In-Depth Insight Into An Advanced Powerlifter’s Programming

Patrick (@patrick_gpathletics) is getting back into the heavy work in preparation for the Arnold Raw Challenge in March. Currently Patrick is sitting about 10 1/2 weeks out, and we are in the second week of what has historically been the training block where we see the most progress. Due to the success the first time around with this block back in July, we took it as a template to build off of leading into Nationals, and again now leading into the Arnold. This does not mean we are just running the same block over and over again, but we are taking the skeleton of what worked and adjusting based off the progression of the previous training block and needs of this current prep. So what specific additions and adjustments did we make to the “skeleton” of this block?

1.) The previous training block we used to really push accessory volume. Historically I have had Patrick do significantly less pressing and lower body accessory volume than many of my other athletes. This was in large part due to his strength and experience levels in the sport, and needing high a level of stimulus from the competition movements to drive strength. With that though, leading into Nationals we started finding that “line” of maximum recoverable volume, as Patrick was hitting fatigue markers that we had not yet touched prior. So with that, I wanted to make it a focus to drive volume in other ways, so we set up a plan to really push belt squats and weighted dips. The goal was to use this past training block to adapt to this new stimulus while doing more self limiting variations on the competition movements. And then as we transitioned into this block, keep that accessory volume high while reintroducing more competition specificity and higher intensities. The hope and theory was that Patrick’s overall tolerance to this workload would adapt and be able to sustain these higher volumes, and so far so good. Through the first two weeks of this training block his fatigue is matched, if not lower, to that of our Nationals prep.

2.) The second addition was that of higher intensity singles on bench press. Patrick continually projects out with rep work well higher than what his competition max is, and it has boiled down to form breakdown that generally occurred at 390lbs. and up. In the past, we may only hit 2-3 singles in the entire prep at that weight and that was during the peaking block in the last 2-3 weeks before the meet. This just wasn’t enough practice to break the bad habit he has with overtaking his left arm once weights reach the 95% and above mark. So this time around we started 12 weeks out, and will be hitting these heavy singles weekly. I would not do this with most people, as there is a higher risk factor involved with hitting 8.5-9 RPE singles weekly, but Patrick has shown very little fatigue and/or aches and pains in the past from heavy benching.

3.) The massive change to this block is how we are approaching deadlifts. When talking about the success of this block, it was mainly based around squat and bench press. For deadlift I learned from mistakes during the Nationals prep on what we need to change. The final week of this block during Nationals prep, Patrick’s deadlift strength was at an all time high. We took a very low volume approach, and it worked great, but it was just too soon. Instead what needed to be done is shift that training block of deadlifts to the peaking block, and during this block push volume more to where we may actually see fatigue masking his strength and performance actually suffering a tad. Deadlift, especially conventional, is a different animal than squat and bench press. What I have found is many times regression in strength is common and not the worst thing, just due to the high fatigue caused by deadlifts. I made the mistake last prep in thinking the low volume approach was working really well, but the truth was is the higher volume block that preceded it is what pushed strength, and the low volume block was dissipating the fatigue so that we could actually see the full potential. And in the end, I extended that low volume for too long and actually detrained Patrick’s deadlift a bit. So what I am doing this training block, along with some other small changes, is shifting everything so that we are matching the skeleton of the higher volume block that seemed to drive Patrick’s strength, and then during the peaking block switch to lower volume to dissipate the fatigue accumulated during this block to then peak at the appropriate time.

How To Fix Your Deadlift Lockout

One of the biggest misconceptions in powerlifting is in regards to the lockout on deadlift. When someone tends to fail at lockout, the first thought usually is that the athlete needs to strengthen their lockout, but unfortunately that should not be the initial thought process. But at the same time I am not going to completely disregard that, and will circle back around at the end on why people have found benefit in “lockout work”.

What it come down to is pelvic and lumbar positioning off the floor. How you start the deadlift will dictate how you finish the deadlift. If you start with a very neutral back and pelvic position, most likely breaking the floor is the hardest part of the deadlift, and the rest is cake. Whereas if you start in a posterior tilted pelvic position and lumbar flexion, lockout is going to be your problem. And this just all comes down to biomechanics. Take any lifter with a “lockout” problem, have them do a rack pull from just below the knee, and they probably can hit that for probably 110% of their normal deadlift max. So they don’t have a lockout problem, they have a positioning problem. When they perform a rack pull at the knees, they can start with better positioning, allowing for more efficient force transfer from the hip extensors. But when they start from the floor, by the time they get to the knees, their butt is tucked under and their lower back is rounded.

