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July 25, 2005
How to strengthen your ankles and make your deadlift harder, without adding weight
Question: I have made great gains with your deadlift program from Power to the People! Unfortunately, I have run out of my 300 pounds and I am afraid to buy more iron as I live in an apartment. What is a good deadlift alternative for someone in my circumstances?
Try the one legged deadlift described by Harry L. Good in his 1940 course The Keynote to Great Strength.
Face the bar with one foot centered and the other elevated behind you. Your shin should be an inch or so behind the bar. If you wish, you may extend the pull by standing on an elevation of up to four inches – or by using small plates. You may also do the drill with kettlebells.
Fold forward and semi-squat. Do not let your knee extend over your toes or buckle in. Stick your butt out and grab the bar with the clean or palms down grip. Take a normal breath, tighten up, and lift.
Keep your weight evenly distributed on your foot and your back reasonably straight – the one legged pull is more forgiving than the conventional DL. You will find that you have to contract the glute on the working side very intensely to maintain your balance. Flex it to break the bar off the floor and cramp it even harder at the lockout. It will not take you long to realize that you have discovered one of the most effective glute exercises in existence.
Unlike the regular deadlift, the one legged version enables you to lower the weight slowly safely so your neighbors will stop calling the police.
The one legged DL does a fine job of strengthening your ankles, at least if you lift barefoot.
An average weak ankle tends to buckle in when the person is standing on one foot, especially with extra weight. The movement of the sole of the foot outward is called ‘eversion’. Under the circumstances it is bad news for your leg.
A barefoot Good deadlift will strengthen the muscles on the inside of the lower leg responsible for inversion or drawing of the sole inward. Just grip the ground hard with your toes, keep the muscles around your ankle and on the bottom of your foot tight, and make sure that the inside of your foot does not come down to the floor.
Your 300-pound set will serve you for a while now. If you can pull a 300 regular dead, good luck in breaking 135 off the floor.
For more information on this and related strength topics order Pavel’s Beyond Bodybuilding today.
Posted by james at 5:44 AM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2005
To pause your deadlift or not to pause the deadlift, that is the question
Question: Should I pause on the platform between deadlift reps or touch and go?
As a rule of thumb, pause. First, you need to develop starting strength for a big pull and you will never do that unless you pull a dead weight. FYI, in the olden days the exercise was known as ‘the dead weight lift’.
Second, to do a touch and go rep you must lower the barbell in perfect form to set yourself up for a clean next rep and to protect your back. Doing a negative in the deadlift takes experience. Otherwise it is plain dangerous; the bar tends to pull the deadlifter forward on his toes and round his back.
Even if you have succeeded in not letting the bar run forward and bend you over, do not think your troubles are over. You probably have assumed an exaggeratedly upright stance. Your knees have slipped forward and got banged up while your hamstrings have lost tension. You have got yourself into a hideous position for the next rep. Which is why I recommend quickly pushing your hips back, dropping down with the barbell after each repetition, and resetting for each rep as if it is the first one in Power to the People!
Nevertheless, experienced lifters have legit reasons to periodically do touch and go deadlifts with controlled negatives. First, it is well known that eccentric contractions are important for stimulating muscle growth. Second, touch and go reps are good for cleaning up one’s technique. Prominent Russian powerlifting coach Askold Surovetsky recommends just that.
An interesting wrinkle in his program is alternating two types of deadlift workouts: heavy ones with full stops and dead weight starts, and lighter, high volume ones with touch and go reps. Pay attention: do touch and go deadlifts only with lighter weights and make sure to practice deadlifts with full stops between reps as well! For instance, if you follow the Power to the People! program, pull the first set with dead stops and the second, lighter, set in the touch and go manner.
For more information on this and related strength topics order Pavel’s Beyond Bodybuilding today.
Posted by james at 9:22 AM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2005
Shock your shoulders into shirt-ripping strength and mass... with the 'RKC Ladder'
Question: My bench press is not too bad but I just cannot make any progress in my military press. Help!
In the good ole' days when the clean-and-press was the measure of a man and the bench press was unheard of, Russian weightlifters had an expression: “To press a lot you must press a lot.” The shoulders, unlike the legs, back, and, to a lesser degree, the chest will not budge until you blast them with a high volume of heavy iron.
The following RKC routine is almost guaranteed to ram you through your shoulder strength and size plateau. Pick a kettlebell you can clean and press – a clean before each press that is – roughly six to eight times. C&P it once with your weaker arm and switch hands. Rest briefly. Ideally your training partner will do his set while you chill. Two reps. Another short break. Three reps. Then start over at one… Feel free to rest longer between each series.
Repeat the 1, 2, 3 series five times, which will total you 30 quality reps. Follow this program three to four times a week. Do a skeleton chest and triceps regimen while you are on it.
Add a series per workout until you are up to (1, 2, 3) x 10 = 60 repetitions. Sixty reps with a seven-rep max is a very powerful muscle-building stimulus!
Now start doing 1, 2, 3, 4 reps, starting out with three series which totals 30 reps. As before, build up to 60 total reps, or (1, 2, 3, 4) x 6.
Move up to (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) x 2. Work up to (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) x 4. By now your shoulders will be swelling with dense and powerful muscle. Take a couple of days off and test yourself on the one-arm military press. You will blow your old PR out of the water!
For more information on this and related strength topics order Pavel’s Beyond Bodybuilding today.
Posted by james at 6:19 AM | Comments (0)
July 4, 2005
'Interval circuit training' for power on a tight time budget
Question: Watching my friend turn into a powerhouse on a routine of high sets of low reps with plenty of rest in between has convinced me that it is the way to train for raw power. Unfortunately, I can barely spare forty-five minutes for a workout twice a week. Am I doomed to remain a pencilneck?
Not if you try interval or ‘slow’ circuit training.
Lee (1988) found that the already awesome gains reaped from variable practice, or mixing up the poundage from set to set, can be far greater if it is combined with random practice. RP is the opposite of blocked practice, or completing all the trials of a drill before moving on to the next one. Doing all your sets of squats before moving on to the bench press is an example of blocked practice. Random practice involves alternating between various tasks within a practice period. It is kind of like circuit training, except adequate rest is provided between the drills.
Random practice delivers predictably great results. The idea of switching between squats, benches, and deads every set may strike you as a bizarre way to annoy the gym owner by tying up three bars and most of the plates on the floor. Yet a breakthrough study by Shea & Morgan (1979) determined that random practice is the way to train. Although it results in poorer performance in practice – you don't get a chance to gradually work up to your meat set and simply do not have the luxury of focusing on one lift and getting in the groove – it delivers better numbers when you go for a PR.
For more information on this topic order Pavel’s Beyond Bodybuilding today.
Posted by james at 6:17 AM | Comments (0)