Pump Up The Volume: Christian Slater, Weightlifting, and Making Faster Progress
“I’m dedicating this unusual song to an unusual person who makes me feel kind of… unusual.” – Christian Slater in Pump Up The Volume
I like to say that if my lifters don’t feel like total crap at the end of our heavy weeks, then I haven’t done my job. I don’t say that as a sadist – though, I’m sure that every coach is at least a BIT sadistic. The point is that in order for these lifters to progress any further, to see positive adaptations to their physiology, they MUST be pushed very hard toward the Gates of Mordor.
Beginners can get away with what we call “linear” progress. They come in every day feeling great and hit new PR’s over and over. Once you’ve gotten past that stage, life gets more complex, and your workouts start to feel far more … unusual.
Turn It Up To 11! An Explanation of “Volume”
Volume is a term we use in strength and conditioning to describe the following (simplistic) equation:
Sets x Reps = Volume
The word, “Volume”, is aptly named. It’s a knob you can turn up or down as needed to elicit the response you want out of your athlete. We want an easy way to think about the total amount of work being done by a lifter so that we can gauge their fatigue levels and progress – including the TYPE of progress. Volume gives us that.
Add more Sets and you raise the volume. Add more Reps and you do the same thing. Raise both and you can increase volume quite a bit.
Take a look at some of the classic set and rep schemes:
5 x 5 = 25
3 x 10 = 30
4 x 8 = 32
6 x 4 = 24
In each case the volume is hovering in the 20 to 30 (ish) rep range. As it turns out, volume in this rep range is pretty closely correlated with positive adaptations toward hypertrophy AND strength at the same time.
In contrast, the Arnold-era 1970′s bodybuilders often used 5 sets of 10 reps. Once volume approaches 50 total reps, we’re looking at a program that is more inclined to make you big (muscle-wise) than strong.
On the other end, many Olympic weightlifters will simply work up to a heavy (max-ish) lift done for only 1 rep. That means that the amount of total working reps for the workout (if we limit ourself to only counting those reps done above 60 or 70% of max) is often under 10. With volume that low, hypertrophy will be quite limited, but strength gains are high.
Don’t take all this TOO literally. That would be a major mistake. 3 sets of 10 reps (volume of 30) is a classic bodybuilder type of rep range and will be most useful for those who care more about their big guns than lifting heavy things with those guns.
BUT, if you flip it to 10 sets of 3 reps (STILL have a volume of 30) you get something totally different. Now you’ve got a classic strength building set and rep range that may also help you gain some muscle.
Both have a volume of 30, but they will cause your body to adapt differently.
1 Factor vs 2 Factor Training
All of this is rather academic so far. As a rule, if you lift hard and do so consistently, you’ll make progress. Three sets of Ten or Ten sets of Three both work. It’s just a matter of degrees relative to your specific goals. Understanding how to manipulate the variables that go into Volume (that is, sets and reps) to meet various goals is a huge topic with much argument.
We ain’t gonna care about that today.
Today, we’re concerned with TOTAL volume and how to manipulate that over time so that you can progress at a rapid rate. As was said above, beginners have the magical ability to make progress at nearly every workout. If that is you, ride it out! It’s awesome, and once it’s gone, it will never come back again.
For the rest of us who are lingering in that abyss known as Intermediate Land, we’re gonna have to kick it up a notch.
There are essentially two styles of training that you should concern yourself with. These aren’t “styles” like Bulgarian or Russian or Bill Starr or Kono … nothing that specific. I’m talking in massive generalities, here.
The styles are 1-Factor and 2-Factor.
1-Factor training is shooting for linear progress at all times. You lift, you cause stress to the body, then you wait until the body adapts to that stress (that is, you’ve gotten stronger) before you lift again. You can think of this as a simple Stress-Adaptation cycle. Beginners can go through a full cycle in one day. Eventually it lengthens out. At the extreme end, we can imagine only snatching ONE day a week (or longer!) trying for a new PR at every session.
2-Factor training still worries about a Stress-Adaptation cycle, but you focus on weeks (or months, or more) rather than workouts. Instead of waiting for your body to adapt to the stress of your previous workout, you come back in BEFORE you’ve adapted and hit it again. This pushes the fatigue up higher – increases the level of stress the body is under. The theory is that when you finally allow the body some rest time then the associated adaptation will be greater.
