Written by Garett Reid | NSCA, CSCS, CISSN, M.S.E.S.S
Fact checked by Kiel DiGiovanni, Co-founder
FACT CHECKED
The one Olympic movement (well, ex-Olympic movement) that almost everyone has done is the overhead press. Unfortunately, it's not done enough because it is notoriously difficult, and no one likes training what they're not good at. While it is hard, the problem is that you might not be using the right reps for this movement.
This article will tell you how many reps you should be using for your overhead press to get the most out of this beast of a movement. So, how many reps should you use for the overhead press? Let's find out.
The Overhead Press
Just to clarify, this article will primarily discuss the barbell overhead press but will also touch on other variations, such as the dumbbell press.
With that said, the overhead press is your primary vertical pressing movement. It involves taking a loaded barbell out of the rack and pressing it over your head, which you lock out at the top. As such, it's responsible for increasing the strength of your shoulders and triceps while helping improve your pushing strength.
As mentioned in the intro, the overhead press is notoriously difficult to progress in. Also, out of your primary movements, it will be the smallest. This makes the overhead press terribly humbling and actually leads many people to skip it! Hopefully, you'll find some rep schemes at the end of this article to help you deal with this, as overhead pressing strength is very impressive once you get it.
Muscle Trained With The Overhead Press
We will go over the muscles worked with the overhead press real quick.
Deltoids
The deltoids are the main muscles in your shoulders and are made up of three groups of fibers called heads:
- Anterior (front)
- Medial (side)
- Posterior (rear)
All three heads are involved in the overhead press and are the primary movers. However, the anterior head is the most active, while the medial and posterior deltoids mainly stabilize the movement and reduce unwanted motion.
Triceps Brachii
The triceps are the three-headed muscle located on the back of your arms. They are responsible for extending your elbows. The triceps are significant in all pressing movements, including the overhead press, as they become the primary movers at the end of the movement during the lockout. Due to their smaller size, they may fatigue before the deltoids do.
Trapezius & Upper Back
The trapezius, or traps, consists of three fibers:
- Upper
- Middle
- Lower
The traps, situated across your upper back, form a large diamond shape. All three groups contribute to military presses, with the upper and middle fibers particularly active as they stabilize your shoulder blades. This is especially true towards the top of the movement.
Related: 11 Best Trapezius Exercises
Core & Lower Body
While the overhead press is an upper-body movement, it also requires activation from your core and lower body for stabilization.
The core encompasses the muscles of your midsection, including the rectus abdominis, obliques, and transverse abdominis. Acting like a weightlifting belt, your core stabilizes your spine during military presses, providing an effective workout for your midsection while you train your delts.
Your lower body, specifically your posterior, works to keep your hips extended. This is why you may hear some people say, "Squeeze your glutes" during the exercise.
Why Do You Perform The Overhead Press?
The overhead press has quite a few primary outcomes. Some of these include:
- Increasing pushing strength of the deltoids and triceps
- Improve the stability and function of your shoulder
- Increase the strength and stability of your upper back
- Improve core strength
That said, the primary purpose is to increase strength, add muscle to the deltoids, and improve overhead strength and stability. Improving your overhead pressing strength will improve not only your overall pressing strength but also your overall upper body strength.
How Many Reps Should You Use For Overhead Press?
So, let's get to it…how many reps should you use for the overhead press?
As always, the following information is based on our knowledge of strength and conditioning and experience with the overhead press, both personally and with clients.
How Many Reps For Overhead Press For Muscle Growth?
Overhead pressing can be a great exercise for building muscle in your shoulders and upper back. To maximize muscle mass, stick to 8 reps when performing the barbell overhead press. We find that this range works really well and produces excellent results.
One thing to consider if you want to maximize muscle growth is performing the overhead press with dumbbells. Dumbbells require higher levels of stabilization in the delts and involve a greater range of motion, which theoretically would result in more muscle mass.
Whether you use the barbell or dumbbell, you can play with any reps between 6 and 10. The only time we'll go higher than 10 reps is usually on a burnout set, which is done until failure.
How Many Reps For Overhead Press For Strength?
Now, let's talk about performing lower reps with a higher load. While you can do this and should at some point, you must first build up a strong foundation of strength and form.
The overhead press has many moving parts, including the ever-so-complex shoulder complex. If you've ever overhead-pressed any amount of weight, you probably know that it is very challenging. Not only must you push that load overhead, but you must also stabilize the weight and keep it from falling back, forward, or to the side.
These movements can produce high amounts of stress on the shoulder, which can result in injury. To prevent this, you must build strength and perfect your form to mitigate and prevent these movements.
