba­sic. The mil­i­tary press is an ex­er­cise that works sev­er­al mus­cle groups si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly and is a great move­ment for bring­ing out mus­cle tone and strength in men and women. Any ex­er­cise that has the word mil­i­tary at­tached to it has to be a se­ri­ous ex­er­cise, and the mil­i­tary press is a very se­ri­ous ex­er­cise.

Mus­cle Used

Many peo­ple think of the stand­ing mil­i­tary press as a spe­cif­ic ex­er­cise for shoul­der de­vel­op­ment but in fact, be­sides the shoul­ders and tri­ceps, it works oth­er mus­cle groups, in­clud­ing your core and legs, since you have to use these mus­cles to sta­bilise your body dur­ing the lift. Yes, you did read cor­rect­ly; I am say­ing the mil­i­tary press can help with ab­dom­i­nal de­vel­op­ment, be­cause your abs form part of your core and they must con­tract for a suc­cess­ful mil­i­tary press lift. As a mat­ter of fact, many peo­ple are not aware that you can con­tract a mus­cle much hard­er if you al­so con­tract the mus­cles sur­round­ing it.

For ex­am­ple, if you were to flex your bi­ceps with­out mak­ing a fist, you would get a cer­tain de­gree of con­trac­tion; how­ev­er, when you make a tight fist, you are able to con­tract your bi­ceps much hard­er; be­cause by mak­ing a fist it al­so caus­es your fore­arm mus­cles to con­tract. So to gen­er­ate a high lev­el of con­trac­tion in your shoul­ders dur­ing the mil­i­tary press, you should con­tract your abs, which in ad­di­tion al­so helps to sta­bilise your body.

De­scrip­tion

To per­form the lift, stand with your heels to­geth­er, keep your back straight and your chest out (now you know why it is called mil­i­tary press). In this po­si­tion, the bar­bell will be on the an­te­ri­or del­toid. En­sure that your hand spac­ing is just a bit wider than the width of your shoul­ders. Push the bar­bell up­ward and above your head in one flu­id move­ment. The bar­bell is then low­ered, with con­trol, to its orig­i­nal po­si­tion. As you push the bar­bell, ex­hale and as you low­er it, in­hale.

Ben­e­fits

As I men­tioned ear­li­er, the mil­i­tary press works your shoul­ders, tri­ceps, core and legs. Per­form­ing this ex­er­cise reg­u­lar­ly will give you a great ath­let­ic shape. It al­so gives you func­tion­al strength in meet­ing the chal­lenges of every­day life, where­by you may be called up­on to place a heavy ob­ject on a shelf above your head. In ad­di­tion, you can al­so work many of the oth­er sta­bilis­er mus­cles in your body by per­form­ing this vari­a­tion of the mil­i­tary press: Put some light weight on the bar­bell and press it over­head; now hold that po­si­tion for a minute.

Your body is go­ing to shake and sway, as your sta­bilis­er mus­cles, in­clud­ing your abs, fran­ti­cal­ly con­tract to keep your body steady. The mil­i­tary press makes your body stronger while en­hanc­ing great mus­cle tone. For those ad­dict­ed to on­ly do­ing car­dio, try in­clud­ing a cou­ple of week­ly ses­sions of weight train­ing and watch your mus­cle tone and strength im­prove by leaps and bounds.

Keep train­ing.