Moreover, proponents of a 2-Factor approach claim that the effects are not additive, but multiplicative – greater than the sum of the workouts.
The point here is that you take the long view. You push the athlete down for a few weeks, then let them adapt for a week or two. After this cycle they’ll be stronger than if they had used the 1-Factor model during the same period.
More Work = More Stress = More Adaptation
Sounds great! But, there is a downside …
Dealing With The Dark Times
“Feeling screwed up at a screwed up time in a screwed up place does not necessarily make you screwed up” – Christian Slater in Pump Up The Volume
You’re going to feel horrible. You’re going to miss weights that you could have power snatched a few weeks ago. You’re going to be squatting like your Grandmother on a bad hip day. And that is exactly what you want.
While the upside of using a 2-Factor model is that you make faster progress, the downside is that you have to go through periods where you feel like crappola.
Your own confidence levels and your faith in the process will take you far. It all comes down to your daily expectations. If you come into the gym expecting to hit big weights when you’re two weeks into a heavy loading phase and your fatigue levels are high, then you’re crazy.
That isn’t to say that you won’t. It is hard to predict these things with total accuracy. The body runs on the principles of Chaos Theory. You CAN predict with some level of accuracy macro level changes, but you cannot predict all of the micro fluctuations. Every heavy cycle at my club, someone hits a PR in something on a day that everyone else looks horrible. It happens. But, don’t be foolish and expect such things.
Expect to suck. Come into the gym with the goal of simply trying your best. That’s the whole point. You are there to increase your fatigue, not to hit PR’s. You are there to ADD stress to an already stressed body.
A Simple Outline of a Good Stress-Adaptation Cycle
At my club we tend to use two basic Stress-Adaptations cycles:
- Two weeks loading, One week light
- Three weeks loading, Two weeks light
I like the second one primarily for pre-contest. But, the first is our workhorse. We’re usually just cycling through Three week periods over and over again.
Here is where the volume comes in. During the heavy loading weeks, you turn the volume knob up. During the lighter weeks, you turn it down.
That’s it.
Yes, HOW I turn it up and down is complicated. What I have lifters do to work on different goals would fill a book or two (working on it!!) … but the point is simple. Spend a few weeks hammering the crap out of yourself, then take it easy for a week.
NOTE: by “Take it easy” I mean that we ONLY hit a daily max on the major lifts and avoid everything else. We never lower intensity – ever. That is important. If you lower BOTH volume AND intensity (weight) then you will simply get weaker. You won’t adapt as well. This is not universal, but for Olympic lifting it holds true.
Put the following basic principles into practice, and you’ll start hitting those personal records you’ve been chasing:
Light weeks, lift heavy for low reps and low sets. Go home, eat and rest.
Heavy weeks Pump up the Volume!
See part 2 here.
You can think about the Olympic weightlifting movements like three sisters. If they were siblings the Snatch would be the sexy and smart one, good at math, a sweet talker, keen on using finesse to solve all problems.
The Clean would be the burly one who went out for Rugby, didn’t bother too much with readin’ da books, but seems to get through life pretty well via the brute-force method.
Both the Snatch and the Clean are specialists.
The Jerk, however, would be somewhere in the middle. She’s strong, but not quite as strong as the Clean. She’s technical and savvy, but not quite like the snatch.
And because of this, she just doesn’t get a lot of attention.
To be fair, there’s something reasonable about that. The Jerk honestly isn’t as complicated! Most people will do a Jerk about 80% right on the first try.
But, there ARE some big issues that seem to plague almost everyone at first.
In this episode, I focus on what we call the “Dip and Drive” portion of the Jerk. We’ll worry about what the feet are doing later.
There are 3 Key things I want you to focus on:
- Take a deep breath, keep your chest high, and be bolt upright the whole time.
- Loosen the arms and shoulders at the start!
- Dip and Drive should be fast, like a bounce. Don’t dip …stop …then drive. It is one movement. (Imagine the triple jump)
Above all, never forget that the Jerk is a LEG Exercise, not an Arm Exercise. If you at least get that down, you’ll save yourself a lot of heart ache.
Finally, treat your head like a Pez Dispenser!
That may sound funny, but it works pretty well. As the bar goes past your face, you need to move your face out of the way! BUT, you then need to put the head back through (just like in a snatch) when the bar is over your head – so you can lock out and shrug upwards better.
Here’s the Video
What other questions do you have about the Jerk?
