Your conventional stance is still pretty wide. Have you tried bringing your stance and grip in?
[quote]dzirkelb wrote:
Awesome videos, great info. Really drives home the lats, which I know for certain I do not do.[/quote]
If you have trouble engaging your lats, one suggestion would be to do mat pulls where you focus on keeping everything tight. Then increase the ROM over time until you can stay tight pulling from the floor.
[quote]twojarslave wrote:
I’m almost as big as you and I pull fine conventional, which is what I can give you some tips on. Sumo is not my realm of expertise, so this strictly applies to your conventional pulls.
First, try bringing your feet in closer. I believe it was Wendler who said that you should start to jump off of two feet, note where your feet are and then bring them in slightly. This, combined with a light outward pointing of the toes seems to give me a good position to pull from.
Next you should try bringing your arms in closer as well. The wider your grip, the farther the bar must travel to lockout. My ares are nearly vertical at lockout, which also yields the shortest distance for the bar to travel.
Keeping with that notion, ditching the shoes and deadlifting in socks or barefoot will also reduce the distance the bar must travel to lockout. Every little bit helps. Disregard if those are wrestling shoes in the vid, tough for me to tell.
Here is what a man roughly your size looks like applying those concepts. This is me pulling 565 last year @ 295 lbs or so.
Make sure you are getting your hips into the lockout (which I did not do a good job of on that particular pull). Get the slack out of the bar before you explode up. I can’t really tell from the angle, but your hips may be a bit low to start.
I have had success with not over-thinking my deadlifts. I focus on my set-up and let my body take over from there in an explosion of effort. Lift with violence, big man!
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Pretty good weight there. Impressive.
[quote]Alrightmiami19c wrote:
Your conventional stance is still pretty wide. Have you tried bringing your stance and grip in? [/quote]
Yup, i’ll bring in my stance during this session. I definitely feel weaker with a narrower stance, feels like I don’t engage my hips or my lats as much, but I’m sure that is all form.
Try throwing some hamstring/glute work into either your deadlift or squat day. As you are saying that you’re failing at the bottom, it sounds like an issue might be the initial drive from the floor (I had this problem as a conventional puller). GHR’s and heavy hamstring curls (single leg or laying) have worked wonders for me to increase that drive from the floor, which was my sticking point. Never hurts to throw in a couple sets a week and go from there!
Hope this helps.
Here are a couple sessions, a week apart from one another.
As you’ll see, I do 465 for a triple fairly easily, yet, I can’t move 475 the next week.
What I noticed on my fails is the bar floating out again, but I think the reason why is I start with the bar up against my chins. When I bend over to get the bar, it pushes it out, then when I start the pull, the first 12" off the ground the bar is going out, then I am trying to pull it back, which is the opposite way the bar should be going. This makes sense as my sticking point, the moment the bar stops going away from me and starts going to me. This seems to happen when I go fast off the ground / pull instead of methodically setting up. Thoughts?
It looks like the bar was too far forward as you said. You just need to be more consistent with your setup because you made 465 look easy. Your shoulders should not move forward relative to its initial starting point and your hips should not move back relative to its initial starting point.
I think the only change you need to make is to be consistent with your ramp up. The previous week you worked up with 325, 365, 415 and then 465. This week you only used 335 and jumped straight up to 475 so you didn’t get a chance to warm up properly and reinforce good motor patterns. It would’ve been better to make smaller jumps like 335, 385, 435, 475. That way you could make small adjustments in setup if anything feels off.
“This seems to happen when I go fast off the ground / pull instead of methodically setting up.”
Methodically set up then.
Superhuman acceleration of the bar off of the floor can be proceeded by a methodical set up. You don’t have to compromise the integrity of your pre-pull pose because you have in your head that this is somehow a different kind of pull. I think you are taking some psych into the part of the lift which does not need psych, that is, your set-up.
Relax, you know what to do.
An aside (maybe.) Knew a guy at the last gym who read the “get all tight before you pull” thing in PL USA. In order to do that, he got all psyched and flexed everything to include the muscles he was not going to use. Got all wrapped up in a tense little ball. He would end up pulling against the bar and himself. Didn’t help. Learned to relax into his set-up, got set, pulled smooth but accelerated hard throughout the lift. All became good.
[quote]lift206 wrote:
It looks like the bar was too far forward as you said. You just need to be more consistent with your setup because you made 465 look easy. Your shoulders should not move forward relative to its initial starting point and your hips should not move back relative to its initial starting point.
