For the last couple of days I've been repeating those words in my head again and again and again. About a year ago I was doing the same thing.
On January 25 2014, I was training events with a couple of other strongmen, and I got stapled on the log press by 115kg five times. I could clean it just fine, but no matter how psyched up I got, and no matter how angry I got, I couldn't press it out. At that point, I had been training the push press almost exclusively for my pressing movements. Saad, a very strong presser around here, told me afterwards to stop push pressing and do more strict pressing.
Just over a month later, on February 26 2014, I pressed a 120kg log, the heaviest weight I had held over my head at that point, without a belt or wrist wraps or weightlifting shoes.
That was the day I realised: the push press does NOT carry over to the log press.
For a solid month, I pressed only once a week, with heavy log pressing for sets of 2-3 reps followed up by either strict overhead presses or incline bench presses for sets of 5 reps and some heavy upper-back work, either in the form of barbell or dumbbell rows.
But later in the year, I seemed I had forgotten all of that. For the past few months I've been training the push press and push jerk as my only overhead movements, but I was still benching, which I had hoped would help maintain some of my strict pressing strength.
A couple of weeks ago I used the log again, for the first time since April 2014, and it went okay. Not great, but not bad. But then, a couple of days ago, I decided to take a max on the log again, just to see where I was at before I start my next training cycle. I was hoping to get a top-set of 2-3 reps of somewhere around 110kg. I doubled 105kg a couple of weeks prior, so I figured I could at least double 110kg.
Welp, the first attempt at 110kg, with a belt, weightlifting shoes and wrist wraps on, I missed the press woefully. And then I took the belt off, got super angry, and with a bit of knee rebend, I grinded out 110kg on the second attempt.
It sucked. I sucked.
Immediately I knew what I had done wrong; I stopped strict pressing. So I followed up my terrible performance with 5 sets of 5 on the overhead press as punishment.
So here I am again, about to embark on two months of solid overhead training in preparation for the state qualifiers for the Australian Log Lifting Championships. At least this time I know how to get my log pressing strength back up.