We live in the future. We’re way beyond post-modern now. And our rate of progress is increasing year after year according to the law of Accelerating Returns.
Advancement in any area is rarely linear – it certainly isn’t in the technological world. Often (and in the best cases) it is exponential: growth begets growth.
There’s a lesson here. Taking a hard look at the growth curve of your progress in any area is a good way to know if things are going well, or if you are heading toward stagnation.
The Future is NOW
I was watching Star Trek – the Original – the other day and realized that my own iPhone is far more advanced than the junk Captain Kirk had. When he, Spock, and Bones needed to call Scotty for a ride, what did they use?
A Flip Phone! They didn’t even have texting, let alone the plethora of apps that are commonplace on any smart phone.
Captain Picard – of Star Trek The Next Generation – had it a bit better. They were essentially using Blue Tooth. All they had to do was tap the cool pin on their chest and they could talk to who every they wanted. What’s more, they didn’t have to tell the device WHO they wanted to call …it just seemed to magically KNOW.
While we don’t have space travel yet, our world and technology is fast approaching that of the craziest Science Fiction books and shows, and already surpasses many of them.
The Law of Accelerating Returns ALA Kurzweil
Ray Kurzweil proposed the Law of Accelerating Returns in his 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines. The idea can be explained as follows: The rate of change in evolutionary systems increases exponentially.
According to Kurzweil:
- Evolution applies positive feedback in that the more capable methods resulting from one stage of evolutionary progress are used to create the next stage. As a result, the
- rate of progress of an evolutionary process increases exponentially over time. Over time, the “order” of the information embedded in the evolutionary process (i.e., the measure of how well the information fits a purpose, which in evolution is survival) increases.
- A correlate of the above observation is that the “returns” of an evolutionary process (e.g., the speed, cost-effectiveness, or overall “power” of a process) increase exponentially over time.
- In another positive feedback loop, as a particular evolutionary process (e.g., computation) becomes more effective (e.g., cost effective), greater resources are deployed toward the further progress of that process. This results in a second level of exponential growth (i.e., the rate of exponential growth itself grows exponentially).
- Biological evolution is one such evolutionary process.
- Technological evolution is another such evolutionary process. Indeed, the emergence of the first technology creating species resulted in the new evolutionary process of technology. Therefore, technological evolution is an outgrowth of–and a continuation of–biological evolution.
- A specific paradigm (a method or approach to solving a problem, e.g., shrinking transistors on an integrated circuit as an approach to making more powerful computers) provides exponential growth until the method exhausts its potential. When this happens, a paradigm shift (i.e., a fundamental change in the approach) occurs, which enables exponential growth to continue.
The place this idea has been applied to most is to the concept of The Singularity, a hypothetical future where artificial intelligence gets so advanced that our current minds aren’t able to comprehend it. Much like how religion tell us that we can’t understand the mind of God, we won’t be able to understand the minds of those (machines or even modified humans) who will have this level of intelligence.
How the world will look after this happens – once intelligence hits a certain threshold – is completely outside the bounds of our comprehension.
It’s like trying to imagine a 7 dimensional sphere. It isn’t within the boundaries of how our minds work. We use them all the time in Mathematics and physics, and in that sense they “exist”, but we can’t see them in our minds.
Who knows IF The Singularity will happen – we can’t know until/unless it does. But, that isn’t the point.
The underlying concept of exponential growth in Evolutionary processes applies to all kinds of things, not the least of which is your progress in the gym.
Beyond Technology: The Weightlifting Singularity
The Law of Accelerating Returns doesn’t just apply to technology (though, that is where it is most often associated). Accelerating Returns are everywhere an Evolutionary Process is in place.
That includes the gym, or more accurately your body in response to the gym.
The goal of ALL training programs is to force adaptation to a specific stimulus. Your body IS a highly complex ecosystem that is constantly trying to respond to the external pressures of the world in order to survive.
Your gym activities are creating an evolutionary pressure that your body must learn to adapt to … that is, if you are working out correctly! Sadly, so many workout programs are just not providing the body with enough stress to honestly cause adaptation, and this leads to a lack of progress and total stagnation.
When you consistently create this kind of environment within which your body must thrive or perish, it will ramp up in response. And, in doing so, a whole host of unforeseen benefits will emerge, many of which you never could have planned for.
Science is only now starting to understand the myriad benefits of serious exercise done over the whole of a persons life. We honestly still don’t know all of the good things this obsession of yours is doing for you.
