I am 5.5 months into training and my deadlift is only at 130kg. My squat is ok I think, at 115 5x5. I just want to ask, is deadlift technique very important once you are lifting more and more? I ask because some people may just have crazy naturally raw strength. This thread is more of a dialogue on personal experiences and how realising these things help us to become stronger.
I saw a coach today (he is a pro powerlifter and has trained national level athletes so he knows his stuff) and he told me that technique and speed are very (very) important.
Technique and more food are the reasons my bench got past my stall of 65kg (I am now benching 67.5kg and 65 kg 5x5 is easy). I watched the Tate “So you think you can bench?” video over and over again to correct my form in my mind, then I went to the gym and practiced it as much as I could until I could do the proper technique without much thought.
With deadlift today, here were the pointers he gave:
My squat form is very good, very deep. And I am getting the bar on all reps of 130kg 1x5 deadlift off the ground… my problem is locking out.
So, the problem is on the lockout.
But first, leg positioning, I was too wide, almost sumo. I had to narrow my foot position so that it was inside the shiny bit of the bar. This bad foot positioning was a dumb mistake and it greatly contributed to the stall. I know, because I tested the correct foot positioning and the lift felt a lot more explosive.
Speed: I am too slow. I have drive harder and move quicker with the bar, driving feet into the floor rather than mentally lifting the bar.
Accessories are quite important: I have been using a mixed grip and I should not do this with accessories, only deadlifts. I have to use double overhand with all accessories (barbell shrugs and bb rows). This will help me with the lockout as it will increase my back strength.
Personal stats:
164 pounds, 5ft10, 500 calories above maintenance.
Improving technique is always important. Keeping an eye on it throughout your training career is quite necessary. But your DL number isn’t out of proportion with your squat number.
In this case, the problem is you aren’t eating enough. 164 lbs at 5’10" is too small. Sorry. Get up to around 200 and you’ll see this “stalling” crap disappear. You saw it improve with the bench…
[quote]SevenDragons wrote:
In this case, the problem is you aren’t eating enough. 164 lbs at 5’10" is too small. Sorry. Get up to around 200 and you’ll see this “stalling” crap disappear. You saw it improve with the bench…
[/quote]
Not necessarily true at all. Don’t worry about your bodyweight, worry about getting stronger. I could deadlift close to 500 when I was about 165. I lift with a 165 pounder now that benches in the mid-low 300s.
It’s only been 10 months since I started, and although I always thought that technique is important, I only really realised the truth of it recently. I came across an article by Andy Bolton, he was talking about the Deadlift and giving tips to improve it. Got home that night and decided to put my new found knowledge into practice - I’m a small guy, 141lbs, 5ft4, and my PR for the DL was 115kg at the time, and had been for quite a while, I blew that away and reached 131kg in that session.
[quote]GentlemanGamer wrote:
It’s only been 10 months since I started, and although I always thought that technique is important, I only really realised the truth of it recently. I came across an article by Andy Bolton, he was talking about the Deadlift and giving tips to improve it. Got home that night and decided to put my new found knowledge into practice - I’m a small guy, 141lbs, 5ft4, and my PR for the DL was 115kg at the time, and had been for quite a while, I blew that away and reached 131kg in that session.
I used a few things, but the three that made the most difference for me, were his tips on squeezing the bar, contracting the abs and lats, and bending the bar before the pull.
He advised to squeeze the bar as hard as you can, from your set-up through the entire pull. Regardless of how much weight you are pulling, always squeeze the bar as hard as you can, whether it’s 100 or 500lbs it makes no difference. Create as much tension as possible before you even pull the weight. The more muscles you can contract the more tension you can create.
The abs bracing, he says to imagine what you would do if you were about to get punched in the stomach and you wanted to absorb the force. For the lats, if I recall correctly he mentions to set-up a barbel at shoulder height, bend your arms and place the upper arm on the barbell a short distance from your elbow, then press down with your arms. This should give you a fairly good idea of what it feels like to contract your lats.
