I tried the hip bounce, too, and was a hot mess! I noticed that I do it within a smaller range, already, but starting out like the video demonstrates (with hips far forward) did not go well. I'm going to experiment with just the bar this weekend and see if I can coordinate better...after practicing some air presses this week.

i tried it yesterday too. i'm completely uncoordinated at it - and weak. couldn't get a thread of a bounce onto even the 20lb bar and the bar path sure feels different. but with all that said, it was almost disconcerting how evenly the bar seemed to go up and keep right on moving, compared with my previous form. it's a lot more like lifting the bar with your whole body instead of just from your armpits up. and the lockout felt different too, somehow.

one note i made was that 'quads' was a little too imprecise for me. when i tried it, i kept that whole discussion with rippetoe in mind, where tommy's saying 'the very top of your quads' and poking rip in the seam of his boxers almost, and rip's going oh, hip extensors. if i don't keep that in mind i found i was letting the epicentre of my quad tension point move down my legs a little and centre more in the middle of my thighs. but really i think suggs is saying it's a much smaller area of tension than that and it should be much closer to your hipjoint.

i'm kind of torn but i have a feeling i won't be able to leave this idea alone, at least for a while.

MissHolidayGolightly wrote: »

Instead of deadening my lower body and using only the upper body, everything was a part of it.

exactly this, yes. i never could get rippetoe's version of it right, so all this time i've just been standing like a stock and pushing the bar into the air. i was using every muscle i've got, but most of them i was just using isometrically to keep myself straight. it's not uncommon for me to get a quad cramp while i'm standing around with the bar over my head, actually. so far ime with the suggs form, there's a lot more glute than legs going on.

(ima be boring and think out loud here) in my old style, i keep my hips stacked right over my feet and my shoulders right over my hips, except for a couple inches of deviation at the start to make sure that i don't take my nose off. with this one, it looks like your shoulders stay over your feet but your centre of gravity doesn't. it moves out in front of them, then back behind them a bit. and then it comes forward again until you're re-stacked by the time you lock out. i'm pretty reluctant to lose that stacking because of all those fragile little shoulder muscles, but when i was doing the suggs thing it didn't feel like i was out in front of myself. i think i ended up with the bar further back than you seem to, but maybe the camera angle's deceiving me.

did it feel okay on your back, to you? the main thing that worries me about this style is not trusting myself to to know the difference between what's right for this lift and lumbar overextension that would be well bad for me.

I posted above and didn't post the link to what I was reading! Here it is: http://startingstrength.com/articles/olympic_press_starr.pdf . The pictures at the end show something like what we see in the Tommy Suggs video above. But it's not what I think I see in the book (where there's just a slight lean back), or the wiki http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ:The_Lifts#The_Press (slight hip extension and no back lean) or the videos: http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/Press_Videos. So I was wondering if the Tommy Suggs video is showing a different lift, or a different technique. I can't seem to put the two demonstrations together.

I suppose that in competition, you'd want to lean back more so you could push extra weight? But that it's not needed in the Starting Strength programme, where you're just building strength (and have the bench press as part of it too)? Or is this an improved, updated technique that I should be using instead of the old one? (Or am I just reading the book wrong - ha ha!).