I think the only change you need to make is to be consistent with your ramp up. The previous week you worked up with 325, 365, 415 and then 465. This week you only used 335 and jumped straight up to 475 so you didn’t get a chance to warm up properly and reinforce good motor patterns. It would’ve been better to make smaller jumps like 335, 385, 435, 475. That way you could make small adjustments in setup if anything feels off.[/quote]
That was my bad, I did 335, 385, 425, then 475. As a matter of fact, I failed on 425 the first pull also, reset, then pulled it.
Consistency is where I need to be at right now that’s for sure, but the problem is finding what I need to be consistent about.
[quote]emskee wrote:
“This seems to happen when I go fast off the ground / pull instead of methodically setting up.”
Methodically set up then.
Superhuman acceleration of the bar off of the floor can be proceeded by a methodical set up. You don’t have to compromise the integrity of your pre-pull pose because you have in your head that this is somehow a different kind of pull. I think you are taking some psych into the part of the lift which does not need psych, that is, your set-up.
Relax, you know what to do.
An aside (maybe.) Knew a guy at the last gym who read the “get all tight before you pull” thing in PL USA. In order to do that, he got all psyched and flexed everything to include the muscles he was not going to use. Got all wrapped up in a tense little ball. He would end up pulling against the bar and himself. Didn’t help. Learned to relax into his set-up, got set, pulled smooth but accelerated hard throughout the lift. All became good.[/quote]
I definitely agree, I go fast as a mental “jacked up” feeling. When I go slow, I think, thinking = bad.
I feel the same way about the getting tense / flexed, feels like I’m doing all these things and none of them work / make it worse instead of just getting comfortable with my pull.
[quote]dzirkelb wrote:
I feel the same way about the getting tense / flexed, feels like I’m doing all these things and none of them work / make it worse instead of just getting comfortable with my pull.[/quote]
Yeah. You look like you know what you are doing so own that. Just chill and do your thing. I pull on every lift like it is 600+. That way I only need to know one thing (me being a One Trick Pony and all that.) So when I pull a warm up, I do the same things I will do when I get to my work sets.
I appreciate everyone’s help on this, but I essentially went back to the “grip it and rip it” technique. I stand wider, my arms are wider, bar is at my toes, I bend over, and I pick it up, that’s it.
For my body / strengths, it appears I need to just do what’s comfortable, as it is with everyone to an extent.
For me, my deadlift is most comfortable as conventional, legs 1/2 between sumo and conventional, and arms outside, basically grabbing the rings. I bend over, and I pick it up, it’s smooth, and I can pull more.
Your hips are too far away from the bar. Sumo helps your back stay more upright and has a shorter ROM. When your knees are not out your hips are too far behind the bar. When your hips are not close to the bar you have to bend down more to get to the bar. When you have to lean over to get to the bar you are mostly using your back and not your legs.
Grip and rip with the stance you talked about could be really hard on your low back. I think if you could get your hips wider you could get a lot more leg drive off the floor. Also most sumo lifters lock their legs out and then extend their back to lockout. You are doing both at the same time. DZ watch this video you will like it.
It’s definitely that you are not getting the advantage you get from lifting sumo in that you shorten the distance between your hips and the bar (giving your lower back an easier time of the lift). Sumo with your hips a long way from the bar is really poor position to pull from, it’s the worst of both worlds.
I think mobility would help you a lot here. Dave Tate’s cue is get your balls over the bar, see if that helps.
[quote]nick8000 wrote:
Your hips are too far away from the bar. Sumo helps your back stay more upright and has a shorter ROM. When your knees are not out your hips are too far behind the bar. When your hips are not close to the bar you have to bend down more to get to the bar. When you have to lean over to get to the bar you are mostly using your back and not your legs.
Grip and rip with the stance you talked about could be really hard on your low back. I think if you could get your hips wider you could get a lot more leg drive off the floor. Also most sumo lifters lock their legs out and then extend their back to lockout. You are doing both at the same time. DZ watch this video you will like it.
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That’s why my grip and rip approach is better. My legs are wider, but not as wide as sumo. I don’t have to bend over as much to get the bar, and I lock out my legs, then my back, just like in sumo. It isn’t a strain on my lower back at all, at least I don’t feel it. I feel the strain when I pull with my legs closer together.
[quote]tsantos wrote:
It’s definitely that you are not getting the advantage you get from lifting sumo in that you shorten the distance between your hips and the bar (giving your lower back an easier time of the lift). Sumo with your hips a long way from the bar is really poor position to pull from, it’s the worst of both worlds.
I think mobility would help you a lot here. Dave Tate’s cue is get your balls over the bar, see if that helps.[/quote]
I’ve watched that and that is how I got to where I am on the sumo. Balls on the bar is what I try to do everytime.
Recently, however, I’ve had terrible tightness in my hips, so I know that is a contributing factor in getting into position. They loosen up around 405 lbs on squat, but before that, man, pain like no other.