Z Press: How to Do It, Muscles Worked and Benefits

Take the backrest away from a seated press and your back starts to lean. Take your legs out of the equation as well and you're left with the Z press: sitting flat on the floor, legs out straight, pressing a weight overhead with nothing to help you except your own trunk. The strongman Zydrunas Savickas made it famous, and it's the most honest shoulder press you can do.

Most lifters are surprised by how little they can lift the first time. That's the point. The Z press finds out whether your core and upper back can actually support what your shoulders are pressing.

How to do a Z press

A pair of dumbbells or kettlebells is the easiest place to start. You'll need enough floor space to sit with your legs straight.

1. Sit tall. Sit on the floor with your legs straight in front of you, feet about hip-width apart. Pull your chest up so your ribs stack over your pelvis. If your lower back rounds, bend your knees a little or sit on a folded mat.
2. Get the weights to your shoulders. Hold a dumbbell at each shoulder with your palms facing forward or slightly in, elbows a touch in front of the weights. With a barbell, set the safety pins of a rack at shoulder height while seated and unrack from there. Any of the squat racks we recommend with a low setting will do this, though squat stands without pins make it awkward.
3. Brace. Take a breath into your belly and tighten your abs and glutes as though you're about to get prodded in the stomach. Push your legs lightly into the floor.
4. Press. Drive the weights straight up, finishing with your arms locked out and the weights over the back of your head, biceps near your ears. Your torso shouldn't move.
5. Lower under control. Bring the weights back to your shoulders over about two seconds, keep the brace, and go again.

Muscles worked

• Deltoids. Your front delts drive the press and your side delts help as the weight passes the top of your head. This is the main target.
• Triceps. They straighten your elbows through the top half of every rep, and lockout is where most people fail.
• Upper chest and upper traps. The upper pecs assist off the shoulder, and the traps rotate your shoulder blades upward so the arm can get fully overhead.
• Abs, obliques and spinal erectors. These keep you upright with no backrest. They're the reason the Z press feels harder than its weight suggests.
• Hip flexors and hamstrings. Sitting with straight legs asks your hip flexors to hold your torso forward, while tight hamstrings will try to pull your pelvis into a tuck.

The research on stability backs up why the lift feels so demanding. When Norwegian researchers compared seated and standing shoulder presses with barbells and dumbbells, the least stable version (standing with dumbbells) produced the highest deltoid activity but the lowest one-rep max (Saeterbakken and Fimland, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2013). They didn't test the Z press itself, but it applies the same principle: less support, lighter weight, more work for the muscles that keep the load steady.

Benefits

It builds strict shoulder strength. With no leg drive to borrow from, every inch of the press comes from your shoulders and triceps. That's why it shows up as an accessory in so many strongman and weightlifting programmes: it strengthens the part of the overhead press where lifters stall.

It exposes and fixes a weak trunk. On a standing press you can hide a soft brace by leaning back and using your legs. On the floor you can't. A few weeks of Z pressing makes a good brace automatic, and that carries over to every standing lift.

It improves overhead position. To get the weight over your head while sitting upright, your shoulders and upper back have to move well. Stiff lifters find out quickly where the restriction is, and pressing through the range under control helps loosen it.

It needs very little kit. A pair of adjustable dumbbells or two kettlebells and a patch of floor is enough, so it fits a small home gym easily. The NHS recommends strength work for all the major muscle groups on at least two days a week, and the Z press covers the shoulders and arms for one of them.

Common mistakes

Leaning back. The most common fault by a distance. If you lean, the chest does more work and your lower back arches under load. Drop the weight until you can press with your torso vertical.

Rounding over at the start. Tight hamstrings pull the pelvis backwards and your lower back rounds before you've even pressed. Sit on a mat or plate, or bend your knees, until you can sit tall.

Pressing forward instead of up. The weights should finish over the back of your head, not out in front of your face. Pressing forward makes the lockout far harder and loads the front of the shoulder.

Going too heavy too soon. Take whatever you use for a seated dumbbell press and knock off a good chunk. People who load it like their normal press either fail at the forehead or lean back to get the rep.

Losing the brace between reps. Resetting your breath at the top is fine. Letting your abs relax at the bottom, where you're about to press, isn't.

Variations

• Dumbbell Z press. The best starting point. Each arm moves on its own path, which suits most shoulders, and bailing out is easy.
• Kettlebell Z press. Holding the bells in the rack position, handles in your palms, bells resting on your forearms, makes the lift a bit more awkward to balance. One EMG study found slightly lower front delt activity with a kettlebell than a dumbbell on the overhead press, probably because the load sits behind the hand (International Journal of Exercise Science, 2018). Use them if that's what you have.
• Single-arm Z press. Press one weight at a time and your obliques have to stop you tipping to the side. Brilliant for core strength, and it shows up side-to-side differences quickly.
• Barbell Z press. Lets you load it heaviest. Set a power cage or squat rack's safety pins at seated shoulder height so you can unrack and rack from the floor.
• Landmine Z press. Press the end of a barbell anchored in a corner from a seated position. The arcing path is kinder to cranky shoulders; see our landmine press guide for the setup.

Sets, reps and where it fits

Treat the Z press as an accessory, not your main lift. After your main pressing, do 3 or 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps with about 90 seconds of rest, once or twice a week. If you don't do a standing press at all, it can take the main slot on an upper-body day, working in the 5 to 8 rep range.

Pair it with a pulling movement such as a chest-supported row or face pulls to balance the shoulders. When you can do every set with a vertical torso and the top rep still moves cleanly, add a couple of kilos.

Recommended reads

• Overhead press: how to do it properly
• Push press guide
• Dumbbell shoulder press
• The best adjustable dumbbells in the UK
• Shoulder exercises for strength and size