Deadlift Revelation: Timing and Rhythm

My thoughts on the Deadlift have changed somewhat, especially in regards to coaching it. I use to walk up set the bar right over my mid foot, bend down grab the bar, set my back and tuck my pelvis and then lift. My hips were high, my back would never feel great, and I couldn’t really get the movement to sync with my planned training. In other words: my Deadlift felt like shit, it looked like shit, and it was shit.

I think my biggest frustration with this was that the Deadlift was the first thing I was able to do with some confidence. I always felt I was a better Deadlifter than anything else. So this was a hard hit to my ego.

But that’s just it, I was lifting with my ego. And it was not paying off.

So shortly before my second meet in 2015 I went back to the drawing board and attempted to figure out what worked for my Deadlift performance. What rep/set scheme worked? What was my best position? How did this sequence of set up feel verse that one? etc. etc. etc.  (believe you me, there was a lot of thought about this).

Here is some of what I got out of all this thought:

Working in reps more than three put me out of position and then cut my working sets, thus no real overload had taken place.  Grabbing the bar first was probably why my hips were always out of position. The time spent to set up felt too long, which didn’t feel right. Activating my legs earlier in the pull from the floor seemed to help, but I was still getting the hips wrong. So I figured, set the back and hips first before pulling or grabbing the bar. The bar is what you’re setting your position against, this yields your positioning to the bar. So setting up the segment of the back and getting the hips right and braced will yield the bars position to you, and you’ll set up right each time.

I went back to the bar and did this. Toying with all these things. But there was something missing.

Timing.

 

So here are some more revelations:

At this point in time (a few months ago) I was working in a lab for one of my Human Performance classes. We were doing reflexes. This particular lab demonstrated that predictable intervals gave you better reflexes by playing audible intervals of tones in a subjects headphones and in turn they would squeeze a button with their dominant and non-dominant arm to react. When the subject had no meter or rhythm there was no anticipation or predictability via signaling of the brain to react. So reaction time dropped. But for me there was something more to this. You see, in the process of contraction in skeletal muscle (Excitation Contraction Coupling) there is something called summation.

Summation is when a muscle receives an action potential or signal from the nervous system (Alpha Motor Neuron with voluntary contraction) that propagates a single contraction or twitch in an individual muscle, but then receives another action potential before relaxation can take place and therein the muscle contracts again but with more force. If more and more signals are delivered the summation becomes a prolonged contraction of the skeletal muscle

Getting back to the point, with this particular lab the muscular contractions read from the EMG (Electromyograph) read more contractile force with a predictable rhythm and pace. This got me thinking about my Deadlift (and also about some of the events I coach for my High School Track team):

If rhythm can increase muscular contractile force because of anticipation, then treating the Deadlift and the set up for the Deadlift in a rhythm propagates a better pull because of its predictability from the neuromuscular system….

This came to me about two weeks before my second competition. The week before I was struggling to get 365 to move like it should and 405, which I had done for easy reps months before, was just an ugly grind. So I went back to the bar and rhythmically set up and pulled. 315 moved like butter. I took some footage of my Deadlift so I could review.

In studying the difference I realized that the speed off the floor had improved dramatically, my back no longer had slight flexion and had stayed true to form through the whole range of motion, my hips were in a better position, my lockout was defined. I’ve heard to treat your Deadlift like a jump before, and I know now that it is pretty much the best way I can describe in words what took place when I pulled these Deadlifts. The speed off the floor gave a better transfer from a push of the floor to an extension of the hips into a full standing position at lock out. When I reached down to grab the bar it was very similar to the lowering of the body before a jump. The intrinsic timing I had employed gave me little room to waste time on toying with position. The Deadlift became a well performed movement.

The next week I came back to the gym with a buddy and I crushed six sets of three at 425, and it was moving so unbelievably fast. At the meet I crushed a 36lb PR at 480, and it moved damn fast (you can look at my instagram for my meet footage).

Now when I coach the Deadlift, the emphasis is on bracing the segments that the body from the standing position, and then initiating a rhythm to the set up (bend down, reach left /grab, reach right /grab, tuck hips, stand up) before pulling from the floor. The speed of the bar in this manner is indicative of neural efficiency as well as contractile force in the “jump” that takes place off of the floor. The more speed off the floor the easier the lock out becomes. The phases of the movement become simultaneous. Resetting from a standing position before every rep is also probably my biggest emphasis too. The hips will likely fall out further and further from their neutral position as you go rep after rep with a prolonged hold on the bar. And what we don’t want is the bar to control our position.

To conclude some of this ramble, the Deadlift only becomes a true Deadlift when the load of the bar is taken fully by the body. When segments of the body lose structural integrity there is more room for the bar to control you. The whole point of this is to suggest that the approach to the Deadlift in training should be one that accounts for a certain hierarchy of values:

1) Efficiency (Control/Stability) and Form (rhythm)

2) Bar Speed

3) Volume

Last thing to consider) Weight

 

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Photo Citation/Avoidance of Copyright Infringement: None of these photos are mine, they belong to other people. They are online. If I am notified of a problem with using them, I wont hesitate to take them off.

The Lifts

All posts about the lifts are here.

Deadlift.

The Deadlift is a very simple movement yet deceivingly so. It can sometimes be down right difficult to utilize the push/pull aspect of it with out destroying yourself. And sometimes it is hard to make the call on appropriate integration into an individuals program.

