A US physical therapist has picked a fight with the barbell clean and press, and men over 40 are the ones getting singled out.
Sean T. Lordan, a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, and a physical therapist who’s built a career out of treating shoulders, told Men’s Journal that the lift sends more middle-aged men to his clinic than almost anything else in the gym.
“I’ve spent close to two decades treating shoulders, and the barbell clean and press is the lift that puts the most men over 40 on my table,” he told the site.
Serious claim, serious caseload behind it, from someone who knows his stuff. Notice it’s pitched at men over 40, even though the headline framing runs to 50 — a small clue about how fuzzy this territory gets once you start hanging injury risk off a birthday.
So: does turning 50 suddenly make the clean and press dangerous? No. What matters is whether your shoulders, thoracic spine, technique and training history let you do the movement properly, and that has very little to do with your age on paper.
The cold doesn’t stop when you get out.
Sharkskin technical waterwear is built for the hours between the water, the boat and the shore. Warmth, wind protection and less bulk when you need it.
Up to 50% off selected styles.
While stocks last.
The Case Against the Clean and Press
Lordan’s argument is worth taking seriously before we push back. First: range of motion. Years at a desk quietly stiffen the upper back, and plenty of men lose shoulder flexion and thoracic extension without noticing. A lifter who thinks they’re locking the bar out overhead is often really just arching through the lower back to fake the last twenty degrees.
Second: the bar itself. A barbell locks both arms into the same path, so a stiffer, weaker or previously injured shoulder gets quietly bailed out by the stronger side — a decent way to turn a minor imbalance into a real one over enough reps.
His fix is reasonable: a single-arm kettlebell clean and press, where each arm earns its own rep and a neutral grip lets the shoulder track naturally, or a half-kneeling landmine press, which asks far less of your overhead range. Both are solid for anyone whose shoulders don’t love a straight bar overhead. No argument there.
But Is Age Really the Problem?
Chronological age, on its own, tells you almost nothing about whether an exercise is safe for a given man. What matters is training history, old injuries, current pain, actual shoulder and thoracic mobility, rotator cuff strength, load, technique and how quickly that load has climbed.
A lifelong lifter at 58 can have cleaner shoulder mechanics than an untrained 32-year-old who hasn’t reached overhead for anything heavier than a suitcase in a decade. Look at Phil Earley, who didn’t start bodybuilding until 57 and is now winning titles most 30-year-olds couldn’t touch.
None of this is “age is just a number” shit. Tendons stiffen, joints wear, recovery slows — that’s real, and old-man strength is a genuinely measurable thing, not a myth older blokes tell themselves. But those changes happen gradually, at wildly different rates man to man. Nobody’s shoulders get a firmware update at midnight on their fiftieth birthday.
Clean and Press vs. Strict Press
Worth separating two things the original piece blurs together. The clean and press isn’t just an overhead press — it’s an explosive pull off the floor, a clean into the rack, then a press, stacking hip power, coordination, wrist and shoulder mobility, and overhead control into one movement.
If you just want bigger, stronger shoulders, there are exercises with a much lower technical bar. That doesn’t make the clean and press dangerous. It makes it unnecessary for a lot of recreational lifters — a far more useful conclusion than “avoid this after 50.”
Power Training After 50
One claim worth pushing back on: Lordan suggests men who say they want “power” mostly want muscle, and prescribes conventional sets of 10 to 12. Fine as far as it goes — but don’t read that as “stop training explosively past 50.”
The ability to produce force quickly is exactly what declines with age, and it’s what stands between you and recovering your balance before a stumble becomes a fall. Well-programmed power training stays genuinely useful deep into your 60s, and it’s been tied to living longer, not just lifting more. The real question isn’t whether men over 50 should train explosively — it’s whether the clean and press is the right tool for this particular man.
Before You Clean and Press, Check These Four Things
- Can you raise both arms overhead without your lower back arching to compensate?
- Can you hold an empty bar overhead comfortably, for a few seconds, without discomfort?
- Can you get into a stable front-rack position without wrist, elbow or shoulder pain?
- Can you press overhead without pain, or without one side obviously struggling more than the other?
If any answer is no, that’s your signal to scale the movement or pick a different one, not to grit your teeth and push through it.
When to Change the Exercise
- Shoulder strength: a dumbbell overhead press, lower technical bar.
- Unilateral stability: a single-arm kettlebell press, per Lordan’s own suggestion.
- Limited overhead mobility: a landmine press, far less demand on your shoulders.
- Power: medicine-ball throws, kettlebell swings, or a properly coached Olympic-lift variation.
- Straightforward muscle: machine or dumbbell presses, easier to load and progress cleanly. And if shoulder pain is the real issue regardless of the lift, it’s worth knowing which exercises tend to make it worse.
The Takeaway
The clean and press doesn’t become forbidden the day you turn 50. But it also isn’t something to keep doing purely on the strength of what you could manage at 25.
The useful question was never “am I too old for this.” It’s “can I still do this movement well, pain-free, for an actual reason.” If yes, there’s no reason to stop. If no, swapping it out isn’t surrendering to age, it’s just training like someone who’s paying attention.
