The Floor Press
As a younger climber when I would “train” I would do as many pull ups and Lat pull downs as I could, every time I had the opportunity. My thinking was that as a rock climber I needed the largest, strongest pulling muscles I could build. If that wouldn’t launch my climbing career to new heights nothing would…🤦🏼♂️. Little did I know that my Antagonist muscles were desperately craving some attention.
Most of us now know we need to train our Antagonist muscles just as much as our Agonists. For those new to the terms, our Agonists, as climbers, could loosely be grouped into the category of Pulling muscles. Hence our Antagonist muscles would then be grouped into the Pushing or Pressing category. The Single Arm Floor Press targets exactly those.
The Floor Press is a fantastic introductory pressing exercise that can be done safely by yourself with minimal equipment. This is by definition a horizontal press meaning we’re pressing away from our chest, similar to a push up. The Floor Press works both the Major and Minor Pectoralis muscles, the Anterior Deltoids, and all three heads (Long, Medial, and Lateral) of the Triceps. The beauty of the floor press is that it doesn’t require large or specialized equipment like a benchpress setup. A single weight is all that’s needed.
I like to see athletes perform this exercise unilaterally (pressing only on one side). This only requires a single weight instead of two which many people have at home. Also by pressing on one side at at time we reap the added benefits of some core tension work and anti-rotational strength building.
Some key takeaways from the floor press:
1) Your elbow should remain close to your sides when near the floor, flaring the elbow past 45˚ can be hard on the shoulder joint.
2) When lowering the weight your elbow should gently touch back down to the ground
3) This can be done with bent knees for extra stability but I like to see athletes press with straight legs on the floor. This requires us to create more tension in our torso which we should always be aiming for with just about every strength exercise.
But WHY do we need to train both Agonist and Antagonist groups? The reasons are many but there are two that stand out most for the purposes of this blog post. The first is muscle imbalance, which can lead to immobility and instability. The latter is often responsible for soft tissue damage, think strained and torn tendons and ligaments. Climbing at our limits requires us to be as mobile and flexible as possible, that can’t be achieved with overdeveloped pulling muscles and under developed pressing muscles.
The second reason is biomechanics. We have bio-mechanical “safety switches” that will turn off our ability to build and recruit new muscle tissue if we become too imbalanced. Imagine only ever stimulating your biceps for years and years while letting your triceps atrophy to nothing. We could literally rip the triceps off the bone if we pulled too hard, our bodies don’t allow this to happen so they simply stop adapting to stimulus at a certain point until the muscular counterpart can catch up.
Like many strength exercises I like to see three sets of five reps on each side. The weight should be heavy enough that you’re trying but not so heavy that you’re failing. The limited range of motion makes and sort of body “kipping” or “popping” difficult so start light and work up, increasing this by five pounds can often feel very challenging.