The Side Press

c. 1900 onwards · One-arm overhead

The side press is a one-arm overhead lift with a controlled lateral lean: less leverage than the bent press, more pressing strength. It was a secondary lift in the music-hall era and survives as a recognised event in some kettlebell and Highland Games traditions.

Description

The lifter takes the bell to one shoulder. From a vertical standing position, the lifter leans laterally toward the unloaded side, while pressing the bell up with the loaded arm. Where the bent press uses extreme lateral bend to fall under the bell, the side press limits the bend — typically to no more than thirty or forty degrees off vertical — and requires the loaded arm to actually press the bell to lockout rather than simply tracking the vertical as the body falls.

The side press is therefore closer to a true overhead press than the bent press is. A side presser can put up about 15–25% more than a strict military press, but considerably less than a bent press, of the same lift.

Rules in competition

The side press was contested in continental amateur and British amateur events through the 1900s and 1910s, often as one of three or four "one-arm" lifts in a multi-event programme. Rules permitted lateral lean but prohibited the extreme side-bend of the bent press. After the 1920s the lift remained occasionally in informal British and American contests but was not in the IWF programme.

Record progression

Documented figures vary widely with how strictly judges enforced the lean limit:

• Arthur Saxon, side press in the region of 200 lb (91 kg) under strict rules.
• Thomas Inch, side press of approximately 200 lb (91 kg).
• Hermann Goerner, side press at approximately 220 lb (100 kg).

Modern kettlebell side press figures, in the strict form, run substantially lower than the bent press because the leverage is genuinely worse.

Disputed and unresolved

The line between side press and bent press is judged differently by different schools, and many lifts reported as "side presses" in the 1900s would now be ruled bent presses. Conversely, some "bent press" figures from older British sources may have been performed under side-press rules. Without film, the distinction is partly textual.