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Welcome to The BarBend Newsletter! Here’s what’s on tap for this edition:

• All the different ways to shoulder press

• Incline or flat bench: which produces bigger pec gainz?

• Follow our 2025 World’s Strongest Man coverage

Training

Press On

Until uprights were bolted to a flat bench, the ultimate test of upper-body strength in the 20th century was the strict overhead press. Sometimes called the shoulder press, the even more oddly named military press, or, when done in a wrestling ring with another human rather than a barbell, the exceptionally confusing gorilla press, the move hasn’t lost any of its strength- and muscle-building properties over the decades..

Whatever your goals, level of strength, or access to equipment, there are a multitude of overhead pressing methods you can use to get bigger and stronger. These 10 versions of the OHP are a great place to start learning to put some weight overhead.

A favorite of strongman competitors since Žydrūnas Savickas began dominating pressing events 25 years ago, the Z-press is as much a core and ab stabilization exercise as an anterior deltoid enlargement method. Conversely, bodybuilders have been using the partial-range dumbbell shoulder press for even longer than that to keep the time-under-tension on the delts and create the biggest burn possible. 

Don’t be afraid to experiment with all of these different lifts and find out which of them works the best for you and your shoulder development aspirations.

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Exercise Selection

Incline or Flat Bench?

It’s not at all uncommon to hear someone in the strength field speaking out of one side of their mouth about how they would prefer it if all their athletes would incline press instead of flat bench, then out of the other side of their mouth, so to speak, they plop down on a flat bench.

While both lifts have their advantages and situational uses, what BarBend wants to know today is this: Which one of these titans of the weight room is better at building massive pecs?

Everyone who has ever lifted a weight has the same mental image of the iconic picture of Arnold, with his heaving bosom fully showcased, incline benching on the beach. That photograph alone may have done the lion’s share of building the legend of the incline press as a pec builder, but does science necessarily agree? 

Pec activation is pretty similar between the two movements, but it may come down to something as simple as figuring out if it just works better for you as an individual. Learn all about the differences, similarities, and practical uses of both the flat bench and incline bench by clicking below.

Strongman

Follow Our 2025 World’s Strongest Man Coverage

The 2025 World's Strongest Man is underway in Sacramento, CA, at the California State Railroad Museum. Twenty-five of the world's strongest will compete in five groups through the two-day qualifying stage, hoping to advance to the two-day final, where a champion will be crowned.

Three-time reigning WSM champion Tom Stoltman and 2023 WSM champion Mitchell Hooper are the two favorites entering the competition as the only previous WSM winners in the field. However, the roster is stacked, and the events will test them all.

We are on the ground in Sacramento, covering the competition live, and you can keep up with the action below!

Quick Hits

🚣 Invert This: A favorite of anyone with a minimalist training setup, the inverted row sometimes gets passed over for its bodyweight cousin, the pull-up, or its weighted uncle, the barbell row. Don’t forget about the uses of the seemingly simple, but endlessly variable, inverted row.

💪 Champion This: Ruairi O’Hagan recently joined the table of the high kings of Irish strongman with the likes of Glenn Ross (who can forget “The Daddy?”). O’Hagan came out on top at Ireland’s Strongest Man on May 5, a contest that included some rarely seen classics like bar bending.

🏃 Chase This Dream: The admittedly introverted Siria Meha may have difficulties seeing her name plastered everywhere, but by leaping to the lead in the CrossFit semifinals, everyone might be seeing a whole lot more of her in years to come.

🧭 Go North: The Norwegian Method for training has caused a revolutionary change in endurance circles and has already started producing amazing results at the very top level of sport. See if you can spot the surprisingly numerous similarities to strength training and apply them over a broader spectrum of your workouts.

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