While this joint can definitely produce a lot of power and handle high amounts of stress, the problem is that many people don't train this movement significantly, especially with heavier loads. We'll go over how to build this strength below.
With that said, let's say you've already built up strength. For these lifters, use anywhere from 1-6 reps. We will say that heavy singles and doubles are probably one of the toughest lifts you can do.
How Many Reps On Overhead Press Should I Use?
We want to lay out some possible rep schemes for different lifters. These are just guidelines that you could apply to your training.
The Overhead Press For Beginners
Let's first start with beginners. But even here, we need to define what we mean.
Beginner Overhead Press
By "beginners," we are talking about someone with limited to zero gym experience. For these lifters, we would start light in the 10-rep range. The purpose here would be to work on form and build some strength. It's important to realize that when you begin.
Stay here for 4-6 weeks, then move the load up and change the reps to 8. The length of time you spend at 10 reps depends on you and how you feel about the movement. At 8 reps, you could do the same and stay for another 4-6 weeks.
These 8-12 weeks would give you a dramatic increase in strength and form improvement. From here, you could then move up to the 6 rep range. The 6 rep range works well for beginner/novice lifters as it's low enough for the lifter to control quite easily yet heavy enough to build strength. Oh, and provides volume for muscle mass.
Novice Overhead Press
On the other hand, we have a "Novice," or someone who has been training for a few months but has never followed any legitimate type of progressive training. To be clear, this can include someone who has been training for years yet has always winged it in the gym.
Assuming they performed some type of overhead pressing, this group could start with the classic 3 x 6 rep scheme. Again, this is a good weight to start with when pressing your overhead.
The Overhead Press For Intermediate And Advanced
After you have spent quality time on the overhead press, you can move on to lower reps and higher loads. This can include everything from a 5 x 5 to heavy singles. We have used all of these and have seen positive progression results.
Best Rep Schemes For The Overhead Press
So now, let's look at some specific rep schemes that work well for the overhead press. To be clear, these aren't the only rep schemes that work; they are just ones we have found to work well.
3 x 6 (Building A Foundation)
3 sets x 6 reps works well for newer lifters trying to build their foundation. It's extremely simple yet very effective. It uses simple linear progression, so start light and then add no more than 5 lbs a week.
We have found that 6 reps tend to work better with the overhead than something like 3 x 5 or 5 x 5, especially with newer lifters.
Post Activation Potential (PAP)
Post-activation potential refers to using a heavier load for a single rep followed by reps with a lighter weight. The heavier weight should theoretically activate more muscle fibers, thus making the lighter weight feel lighter and allowing more volume.
You can use this for any movement, but we have found it works really well with the overhead press. There are many ways you can do this, but here's a scheme you can use. Note that your single should not be above 90%. It should be heavy but easy to do with one rep.
- 1 Rep @85%
- Rest:30-1:00
- Perform reps of 70% until RPE8-9
5/3/1/10 (Build Strength)
5/3/1/10 is a 4-week block that works on building pure strength. The rep schemes include:
- 5X5 @80%
- 3X3 @90%
- Ramp up to a heavy single of 95% or RPE9
- 3X10 @50%
Heavy Singles: 5X1, 6X1 (Build Strength)
We have found that heavy singles work well with the overhead press, especially when lifting heavy. We can't give an exact answer as to why this is, but one possible reason could be that doing heavy multiples can be challenging at first due to the mechanics.
Therefore, if you have found that putting up big numbers has been challenging, try working up to 90-92% and then repeating singles with 3:00 rest.
Cluster Sets
Cluster sets seem to work well with overhead pressing. Again, we think this may be due to the difficulty of performing multiple heavy reps, at least at first. A cluster set is basically breaking down the total number of reps on 1 set with "mini breaks." There are many ways to run this, but here's what it could look like.
Use 85%1RM and perform doubles. Rest 20s and repeat 3 times.
EMOM
EMOMs are another rep scheme we have found particularly helpful with the overhead press. Again, we'll do this with relatively heavy weight and perform 5 sets. For example, take 90% and perform doubles for 5 sets.
These can be a bit unpredictable, so you can adjust as you go.
Get Your Press Numbers Up!
If you're frustrated with your pressing numbers, try some of these rep schemes to see if you can raise them. It can seem daunting, but trust us, one day, you're going to "get it" and start seeing your numbers rise. Once you start pressing bodyweight overhead presses for reps, people will notice, and so will your shoulders!
More Resources On Rep Schemes:
Garett Reid
Author