Recently I have started taking my training volume on Deadlift down. And by “down” I mean cut at least by half. Instead of treating the deadlift as a movement with which I would normally accumulate volume, I am now using it as a test as well as practice. On Tuesdays I use it to go to a heavy triple, this way I can put something a little lighter on the bar and get a groove for bracing and position. The max triple of the day and the warm up triples before it all add up to about 12-18 reps by the end. In this regard there is not enough tonnage or volume to destroy the volume I do with Squats.

On Saturdays I hit 15 singles. This includes warm ups. By limiting my reps I have to be smart about exactly how much I’m doing. Also hitting heavy singles allows me to practice bracing in a way that more emulates a powerlifting competition. For the Squat and Bench there are easier ways to get tight and brace, but with the Deadlift it is a whole different ball game. The Deadlift doesn’t start with your body in full extension, rather it is in full flexion. Meaning leverage is harder to feel and achieve before starting your pull of the bar. So setting up for a single pull makes that pull count and conditions your brain to learn to start in a better position. After all, in a real competition you’re only doing singles and the discipline to get your position, mind, body, etc. all in sync is essential to executing the Deadlift right the first time. In other words, this helps you make rather than brake in the situation where you have a limited amount of singles to pull.

Just an insight for today.

-JA

Squat: Just Some Jargon

Da Squat. We all know by now that the squat is a phenomenal movement. There isn’t a muscle in your body that doesn’t contribute in one way or another to its completion. Personally as a coach it is one of the first movements I teach anyone. It not only requires great neuromuscular control and balance but also reveals many things about a persons anthropometry and present restrictions at the joint(s). In this case it is a tool that we can use to assess current levels of mobility and motor control. Which means we can quantify progress all with a simple look at what is going on with an individual’s squat.

Another interesting thought behind the squat is the fact that as a predetermined  expression of human movement it is something that if practiced every day can be mastered and performed for all of the above reasons. We can express our mobility, express our strength and motor control, we can essentially make sure our brain is working. It takes everything from the body to perform such a demanding movement.

Which brings me to a final thought/tirade. We should all know by now that the fitness industry is not concerned with implementing any form of effective training. They want gym-goers to feel good about being a hamster on a wheel. As long as profits are driving forward then the goal is accomplished, despite what the condition of their demographic is. So why make it complicated? Why ignore simple yet effective movements?? You don’t need much to do them, and they work! The squat, it really works! Of course I know that all of these observations mean little to nothing in the end. After all a lot of people out there are perfectly happy being misinformed. They like shiny equipment, and pools, and tend to walk themselves into bug-zappers. I can’t change those people, at least not all at once. Anyway, the squat isn’t that complicated. In my experience if the information is dubbed down enough squats are as easy as they seem. Up and down. Back un-moving. Hips back and below top surface of the knee. Knees tracing the line of the toes. Chest up. Shoulders back.

What I hope to do in my life time is change the way that these bigger movements are perceived. It is already happening, and yeah I am hopping on the band wagon so to speak. Especially with CrossFit reinvigorating the popularity of the strength sports. But these movements work, and can be varied for life. No other equipment will do the same way a barbell will.

-JA

Bench: How Force Plays a Role.

Bench Press. The upper body’s best tool to get jacked. It was not my first love, but certainly it has grown on me in the past few months. This is something I usually illustrate for clients (forgive me if I hop right in):

I usually assume that most people don’t know to use their whole body while performing the bench press, so I show them something like this. Here’s my explanation:

As we can see I’ve circled two points: the feet and shoulder girdle. This is the “chain”, it is all connected and we are going to use this chain to accomplish proper bracing via muscular contraction. For proper bracing of the body against the bench we have these two points to use. Our feet and shoulders give us two points to drive our body into the ground and use those stable anchors to create our own rigid structure, i.e. the body.

Forgetting the whole idea of pulling the bar in and pushing it back up, lets just talk about why bracing is so important. Physics and basic knowledge of force transfer is important here. Newton’s Cradle is my favorite example of the transfer of force, and if you don’t know what it is, look it up. Newton’s Cradle displays that a rigid object hitting against other rigid objects transfers force into the apposing objects and vice versa. But notice that these objects are dense/rigid. If we had a Newton’s Cradle with Styrofoam attached to the strings instead of marbles then the force would be absorbed and lost. It is the same here on the Bench, we want to transfer all of our force into the bar. So tracking backwards from the end of the chain (Shoulders/head), we see that the feet are first. As so illustrated you push your feet into the ground and tense everything in the legs and hips (Quads, Hamstrings, Glutes etc.)now your hips go up. By arching your back and pinching your shoulders you put your spine into a better shape that can transfer the force applied rather than absorb it (Absorbing force is always a bad thing). As the chest is up and head is back, the shoulders are now driven down into the bench with a combination of forces from everything down the chain. Now you have stability and a RIGID chain with which fore can be transferred.

I also like to mention when presenting this picture that we have basically made a sandwich, where the bar and bench are the “bread” and you are between them. If you look at the arrows I have drawn, they are to illustrate this idea. If we push our upper back and shoulders into the bench we can push up a lot harder into the bar. In this way we can quantify a client’s real strength, and from there set appropriate training parameters.

Otherwise it is now a matter of understanding grip width, humerus angle, a few small ques to have anyone benching like they’ve been doing it for years.