Sunday, August 26, 2012

Using straps on the front squat to fix your form




Using straps to hold on to the bar for front squats is recommended for people who lack the flexibility for a rack position, or for people who have elbow problems. However, there is another use for straps – perfecting your front squat form. The front squat is superior to the back squat because of one reason – it is very hard to cheat. With the back squat a person can lean excessively forward and use the lower back to get the weight up. If you try that with a front squat, you will dump the bar in front of you. However, most people figure out that if they hold on to the bar with their hands, they can lean forward just that tiny bit and overuse the lower back. This is where the straps come into play. By using straps to hold on to the bar, you have no way to ‘hold’ the bar in place, and any leaning forward will cause the bar to fall forward, thus ensuring perfect form with the chest up and the lower back arched. Try it and perfect your front squat form.

Watch Rob Adell of Average Broz Gymnasium perform a 227.5kg / 501lb front squat using straps


Sunday, August 19, 2012

Tension and the Deadlift


The deadlift is a unique lift compared to every single other lift in the weight room. It’s unique in that you lift the weight off the ground from a dead stop, without any eccentric component. There’s no way to get a “feel” of the weight you are lifting before you actually lift it, and this is why the deadlift is so ridiculously hard and is not very often performed in the weight room.

Tension is the key to deadlifting big weights. Pavel has written a great amount about the importance of tension in his book “Power to the People”. He also mentions that when deadlifting legend Lamar Gant used to get down to the bar, he would go down so slowly it looked like he was squatting a maximal weight. This is accumulating tension - a big reason why Gant was such an accomplished deadlifter.

So how do we use tension? Perhaps you have heard the anecdote about the two suitcases. If I tell you one suitcase weighs 200lbs, but in reality it only weighs 10lbs, the suitcase would fly when you tried to lift it. Conversely, if I told you a suitcase weighed 10lbs but in reality weighed 200lbs, you would probably hurt yourself when trying to lift it because you would not be tensing the body and protecting the spine. My take on this is a bit different. Imagine that I gave you a suitcase to lift, but all I told you was that it’s extremely heavy, probably the heaviest thing you’ve ever lifted. You do not know the exact weight. How would you lift it? Would you take a chance that the suitcase is light and yank it off the floor? Or would you accumulate as much tension as you can before gingerly squeezing it off the floor? Obviously, the latter. Once you’ve got an idea of what the weight is, you would accelerate the suitcase to a standing position. Go ahead, pretend you're lifting something up off the floor and it's the heaviest thing in the world. Really focus on how much you tense your body before the act of lifting the imaginary object. That's the amount of tension you need to accumulate before the lift. The more tension you can accumulate, the more force your body will produce.



This is the key to building that big deadlift. Too many people yank the bar off the floor in the hopes that if they create acceleration at the bottom, it will carry over to the top. Think about throwing a medicine ball straight up from a full squatting position. You would gradually accelerate from the bottom to the top and peak at the jumping position to throw the ball up. You wouldn’t put as much acceleration as you could into the bottom position. This applies to deadlifting as well. You squeeze the bar off the floor, and then gradually accelerate to a strong lockout.

Try the suitcase analogy the next time you deadlift heavy. Pretend you don't know what the weight is, but that it's just really heavy. Another way around this is to pretend the bar is 200lbs heavier than it actually is. If it's a 400lb deadlift PR you're going for, fool yourself into think it's 600lbs. You'd be surprised at how easily the weights come off the ground

Monday, August 13, 2012

Counter intuitive lifting tricks and cues - Correcting the 'falling forward' on the deadlift

The Problem:

We've all seen it. A person sets up for a deadlift in the right position, everything looks good and BAM at the point of lifting the hips rise forward and upwards and the lower back and quads are used primarily to lift the weight up.  Being used to a world in which we predominantly sit, the hips have become dumb, and the ability to shift our weight posteriorly (get the hips behind the heel) has diminished. Now this may be the case of a posterior pelvic tilt (tight hamstrings, weak lower back), but if a person can get into a perfect starting position, it's more likely just a case of bad habits. In the video below, it's not an extreme case of hips coming forward, but this person would be lifting a lot more if he fixed his hips.




Why This Happens:

Assuming the weight is not something that's too heavy for the person, this mostly happens because we live in a quadriceps friendly world. We like to shoot our weight forward, and this is why you see so much more back and knee pain in today's world. With the deadlift, we do not know how to load our hamstrings and glutes, and the body lets itself pitch forward to put more stress on the quads. In the bottom of the deadlift, the pelvis is as anteriorly tilted as it can get which means that the hamstrings are the prime movers. If you lose this position and take the stretch out of the hamstrings, you will bring in the wrong muscles. It's usually the case with beginners and people with extremely strong backs. Or just people who have been improperly training and have been feeding their dysfunctions.

The Counter Intuitive Solution:

1) Firstly make sure the bar is only an inch or two away from you. No amount of cues and fixes will fix your deadlift is your starting position isn't perfect.
2) Lift the bar very slowly from the ground to the kneecap. It should take you at least three seconds to get to kneecap height.
3) From kneecap up, lift normally.


Why This Works:

1) The problem is magnified when going slow. A person can use momentum to drive a light weight through bad form, but when going slow the weight will keep a person honest. The person will be forced to pull back and load the posterior chain, because the falling forward will be made that much more obvious.
2) The going slow will force the abs and lower back to contract harder. Most people forget how to contract their torso to stabilize the spine. Going slow forces this change to happen, which makes for a better lift.
3) The person can't jerk the weight around when going slow. Jerking the weight, usually off the floor, results in losing the tight lower back arch. Tension is key to lifting big weights, and this solution helps solidify that key point.

When And How To Use IT:

Firstly, this should not be done with heavy weights. Think of this fix as practice. You want to practice consistently and perfectly. If this is a chronic problem, you want to practice this every day or every alternate day. Maybe even between sets of your bench, you can practice a set of slow deadlifts. If this isn't a chronic problem for you, but you still would like to practice perfect form, I would suggest once a week or so as a warm-up. It works great as a warm-up, but make sure you also get used to pulling fast and perfectly when it comes to heavy weights. Be aware that this will also cause some very sore hamstrings the first few times.

Note:  I do not advocate pulling slowly all the time. This is only for people who need technique work and who pitch forward. Practice safe lifting