Sounds like a mental block to me then. If you’re squatting 425lb and sumo deadlifting 475 then I cannot imagine some muscle weakness holding you back. Heck, one could argue that your sumo deadlift is low relative to your back squat.
I dabble in Oly lifting (only the clean; fuck the snatch). and I know that the deadlift and the clean are completely different movements. It took me a long fucking time to really figure this out with my body though.
What do you do differently in setting up the deadlift vs the clean?
One thing I’d recommend is that you try deadlifting light weight intentionally with a rounded upper back, or at least not concerning yourself with your back at all. A rounded upper back is safe; your thoracic spine can do all sorts of wonderful things.
Try this and then adjust as needed to your body-
Place the bar just slightly away from your shins. Hinge straight down and grab the bar. Start pulling the bar towards you as your drop your hips some more. Ideally this is simultaneous and you don’t really move much at all, but I think this is highly personal to what you like. The goal here is to get the bar as close as possible to your center of gravity while pulling your lower back into a good position. Don’t worry about what your upper back is doing besides squeezing your armpits together. As soon as the bar touches your shin just push the floor away and straighten up.
From what I understand, the mere act of getting the bar to your shin should change the way the pull occurs, and the upper back tightness you’re getting from squeezing the armpits should also be different from what you want from the clean.
The goal is to focus on four things- scrape your shins with the bar/push the floor away/back tightness by squeezing the armpits together/crush the bar. Grind the bar off the floor. You just need to find the correct initial distance between the bar and your shin to make all this happen smoothly and painlessly.
PS- if you really want your upper back to round then don’t squeeze the armpits together. Your lower back should be safe as long as you’re actually scraping the bar against your shins + you got a good back positioning from all your set-up and your hip positioning doesn’t shift during the actual pull.
Haha heck YES! If you do a few more rounds of that, with the way you’ve reported your physique changing, I’ll bet your delts become rounder and more defined.
Something you could definitely try would be ingraining this video into your head. It helped me a ton.
Another thing you could also look into is wearing your belt higher up on your stomach. Personally, when I deadlift, I’ll wear the belt around my upper abs so I can get into a better starting position and incorporate more leg drive at the beginning of the pull. Good luck. Run 5/3/1 again if you have to.
This internet virus is spreading around. How can we get infected through the screen.
On another note it seems like you like what the program gives you, at least in terms of trashed’ness … is that a word. I recall the first week were you almost ditched it.
Do they suck because they are stupid? Or do they suck because they are difficult? Your school has those old -school, shallow 1960s power racks with 2 sets of pins, especially for Iso stuff. Every time you post a video, I day dream about using them.
They suck because they are difficult. You just lay there and push. Weight doesn’t move. You can feel out where the push is generating from and try to isolate the push or should I say localize the push.
If we had a real chest machine it would be awesome, but the military chest press/ shoulder press we do have that I used… I could feel my chest activation in a much different way after the isometric holds.
Trashedness is no word in the dictionary but it is in my linguistic tool box.
Yeah, about the program. It’s good. It’s what I needed. It’s like eating veggies as a kid. You don’t really like it, but you know it’s good for you so you do it anyway
I think that’s the virus for the year so far. If it’s like mine then you won’t actually feel too bad. Mine started as a weak cough but I’d cough up some junk that let me know I was sick. I’ve been taking over the counter stuff and felt pretty normal. The bad part was bed time. I’d lay down and the coughing would start so I added nyquil to my bedtime routine.
I think if I was a runner then it would’ve felt worse but my weightlifting sessions didn’t suffer. Hopefully it’s the same for you. I don’t wish you to be sick but this isn’t the worst illness I’ve had.
Mind getting a video of your JM press next time you do them? Ive heard how benificial they can be for tricep strength and your bench. But everytime Ive tried to do them they have desroyed my elbows to the point where I have to take 2-4 days off any upperbody movement cause of pain. I just want to see if you do them differently
Appreciate it, Skullcrushers and JM Presses are the only thing for me that causes my elbows to flair up. I usually do 3 sets of 20 on the cable extensions to warm up my elbows for pressing work.
So my monthly fee has run out. And I have a decision to make pay another fee for another month of training or move on and find something else.
I’m torn honestly. I’m enjoying learning this style of programming (not sure it is work what I’m paying) but it is a nice change of pace. I’m also not sure I’m confident in programming for myself moving foward after this. Because it has taught me some valuable lessons on volume and such.
I also not sure where to go next…hmm I have a day or two to decide. I will say this is beating my joints up more than anything else has since I moved from hypertrophy to strength.
