Tip Do the Viking Press in Your Gym Search Skip to content Menu Menu follow us Store Articles Community Loyal-T Club Loyal-T Points Rewards Subscribe to Save Search Search The World s Trusted Source & Community for Elite Fitness Training Tip Do the Viking Press in Your Gym You' ve seen this lift in strongman competitions Here' s how to do it in a regular gym and smash those delts by Paul Carter December 15, 2018August 18, 2019 Tags Overhead Press, Powerlifting & Strength, Shoulders, Tips, Training Need some savage delt destruction? Rig up a Viking press in the rack: Let's discuss for a second. To start, for overhead pressing I always like a thumbless grip. Whether you use a thumbless grip with your bench and incline pressing is preference. But for overhead work, I've literally never seen anyone who didn't press more once they went to a thumbless grip. With a thumbless grip, you get more of a neutral hand position and better alignment with the elbow joint. This tends to reduce stress at the shoulder and decreases torque at the elbows (because we're looking at better tension distribution across the wrist, elbow, and shoulder when you have alignment through those three joints). The other factor here is that you're using the plate-loaded end of the barbell, so it's like using a thick bar for pressing. Thick bar work is a great option for those who have joint pain when pressing. The loading gets spread across more of the entire hand, and thus spread a bit more evenly across the forearm flexors and extensors. When you're using a normal sized bar, with the thumbs-around style with poor wrist to elbow alignment, it can lead to elbow, biceps, and forearm pain. This is most often because of an imbalance between the muscles of the forearm or something being short and/or tight in the rotator cuff. Try the Viking press using a (mostly) thumbless grip and see if you can do these pain free. If so, then most likely it's related to something above. But now you've got a way to at least train around it in a pain-free fashion, so you can get savage again. Get The T Nation Newsletters Don' t Miss Out Expert Insights To Get Stronger, Gain Muscle Faster, And Take Your Lifting To The Next Level related posts Training 4 Gym Gadgets That Are Wasting Your Time Are you using any of these overhyped fitness gadgets? If so, should you be? Probably not. Metabolic Conditioning, Metcon, Opinion Dr John Rusin May 19 Training Powerlifting The Definitive Guide At some point, every strong guy wants to test his mettle in competition. Here's everything you need to know to make your first powerlifting meet a success! Powerlifting & Strength, Training Jordan Syatt April 2 Training Running Man A running program that won’t cause muscle loss. In fact, it’ll help you gain muscle. Check it out. Bodybuilding, Fat Loss Training, Training Christian Thibaudeau March 7 Training Tip The 20-Percent Experiment Get a better workout every single time you walk into the gym. Here's how. Bodybuilding, Tips, Training Chris Shugart July 12