Resting heavy on your shoulders

The rack position has the barbell resting on the meat of the front deltoids, elbows up and slightly in front of the bar. It allows proper execution of the front squat, press, push press, and jerk.

When learning the rack position, people often default to trying to control the bar with just their arms, avoiding contact with the shoulders (as in the photo on the left). Notice that most of the load is on the wrists. Ouch. Progress and performance will quickly stall for those who use the arms to rack the barbell. This must be corrected. We do this by loosening the grip (opening the fingers) a bit to allow the bar to drop back onto the shoulders, working with an empty barbell to get the feel for the placement, and adjusting the grip width to find the best position current flexibility limitations will allow (photo on the right).