Siegmund Klein: Special Preparatory Exercises for the Bent Press [1938]

Because of the physical demands of this lift I cannot put too much emphasis upon the need for special preparatory training with exercises that will prepare you for this feat of strength.

In fact, you should practice these for weeks before you try any weight over a hundred pounds in the bent press. It is assumed that you have done a lot of other lifting exercises over a period of months, including plenty of deltoid work in pushing up weights from the shoulders, not only in the military press but especially the one-hand press with the weight well out at the side. If you have not done this you should immediately start practicing a lot of it.

Apart from this, you will particularly need a lot of side bending strength and also strength in the legs. For the legs you must have more than enough strength to be able to come up from a squat with the extra weight. If you are hoping to press 200 pounds – and that’s a good lift for any good man weighing less than that – then you should practice deep-knee bends with a barbell on your shoulders weighing from a hundred pounds up, according to the amount of weight you hope to use in the bent press during the next few weeks. Remember you need more than enough strength in your legs so that you can easily stand up from the squat, first in lifting the weight to the shoulder and second, a little later when you are somewhat tired, in standing up with the weight at the end of the lift.

So if you are going to bent press a hundred pounds, you would be wise to do the deep -knee bend with a barbell on your shoulders weighing 110 or 120 pounds. If you are going to do a bent press with a weight of 150 pounds, do the deep -knee bend with 160 or 170 pounds. If you are very strong, and expect to do 200 pounds in the press, practice the deep -knee bend with 210 or 220 pounds. Always do fifteen repetitions in this deep knee bending exercises. You must have legs so that it is easy to stand up with your weight.

Also you should do a lot of side pressing. In the „side press,“ which is a standard press, you bend to one side as necessary to push up the weight with one hand, but you keep the legs straight. You do not bend the knees as in the bent press. But by practicing this you build up the side muscles that you need in the bent press, and also the triceps.

In the military press with two hands, you use mainly the frontal deltoids and finish the push-up with the triceps. In the one-hand press over head, standing up straight, with the elbow out at the side, you do most of the work with the lateral deltoid up to a certain point, and then you finish the push-up with the triceps. But in the side-press you don’t try to stand up straight; you bend over toward the other side (keeping the knees straight ); you use the deltoid less and the triceps more; you start with the deltoid but the triceps takes over the job sooner. And this work, as I have just said, strengthens the side muscles, needed for the bent press.

But the one exercise that I would advise most of all to prepare you for the bent press is a combination of both these values, the squatting and the bending. Start with a fairly easy weight of perhaps fifty pounds, hold it at arm’s length overhead, with the arm straight, and practice squatting and standing up with it again and again. You can bend a little as you go down, but don’t bend as much as in the bent press; you can keep the body a little straighter. It is the ideal training for standing up with the weight at the end of the bent press. Be sure that you squat low down. Watch the weight every second. This is great for the legs, for your sense of balance and for control of the weight. Practice this plenty – over and over.

– Siegmund Klein, How to Bent Press, 1938