Plague of Strength

You’re STILL Doing Fucking Lateral Raises?

Jamie Chaos
In this blog, I detailed the myriad marvelous means by which one can improve their mental and physical strength with the grand poohbah of upper body lifts- the Behind The Neck Push Press.  Well, fuckers, I’ve got another exercise for you to try, and it’s another one for the fucking record books.

Behold the awesome might of the Partial Overhead Squat.


The form on these will be a bit tricky when you first start.  As you can see in the video, I usually have difficulty finding my mark right out the gate.  The setup, however, generally goes like this- line up the way you would for a squat, making sure that your legs are evenly spaced, slightly wider than shoulder width after you duck under it.  Then, straighten your arms as you squat deeper, locking them out fully, and stand up, pushing your head forward as you do so.  Like most lifts, this isn’t fucking brain surgery, and chance of injury is basically nil due to the use of the rack.
Once you find your groove, however, this movement gets fun, and interesting, in a fucking hurry.  Additionally, I find moving the pins from set to set to add an extra level of difficulty, and makes it a bit more fun on days when you just feel like hammering away on a single exercise all day long.

For me, this exercise arose out of doing ancillary work for the BTN push press.  I had been doing BTN lockouts in the rack, and found that as I got tired and the weight was heavy, I’d start doing what amounted to and OH squat lockout.  These were initially tremendously difficult, but I saw massive crossover for all overhead pressing movements, in addition to extra squat work.  Having made this discovery, I started working on this exercise, specifically, one a week.  Since doing so, I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in my comfort and skill at fully locking out and holding my BTN push presses, and have seen gradual rise in my BTN press overall weights, as well.

Why not just do the full overhead squat?  Frankly, because I don’t see the point.  Clearly, I’m not a grunting, Tapout-ensconced, mouthbreathing retard, but I’m not much of a natural athlete, either.  My balance and flexibility suck, and I’ve always achieved any success in athletics through wild-eyed aggression and general effort, rather than natural skill.  As such, I’m wholly unsuited to something like the OH squat, which is only a hell of an exercise if you’re flexible enough, and have the requisite balance to do it.  As I’ve not neither, and my OH squat weights are so much lower than my front and back squat weights, I’ve never seen the point in doing them.  It’s be like doing one armed bench presses while balancing a spinning teacup on my nose.  Would it be hard?  Hell yes.  Would I ever fucking do it?  Maybe if I were going to consider thinking about doing Hercules curls supersetted with leg extensions and wanted something to occupy my time while doing so.

Should you feel it necessary to attempt full OH squats, have at it.  Personally, I’m going to continue compounding my ridiculous brute strength to no flexibility ratio and leave the full squats to Olympic weightlifters and chicks with awesome asses. 

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Jamie Chaos Avatar
Jamie Chaos
I am a former all-time, all federation world record holder in raw powerlifting at 181lbs, a record I broke just to say fuck you to the internet’s “lifting” community and the powerlifting community at large. Over the last ten years I’ve written over 500 articles on strength training, nutrition, and supplementation, and continue to do so simply to fight the tide of weakness and sadness that currently pervades the scene I’ve called home for the better part of three decades. I’ve got personal trainin certs, BodyPump and BodyCombat certs, a BA in History and East Asian Studies from the University of Arizona, and MBAs from the Vienna University and University of South Carolina on my side, in addition to some sick lifts and a hell of a lot of rage. What the fuck have you got?

10 responses to “You’re STILL Doing Fucking Lateral Raises?”

  1. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    I started doing these after realizing I loved both BTN presses and squat lockouts, and put two and two together. They're a bitch to get just right at the start, everything has to be "stacked" just right, but it's an easy way to hold 315+ over your head, haha.

  2. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Just some more excuses for not doing any exercises correctly to build the ego. If you want to convince somebody that this shit works, at least in the strength department, then starting doing the shit correctly and shows us the numbers, not some gay ass pics of you posing in a cut off.

  3. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    ^

    Do you know anything about partials, kid?

  4. Jamie Lewis Avatar
    Jamie Lewis

    Nevermind the fact that Oly lifters do these as well, hahaha.

    And no, he doesn't. Dude's obsessed with Turkish getups with kettlebells and sun salutations. Good times.

  5. Ryan Avatar
    Ryan

    He obviously did not read the part about how using this exercise has had a CROSS-OVER to Jamie's BTN push press. Therefore, doing the over-head squat "correctly and show us some numbers", would not be as beneficial to gain on the previously stated push press..

    …Again proving Jamie right, that Americans (like the poster under 'Mike') are becoming increasingly retarded.

  6. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Nice. Easy lift to incorporate as I already do Legs and shoulders on the same day.

  7. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I know what partials are but for some reason everything is being done as a partial. I suppose calling me a kid makes you feel strong.

    A "CROSS-OVER" to that other random exercise is great and all but what does that even mean? It is as qualitative (go look up it up smart guy) as it gets. How did it cross over and what were the increases?

    I'm not an Olympic lifter so I didn’t realize that they do these partials often. Even if they do, I believe they spend most time doing the REAL exercise.

    I'm not a troll in complete opposition of everything here (particularly the calling out of fat and lazy Americans). Call me old fashioned or something else but I'm going to need some data to believe it improves strength better than say the Sheiko routine (which is what I stated first). Perhaps the overall goal is to build random strength (while not getting bored) and have low body fat? Also, I don’t know how you can constantly call out others when you don’t have it in you to even build some flexibility.

  8. Jamie Lewis Avatar
    Jamie Lewis

    Because my goal, as I've stated numerous times, is to build random strength while maintaining low bodyfat.

    If you want an Olympic lifting program, look elsewhere. This brings me to your next point: you want data to confirm that improves strength better than the Sheiko routine? I suppose I'd better actually create a static routine, then.

  9. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I do partial kegels.

  10. Jamie Lewis Avatar
    Jamie Lewis

    I did them one time- they left me unable to compete in the Whorehouse Olympics, and I injured myself at the Crossfit Games.

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