The Push Press Does NOT Carry Over to the Log Press

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.