We will now practice radical empathy for the overhead press

I figured it would be easy to paddle to the surf break my friend recommended because I could see it from the shore. This was my first mistake. After about 20 paddles, 10 paddles per arm, on my surfboard, my delts began to cry out in pain. I stopped and lay flat on the board, tiny waves slapping me in the face. I tried to cobra-post up to see how far away the surf break was: about the same as when I started.

This pattern repeated, I estimate, between 70 and 100 more times, before I reached the place where good waves form about 25 minutes later, arms exhausted, gasping for breath. Finally, it was time to stop paddling, and time to start paddling even harder for waves. And this was to say nothing of the time that lay in the future when I got tired of paddling even harder for waves and decided it was time to return to shore, upon which I would resume normal paddling, for another 25 minutes.

I want to note in defense of my body that most of my muscles weren’t tired by this process. My lats, which I would normally consider the “reach and pull” paddling-type muscles, felt nothing. It was the overhead part of the paddle that immediately, rudely limited me.

Like virtually everyone, I hate overhead work[^1]. When you start to strength-train, overhead press is the lift you will inevitably start to struggle with first, and I was no different. Little recommends the overhead press: It feels extremely show-offy in form, but humbles everyone in function; you don’t and shouldn’t “max out” with it; the correct form is surprisingly subtle, almost inscrutable, and I've never seen a person do it even close to right in all my life; and learning that you are actually doing it wrong after several months, as almost everyone does, will probably mean you have to start over.

It’s for these reasons that I’m compelled to mount a defense of the humble overhead press, if for no other reason than I want to renegotiate my relationship with it, myself. So much of what makes exercise annoying is pointlessness, at least for me. If I can imbue it with a purpose, I won’t hate it so much.