Substituting OHP and moving on from the Beginner Template

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Dear BBM Team,

(Please do let me know if a meaningful answer to this question is more appropriately dealt with as a consult.)

Background:
Lifting since May 2019 - ran Beginner Template to Phase 3, stopped lifting November 2019-March 2020 because life, restarted BT March 2020, reached old E1RMs within 6 weeks and now at Week 12 again though only lifted maybe twice weekly on average since August due to life, job, random illnesses and lifting-unrelated injury. My priority is strength>hypertrophy. I own a rack, flat bench, landmine/DIY belt squat, 10kg & 20kg bars, SSB and bumpers. Think I’ve read and considered everything you guys and gals have put out…
Height 163cm, weight 67kg, waist 31.5in, east asian ethnicity.
E1RMs: squat ~131kg, Sumo DL ~140kg, Bench ~72kg, OHP~ 41.5kg

My training has been scrappy since August (when most of my best numbers happened) and Week 12.x is kicking my butt so I think it’s time to move on. In particular I’ve found OHP a struggle: I like to think I’ve always had good kinaesthesia but elevating my arms to put the bar vertical (or behind the axillary line per Strengthlifting rules) requires me to essentially do a 60-degree standing incline bench. 4’s were doable but 12’s are generally unpleasant. I’ve tried reducing the weight drastically and accepting that the bar remain forward of vertical but trying this (or the standing incline) for reps still often makes me feel faint. On bad weeks I’ve fainted whilst warming up 12’s with a 10kg bar. I’ve been subbing close-grip bench for OHP in Week 12 and it’s been rather more tolerable. Whilst I ultimately would love some coaching around this I think it would be most productive to ditch OHP for a bit and look for gains elsewhere.

I bought PB1 and Strength 1 a while back and wanted to run those next but subbing out the overhead variations would probably leave me duplicating bench exercises with my current kit. I don’t need an excuse to get an incline bench and dumbbells but I’d be grateful for your suggestions on alternative exercises that would adhere to the ‘spirit’ of those templates.

Many thanks for your attention

2

DJ,

Do you have a video of your OHP? Also, you could probably do landmine press for the higher rep work. Obviously, there are tons of different bench variations available to you. What slots are you looking at replacing?

-Jordan

3

Hi Jordan,

Many thanks for your reply. Please forgive my rudeness - I wonder if this is some sort of record but I have literally only just seen the notification that you replied to me about this. Since I wrote the above, I’ve had long breaks from lifting due to other pursuits (mainly martial arts) with some restarts of the Beginner Template in between.

I seem to have found a tolerable variation for OHP by having a wide grip (pinkies on the PL rinings) which lets me get the bar just about overhead (though it’s still probably still forward of my centre of mass). By re-beathing and re-Valsava’ing at the top of the first rep, I can also stave off the worst of the presyncope. High RPE efforts are still difficult though and the E1RM is still pretty terrible lol.

Thank you for the suggestion of landmine press - I didn’t think of that. I’m afraid I’ve not been able to video my OHP as I am confined to a narrow garage and cannot get a useful field of view laterally with my cameras. If you think it would still be useful to see, I can try and lift in the open (with a very light load) and ask someone else to video me.

I have further questions about the Strength Templates that I have purchased (and OHP) but I will place these in a new post to avoid going off-topic and in case the questions are helpful to others.

Many thanks again, J