Let’s breakdown the biomechanics of this and why it makes it so hard to lockout when in this position. We have two things going on, posterior pelvic tilt and lumbar flexion.

1.) When we go into a posterior pelvic tilt, 3 things happens with our hips extensors. Our glutes are shortened, our hamstrings are shortened, and our spinal erectors are lengthened. A muscle is the weakest at its lengthened and shortened position, and  strongest in its middle range. So with the glutes and hamstrings, when we start with our butt tucked under and continue that position, as we get to lockout those muscles are greatly underperforming. They are in a shortened state and creating significantly less hip extension force than if they were stabilized in a neutral position. So as we get to lockout, 2 out of the 3 main muscle groups trying to extend the hips and lock out are basically “shut off”.

2.) The lower back, as mentioned above, is lengthened if we start in the posterior pelvic tilt and lumbar extension position. As we get to lockout, the main mechanics that are now happening is lumbar extension. If we started with a neutral back to begin with, the goal of the lumbar spine is to aid in hip extension and isometrically stabilize its position through lockout. But when our starting position is off, the spinal erectors are now having to pull the lumbar spine out of flexion and into extension, doing way more work than usual.

Now, with all that being said, I want to circle back around to “lockout work”. People have sworn by it for decades, so it must work, right? Yes it does, but not for the reasons they typically think, nor should it be the priority. The number 1 priority is always improving positioning off the floor on deadlift, with a secondary goal of strengthening the lower back. When doing lockout work, people thought if they overloaded the range of motion they failed in, they’d get stronger. The issue is when you do a 4″ block pull or rack pull from just below the knees, you are not performing the same movement as your normal deadlift. And that is due to what I mentioned above, as your positioning is completely different. When performing the rack pull, most likely your are not tucking your pelvis and rounding your lumbar spine in the same way, so you are not training the sticking point in the same manner. What you are doing is training the lower back though. And as mentioned, the lower back is going to be called upon to a much greater degree when you suffer from this bad positioning. So that is why this “lockout work” helps, it strengthens the lower back.

My argument against this though is I believe there are better ways to strengthen the lower back rather than overloading lockout work, due to heavy overloaded rack pulls putting a high demand on the body. Instead, we can target the lower back with some less aggressive accessory movements such as back extensions, good mornings, safety bar squats, and bent over rows. So if you have a lockout problem, I’d recommend a two step approach:

1.) Improve your positioning off the floor to achieve neutrality in the pelvis and lumbar spine.

2.) Strengthen the lower back with more conservative exercises such as back extensions, good mornings, Safety Bar squats, and bent over rows/pendlay rows.

How to Properly Brace in the Squat

In my opinion the two biggest mistakes/misconceptions with bracing is that the bigger the breath the better and that the belt does the work for you. A bigger breath usually just means less intent for how the breath is used, and most likely results in a nice big chest breath and shoulder shrug. The second issue tends to be even worse, as a belt does not contract your abdominals. If all you are doing is breathing into your belt, you are just expanding your stomach, not bracing. I like the analogy that we are filling up a balloon. When you fill up a balloon it is not done by one big breath, it is done my multiple small breaths. So what I like to do is 3 small breaths. Each small breath expands the lungs and diaphragm further, and after each breath is taken you contract down with your core. It is almost like the abdominals are being use to try to crush the “balloon” being blown up inside of you. Now what does the belt’s purpose in all of this? An external cue to breathe into and for core contraction. We need 360 degree expansion into the belt, so that belt acts as a cue for the intent of each breath, as well as and external stimulus for muscle contraction. Think about if someone pushes their fist into your stomach. The natural reaction is to brace. That is what the belt is doing.

So putting this all together, here is the step by step bracing pattern/setup I use. After the walkout, contract their abs and lock down the ribcage. From there, take a small breath into the diaphragm to slowly fill that “balloon”. After that breath, lock down again with the abs. Then again, take another small breath to fill the ballon even further, then tighten the abs again. Then lastly, take a medium size breath to finish, which combined with the other two breaths in reality is a large breath, lock down the abs one final time, and squat. Sounds like a lot, but all of that should take less than 5 seconds. Its quick and small breaths. Not a relaxed meditation breath. Give this a try and let me know how it goes!

A Year In Review: Deadlifts Need To Improve

Looking back over the last year and my athlete’s progress, I can see some patterns in the progress of each one of the 3 lifts. By far the most progress has been on squats. Almost universally the athlete’s I coach have made significant increases on their squat, and while I will never stop learning and trying to expand my knowledge, I think I have a pretty good system in place for how I coach and program that squat.

