Stop F*cking Up The Arnold Press (PROPER FORM!)

Do you know how to do an Arnold Press? If not, you’re in luck. In this video, I am going to show you exactly how to perform a dumbbell Arnold press so that you can perform the exercise every time without making a mistake. Remember, it’s not just what exercise you do, but how you do them that matters

There’s not the day that goes by that I don’t see someone doing my favorite shoulder exercise, the Arnold press, to build big front delts, meaty middle delts, and explosive rear delts. The problem is they’re it up. What is my impression no good? You just taking my lines. Let me show them how to do it, please.

And like Arnold, I actually love the Arnold press. It’s one of my favorite ways to do a press. However, a lot of people get this wrong. You see, Arnold knew what he was doing, but it really came naturally to him. There’s a lot of nuance in when and the timing of how you press these dumbbells overhead that a lot of people are messing up that are costing them not just gains on the exercise but also a little bit of comfort in your shoulders and wrists.

And it starts with the starting position because when we hold the dumbbells I don’t want to see rest them on your shoulders. Most of all you don’t want to give the muscles a break at the bottom of the exercise but more importantly look at the angle that you create of the forearm. It’s angled backwards whenever we press. We’re better off trying to maintain a stacked joint situation where we have the dumbbells a little bit away from our body so that our wrist can be stacked right above the elbow. So when I go to press up overhead, I have more support and I take some of the strain and stress away from the elbow and wrist joint.

So you always want to start with the dumbbells a little bit away from you. Now when we go up and press, the rotation of the dumbbells is where people mess this up. And I’ve seen all kinds of variations. A lot of swinging of the arms like this. a lot of early rotation.

Here’s what you have to remember. The goal of the exercise when Arnold designed it was to hit the front delt and the middle delt. He wanted to make sure that as you pressed, you transitioned from front delt to middle delt up to the top. Now, he did mention rear delt on a press, though it only really gets about 11% of the contribution on the exercise. So, I don’t look at this as a great rear delt exercise.

There’s other things like a seated row that do a much better job of that. What you want to make sure of is that if you’re looking for front delt, then the elbow has to be out in front of your body. In other words, this arm has to be positioned in front of the body. And whether I’m doing a front raise or whether I’m doing a shoulder press, when the elbow’s out in front of the body, I’m going to get more of the front delt. When the arm starts to get out towards the side, we shift that focus to the middle delt because the middle delt becomes more at an advantage to be able to pull.

So whether I’m doing a lateral raise or whether I’m doing a press from this position, the position of the humorris is out here. So to do this right, you want to make sure that you’re starting in the front and you press the dumbbells up straight up in front of you here until they get to the level of your forehead. Once the dumbbells are at the level of my forehead, now I start to rotate. And as I rotate, what’s happening to the elbows? The elbows are rotating out too to that position there.

Now, as I press up overhead, I’m getting more abduction, right? I’m keeping the elbows further away from my body, which will shift the focus into the middle delt. As I come down, I just simply reverse the timing and the motion. Now, what are some of the mistakes people make? Again, they start in the front and they do the spin without any movement.

So, they go like this. Spin and then press and down. Spin and press. That does nothing. If I spin from here, that’s not really doing anything.

I’m basically positioning myself from a front delt focused exercise to the middle delt and then pressing all the way through the mid delt on the entire exercise. That’s not what the goal was. The next thing people do when they make a mistake is they stay here and they press and spin from the same spot. So, if I’m here and I press and spin out front of me like that, it’s still going to be a lot of front delt because I have my elbows way out in front of my body. I never left that position.

And if you do it, you’ll feel that. So, you don’t want to just be spinning in front and pressing from here. You got to let the elbow slide. Now, the last thing is people slide so much that they put the elbow behind their body or way out to the side. So, they go like this here and they press from there.

And essentially, you turn this into an overhead press behind the neck like that. And we’ve talked about the risk of doing an exercise like this because once you take your shoulder out of the natural scapular plane, which is angled about 30° forward here, like this, you start to put some unnecessary stress on the rotator cuff and the joint itself. So, what can we do? We just want to make sure that we limit it to a little bit in front of a completely horizontal here. So, when I press out, I don’t want the elbows to drift all the way out to the side.

I want to make sure that they stay a little bit towards the front just like that so I can get the best of all worlds. Now, would you do this exercise seated or standing? The the choice is really up to you. If I stand during any press, I’m going to have more core demands to be able to stabilize anytime I try to press weight up over my head. There’s also a tendency for me to start cheating with a little bit of lower body English to get myself going.

I’m not saying it’s a horrible thing. I’m just saying that you have to be aware of. I prefer whenever you do a press on your feet because it’s more athletic. However, if you wanted to focus more on the delts, you take your legs out of it, you have to be aware of one potential pitfall here. That is, are you pressing into the bench or not?

Because it interrupts the normal biomechanics of the exercise anytime you try to press overhead. If you’re pressing, particularly heavier weights, which people tend to do when they sit cuz they want to be able to get better leverage, you don’t want to be pressing back into the bench and pushing backwards. This is what people do. They try to get heavier weights up. They push through their feet the same way you would in a bench press.

Drive backward into the bench and then push up. The problem with that is you can interrupt the normal biomechanics of your shoulder blade. Whenever you raise your hand overhead, your shoulder blade has to rotate. Overhead motion. Some people have talked about a bench press.

You do not need rotation during a bench press. Your shoulders at the same height is staying right here. Rotation is not our concern. Overhead pressing is much different. You need to understand biomechanics.

Overhead pressing is different. You need rotation of the shoulder blade to get my arm up overhead. As a matter of fact, it’s a 2 to1 ratio between the glenoumeral joint going up into abduction and the rotation of the scapula having to occur in order for your arm to go overhead. So, if I pressed into the bench and I started to interrupt that very delicate balance of 2 to1 ratio as I go up, I could just interfere with the normal press and cause issues where there doesn’t need to be some. So, what do you do?

You just simply sit a little bit further ahead. Don’t push into the bench. Just do your press from here. And again, now you’re not getting the lower body involved. You’re still able to get all the benefits of the exercise without the chance of disrupting the biomechanics at your shoulder joint.

And again, if you want to be a little bit more athletic, you stand up on your feet. You do it that way. Botto