Push press: a short dip, a drive from the legs, then the press

The push press is an overhead press with a leg drive in front of it. The bar starts on the front of your shoulders. You bend your knees a few inches, keeping your torso upright, then drive straight back up through your legs; the bar leaves your shoulders with speed, and your arms finish the press to straight arms overhead. The legs start the lift, the arms end it.

This page covers the steps, how it differs from the strict press and the jerk, what the studies measured, the dumbbell version, the faults, and the sets. The strict press, with no help from the legs, is on overhead press form.

How to do a push press

1. Set the bar in the front rack: hands just outside your shoulders, the bar resting on the front of your shoulders, elbows slightly in front of the bar. Feet about hip width.
2. Brace. A breath held, ribs down, glutes tight. Your torso stays this way through the whole dip.
3. Dip. Bend your knees a few inches, straight down, as if you were about to jump. Keep your heels down and your chest up; don't let your hips push back.
4. Drive. Without pausing at the bottom, straighten your legs hard and fast. The bar should leave your shoulders on its own.
5. Press through. As the bar passes your forehead, move your head back and then through, and press to straight arms with the bar over the middle of your feet.
6. Lower to your shoulders under control, softening your knees a little as the bar lands, and reset before the next rep.

The dip is short: a quarter of a squat or less. A deep dip turns into a squat, and the bar loses the speed the legs gave it.

Push press vs overhead press and jerk

Three lifts start from the same rack position. In the strict press, the legs stay straight and the arms do all the lifting. In the push press, the legs drive and the arms finish, with your knees straight when the bar locks out. In the push jerk, the legs drive the bar up and you bend your knees a second time to drop under it, catching it on straight arms. A 2019 review of these lifts describes the push press as generating large forces with the lower body and transmitting them through the trunk to the arms, which is the main difference from the standing press.¹

The leg drive is what separates the push press from the strict press; the second dip and the catch are what separate the jerk. In 15 men and 15 women with weightlifting experience, the push press max was the lowest of the three weightlifting overhead lifts tested: about 1.0 times body weight in the men against 1.1 for the push jerk and 1.2 for the split jerk, and 0.8 against 0.9 and 0.9 in the women.² At the same load, 80% of their push press max, 16 resistance-trained lifters, 12 men and four women, applied no significantly different force, power or impulse across the push press, the push jerk and the split jerk.³

What the push press trains

The push press is a power lift: the legs and hips extend fast, the trunk holds firm, and the shoulders and triceps finish overhead. In 17 resistance-trained men lifting single reps from 10 to 90% of their push press max, peak power was highest at about 75% of the max and mean power at about 65%. Eight of the men also did jump squats: the push press's highest peak power was not significantly different from theirs, and its highest mean power was about 9.5% higher.⁴ The authors see the push press as a time-efficient way to combine lower-body power with upper-body and trunk strength.

What's missing is training data. The 2019 review found only 13 articles on these overhead lifts and noted a lack of information about their longer-term training effects,¹ and a PubMed search for this page found no trial in which adult lifters trained the push press on its own and were measured for what changed (the one push press training trial found was in under-20 soccer players). So the push press is a well-described lift with good single-session numbers, not one with proven results over weeks. Use it as a fast, whole-body overhead lift alongside your presses, not in place of them.

Dumbbell push press

With dumbbells, hold one at each shoulder, palms facing each other or forward, and do the same dip, drive and press. Each arm finishes on its own, so you'll notice if one side lags. One arm at a time works too: the free hand on your hip, the dip straight down, not leaning away from the weight. No study of the dumbbell push press turned up in a PubMed search for this page, so think of it as the same lift with a different load. It's a good place to learn the timing before you use a bar.

The common faults, and a fix for each

• Dipping with the hips back. The chest drops and the bar drives forward. Bend the knees straight down, torso upright, weight through the middle of your feet.
• Dipping too deep or too slowly. A short, quick dip and an instant drive; no pause at the bottom.
• Pressing too early. If your arms start before your legs finish, the drive is wasted. Let the bar leave your shoulders first.
• Pressing around your face. Head back as the bar passes, then through, so the bar finishes over your feet rather than in front of them.
• Leaning back at the top. Glutes tight and ribs down; if you can only lock out by leaning, the weight is too heavy.
• Lifting through something that hurts. Tired shoulders and legs are normal; a sharp or lasting hurt in the shoulder, the back or the knee isn't. Stop, and see a doctor or a physical therapist.

Sets, reps and where it goes

• Three or four sets of 3 to 5, with full rest, two to three minutes. Every rep should be fast; when the bar slows down, the set is over.
• First in the session, after a warm-up. The American College of Sports Medicine's 2026 position stand found power was enhanced by moderate loads (30 to 70% of a max), low-to-moderate volume, Olympic-style weightlifting and a fast lifting phase, and strength by exercises done at the beginning of a session.⁵
• Count it as a press. If you push press and strict press in the same week, they share the shoulders and the triceps. Do one of them heavy, not both on the same day.
• Add weight in small steps, and only when every rep in every set stays fast. (Progressive overload covers the options.)

If you'd rather not plan it alone

The push press takes a few sessions to time; deciding whether it belongs in your week at all, what it replaces, and how heavy to go next to your strict press is the part a page can't do. Coaching is the version where your workouts are built around the days you actually have, and a weekly call looks at the week you just had and rebuilds the next one. Coaching to build muscle explains how that works, and here's how to apply. Otherwise: at your next upper-body session, learn the dip with an empty bar or light dumbbells, then do four sets of five and write down the weight.