It's only injurious if you can't do it. If you can lift 50 lbs up above your head a few times in a row, there's nothing wrong with doing that.

Most males can probably do that with a tiny bit of practice.

Holding a heavy weight overhead is an inherently unstable position. Even if you can lift it overhead (using momentum), doesn’t mean you can hold it overhead. Even if you can do a few overhead presses, you need to be very careful not to do it to failure, as you need enough strength to safely bring it back to the ground.

If you lose balance and the weight swings back, your shoulder is fucked, especially at that weight.

The overhead press is usually done off of hooks or pins, you don't have to start or end on the ground. The front rack position is very stable, I've never felt it to be the least bit sketchy lowering the bar even after a failed lift, either strict or with leg drive.

If you do start off the ground, it's going to be a weight you can clean up into a front rack position; if you can clean the weight you can certainly lower it back down.

Ah, right, I always did overhead dumbbell press so I first thought of that. Yeah 50lbs barbell press is trivial, and using pins or even Smith machine it’s completely safe.

Mmm, yeah I don't like going too heavy on dumbbell presses, but heavy is really relative to your max, and sets of 10 is about where they start feeling good to me.

Yes, but essentially no-one tries to do a high weight overhead press without training. If anything, most people are less likely to even touch a barbell because it looks like "serious work".

For most adult men lifting the bar (44lbs, so almost 50) above their head after studying the form is not "injurious".

> Even if you can lift it overhead (using momentum

You don't do shoulder presses using momentum (unless you're doing something specialised, in which case you know what you're doing).

> as you need enough strength to safely bring it back to the ground

You don't, you can do them in properly configured squat rack and just drop them.

I occasionally use 50-lb dumbbells for one-hand overhead presses. It takes some mindfulness of form, but otherwise is perfectly safe for me. I like it for when I don't have a lot of time, since I can only do a few reps with each arm.

Part of lifting weights is raw strength, another is proper form. If I can't perform a lift 'the right way', I take off weight until I can. It took a fair bit of practice to