For bench press, results have been pretty good, but not great like squats have been. I think a lot of that falls back on my hesitancy sometimes to push volume on bench like I need to. It doesn’t mean going from 2 days and 10 sets a week on bench to 4 days and 25 sets, but it does mean to have consistent and slow progression to build volume tolerance over time. This very well could fall back on more hypertrophy emphasis blocks for bench press.

The difference I feel like I have noticed on squat and bench press is that while both technique and volume are very important, comparatively technique matters more on squat and comparatively volume matters more on bench press. Don’t take that as volume matters more than technique on bench press, technique is always more important. But what I am just saying is that comparatively volume matters a bit more on bench press than squat, at least in my observations with my athletes. Where I think this idea is proven is in the average gym bro. You won’t see an average gym bro walk up to a squat bar and hit 500lbs. to depth, but go to any local commercial gym and you will find plenty of guys benching 315lbs.

For the last lift deadlifts, that is where I am just not happy. I’ve had people make progress, but not as much as I’d like. And more importantly, I am not seeing correlations between those who have seen good progress, at least on the programming side. I believe most of the progress my athlete’s have made on deadlift has been from technical adjustments, but not near as much from the programming side. I spent the last 3 weeks reading everything I could on deadlift, especially from sources/coaches who have excelled in coaching the deadlift with their athletes, and also reading from a lot of sources/coaches from prior generations that I may have overlooked before. There are so many differing opinions out there, so what I was looking for was the couple key points that seemed to be consistent across the board. Principles that I saw across multiple programs and that had stood the test of time from past generations of powerlifters to our current day. I found two main things:

1.) The coaches that seemed to excel with deadlifts did a lot of lower back accessory work. This may seem kind of obvious, but the fact is that modern day trends lead a lot towards just deadlifting for lower back strength. But looking at the programs and articles detailing keys to progression on deadlifts, I saw over and over the use of a large amount of accessory work to build the lower back, and that is something I have not been doing.

2.) Opposite stance deadlifts. If I have someone who sumo deadlifts, I mainly have had them sumo deadlift, and vice versa. But looking at all the material I found, there was a correlation to coaches training multiple stances in the deadlift and their success. We do that in bench press with no questions asked. Close grip, medium grip, competition grip, and wide grip. But for deadlift I was just training one stance. In particular, it seemed that coaches with high level sumo pullers were still having them hit conventional deadlifts heavy, which goes back to point #1 and strengthening the lower back.

With all that being said, this has just been information gathering to this point and now I need to put these ideas into practice. Time will tell if these hypothesis are correct, which I am confident they will be, but if not it is back to the drawing board to reassess and continue to build.

How To Keep Your Butt Down On Bench Press

For the longest time, I could never keep my butt down on bench press. I used the excuse of my extremely long tibias making it about darn near impossible, and while they do make it a bit more difficult, there was a fix. I tried different setups with my foot position, I worked on increasing my arch, I tried flat shoes versus heeled shoes, lifted on commercial gym benches versus competition benches, but none of that seemed to really matter. The route cause was the cueing of my leg drive. Two main things were wrong:

1.) I would drive through my heels, pushing straight up.

2.) And even when I fixed that, I would still think of leg drive as this push with my legs as I pressed.

So what did I do to fix the issue?

1.) First and foremost, constant tension was critical. Leg drive should not be something you initiate just as you press, but instead something that is present through the entire lift. From the time I start the downward motion until the moment I rack the bar, I am always driving with the legs. The only small change is I may be driving at 50% effort during most of the lift, but during the press I increase to 75%. And notice I didn’t say 100%. You are not trying to heave the bar up with your legs. The two main things you are trying to accomplish with leg drive is increasing tension and creating inertia moving back, not up, which leads me to the next fix…..

2.) Leg drive is back, not up. What you are trying to essentially do is slide back into the bench. But because you are holding weight and have your upper traps dug into the bench, what happens when you drive back is those traps stick into the bench, drive down into the bench, which then has the opposite reaction of driving the bar up. Just like the feet pushing into the floor on squat and deadlift to create the force to drive the bar up, the upper back drives into the bench to apply force in the opposite direction to move the bar. Your legs do not move the bar, they just create the tension and inertia to drive the upper back down. So when I drive with the legs (reminder from point #1 that this is a consistent drive throughout the entire range of motion), what I am thinking about is trying to slide my feet forward and out. Almost like I am trying to push my pinky toes through the front of my shoe. This force in return should cause your body to want to slide back into the bench. If done correctly, the butt really shouldn’t move, as there should be little to no vertical force with the leg drive, but rather horizontal force.