The last part about bending the bar is the direct opposite of the “grip and rip”. Essentially it’s this, if there’s 250lbs on the bar, you should take 249lbs of slack from the bar before you attempt the lift.
I hope this is clear enough, it is in my head. I tried to hunt down the article but I haven’t had much luck.
Thanks for the writeup there. The “create as much tension as possible” seems to be common on all the lifts. I first ran across it when I was reading some of Pavel’s stuff years ago, when he was talking about it in the context of bodyweight.
Had a bench session with the same coach today. On 67.5kg I lifted 4,5,5,5,3 reps.
Whilst my form is not bad my mentor (qualified to coach pro olympic lifting) today was around and he has noticed my rotator cuff (past injury from tennis) causing a muscular imbalance. I am not as strong on my right hand side and this shows in how I seem stronger on my left side when doing the lift. He warned me that eventually this will cause more wear and tear (i.e. injury, perhaps serious injury which requires surgery) on that shoulder area as I start lifting more and this will be unpleasant, so it is about preventing that inevitability. Also, whilst my form in general is good, I have the bar too far up, when it has to be in line with the nipple. So it becomes a sort of upper chest lift even though I am flat benching. I need more time to perform the correct motor pattern with no second thought, i.e. doing it second nature.
He wants me to switch to db’s for a few weeks/a month to focus on bringing up the db’s at the same time in a consistent form-focused manner. I can go as heavy as I can on these. In these same sessions, I am then to work on form on the barbell and some lighter weights. However, I do not know how heavy I should be going on the dumbbells or if they are transferrable in strength gains to the barbell bench press when I eventually go back to just barbell bench pressing in a few weeks. Has anyone had any experience with this type of thing before? I.e. switching to db’s for a few weeks to solve an imbalance problem out.
Overall, the bench is what frustrates me. I feel like I am behind a bit with it, in terms of where I should be. But, as my coach told me, this game is about longevity and in his opinion, everyone really serious with this lifting game will get a wear and tear of the shoulders eventually (rotator cuff, primarily).
Have you considered switching to the Floor Press instead? not as brutal on your shoulders, but still awesome for strength gains.
I switched a few months back because I consistently had shoulder pain after benching, and because I train alone and don’t have the luxury of a spotter…but I still want to lift as hard as possible. The bumper plates stop the bar about 2 inches above my chest/head, so there’s no way I can injure myself if I fail.
[quote]GentlemanGamer wrote:
Have you considered switching to the Floor Press instead? not as brutal on your shoulders, but still awesome for strength gains.
I switched a few months back because I consistently had shoulder pain after benching, and because I train alone and don’t have the luxury of a spotter…but I still want to lift as hard as possible. The bumper plates stop the bar about 2 inches above my chest/head, so there’s no way I can injure myself if I fail.[/quote]
I am going to work at the root of the problem rather than try and work around it. I am confident that I can get that side fully up to the task of lifting more weight safely on the bb bench in a few weeks. It is not a big imbalance, but it is enough to see that it will injure me when I lift the bigger weights. Which is why it is vital to get it sorted out now rather than let it sideline me in the future. All about longevity mate.
I didn’t mean that you should just take up the Floor Press and not address the problem. I merely meant that you might want to consider the Floor Press instead of the Bench. If you have injured your shoulder in the past, depending on how bad, the Bench Press might not be the best thing in the long run.
[quote]GentlemanGamer wrote:
I didn’t mean that you should just take up the Floor Press and not address the problem. I merely meant that you might want to consider the Floor Press instead of the Bench. If you have injured your shoulder in the past, depending on how bad, the Bench Press might not be the best thing in the long run.[/quote]
It was just an injury which required several weeks (about 2-3 months) of physio work. No surgery, it was a rotator cuff strain. I am not going to give up bb bench, I just feel like I must get to 100kg as it is what I set up to do at the start of training. I would do floor press as part of my routine, but imo BB bench for me has to be part of it.
