It galls me that #machavok actually beat me to this one; I had experimented last season with a number of exercise variations that would help work on pressing up and above tools, but never came up with something perfect. Last year at worlds quickly proved that this was one of those movements that was critical in being able to make the massive moves between holds that was so normal during the circuit.  A lock off here in Canada was this nice thing that happened at shoulder level; the Russians lock off at their waists.  This requires some mad tricep strength and tendon splitting levels of tension. My attempts at using multiple heights of rings just didn’t seem to be able to mimic the same press, and while I had joked around with kickbacks I couldn’t bring myself to do those in public that often.

The solution: grab a band, or a handle on a cable machine: pull down to your standard lock off, then press down.

This is actually that easy.  If we had a cable machine then you could slowly increase the load on this one… but different densities of band can do the trick and are a cheaper home solution than a $3000 cable rack.

My suggestion would be to work at both pressing straight down and at pressing down and across the body (ie pulling from above the left shoulder and pressing down past the left hip) as this is a movement that is certainly one that comes in handy given it is rare that our holds are in perfect alignment.

*reps are to be done per arm. A suitable rest time between sets would be about 1-2min and I would suggest only resting between full super sets (after having done both a and b).

Give it a try. This exercise will do phenomenal things not only too your mixed climbing but also to your skills on rock as well.