Seated Military Press

Muscles worked

The prime movers are the deltoids, which raise and rotate the upper arm at the shoulder joint.

Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the triceps straighten the elbow to finish the movement.

Every exercise for:ShouldersTriceps

How this movement works

The working muscles shorten as they drive the load away from you, and more than one joint changes angle to do it. Load spreads down a chain instead of sitting on one muscle, which is why a compound push handles more weight than any single-joint alternative — and why joint position, not the muscle, is usually what fails first.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

A barbell locks both hands to one bar, so neither side can drift and the load climbs in plate-sized steps. That makes it the simplest way to add weight and the least forgiving thing to bail out of.

A bench fixes the torso angle and gives you something to drive against, which is what lets the load go up without your position wandering.

Every exercise using:BarbellBench

These train the shoulders too, using equipment this one does not:

• Seated Rear Lateral Cable Raisecable
• Seated Side Lateral Raisedumbbell
• Shoulder Press - With Bandsband
• Smith Machine One-Arm Upright Rowmachine
• Smith Machine Rear Deltoid Rowsmith machine

Difficulty

Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.

Of the 141 shoulders exercises in this database, 46 are listed at intermediate level.