Growth Begets Growth: The Pat Mendes Bench Press Example
Obviously, when we talk about growth we mean this in a comprehensive way. It is NOT true that you will see your squat numbers grow exponentially! Duh …
That is the narrow and naive view. This way of looking at things (being overly literal) causes people to miss the larger point, and be unable to steer their progress correctly because of it.
Let’s take an example.
When John Broz, of Average Broz gym in Las Vegas, first met the young Pat Mendes (who is now the current national champion thanks to Broz) he knew that he had something special: a true diamond in the rough.
Unfortunately, like all rough diamonds, Pat was VERY rough! He could Power Clean a ton of weight, but it was ugly as sin. He could Squat a lot, but not a lot for a weightlifter of his size. And, of course, as a young high school kid, he was a little TOO obsessed with the Bench Press.
Pat was interested in what John was offering (coaching and a chance to be an Olympian), but he wasn’t convinced that the program John wanted him to do was going to get him there.
In case you aren’t aware, the John Broz method of training is more Bulgarian than Bulgarian – and has been a big influence on how I run my own training programs.
Basically it involves doing nothing but the Olympic lifts, heavy squatting, and some pulls. All heavy as sin, every day, twice a day. No breaks. No light weeks. Adapt, die, or quit. (I’m a tad more mellow than that, as I allow for a light week every 3 or 4. However, by “light” I mean that we only have to max out, no back-off sets.)
Broz also (like all Olympic lifting coaches) is obsessed with making sure that beginners learn proper technique. He didn’t allow Pat to touch a bar until he spent a month with just a stick learning proper form.
“The first pull can’t make a lift, it can only miss a lift if done incorrectly.” — John Broz
Imagine how a high school kid who is used to being the big man on campus must have taken all of this.
“I have to spend a month using only a broom stick? I’m going to do the SAME few exercises in the same way, every day, FOREVER? And you aren’t even going to let me Bench Press?”
Broz was making the hard sale, for sure!
Clearly, Pat’s progress on his squats was not exponential. He did go from a 220kg back squat to a 350kg squat in a little over a year. That is fantastic progress. But, it ain’t exponential.
But focusing only on the numbers on the squat bar is thinking too small. When you increase your squat by that much, guess what ELSE happens? You get much stronger in MANY other areas.
For Pat one of those areas was the Bench Press. After all that squat work, he was able to do an impromptu competition with his team mates on the Bench. They ended up easily benching 400# without issue …and Broz stopped them (they’re Oly lifters, and they only had squat stands to bench off of. Safety First!)
He hadn’t benched in over a year, and he could bench over 400# like nothing. Why, because growth begets growth.
What This Means for YOU
The Bench Press is a silly example. However it helps to explain an important point.
Get great at the back squat, and you get very good at a lot of other exercises.
Get great at the clean and the snatch and the same thing happens.
Get great at the BIG things, and the little things benefit without you even realizing it.
Lifters who do BOTH heavy squats AND the Olympic lifts make faster progress on both than lifters who only do one or the other. They create powerful feedback loops that feed into one another.
If you put your time and energy into the RIGHT exercises in the right way, then you will see the fruits of the Law of Accelerating Returns.
On the other end, if you put your time into piddly exercises that have no potential for compound growth, then you are wasting your time.
Don’t waste your time and energy on things that have no ability for compound growth!
No matter what the investment is – emotional, physical, your career – you must focus on those areas where The Law of Accelerating Returns can be applied. That is areas where the feedback loop of an Evolutionary process is in place and broad.
Little exercises like curls are not worthless, they can be beneficial for your shoulder health and ego if done right, but they are hardly the main drivers of your bodies evolutionary change, they don’t carry over to much else, and they have little potential for compound growth.
In contrast, major multi-joint movements that tax not only your muscular system, but your nervous system and cardiovascular system create massive feedback loops of progress that will lead you toward a level of advancement that you can’t even predict accurately.
Bottom Line: Hard work on the most important things creates feedback loops that build up onto one another and make you better at more and more things at an ever greater rate that expands out into areas you’d never have expected.
Figure out what the essentials are relative to your goals, and hammer the living hell out of them. You never know what kind of amazing rewards you’ll see because of it.
The Lessons You Learn While Drinking With Bulgarians, Part 2: Coaches Are All Liars and The 3 Big Lies of Snatch Learning
In Part 1, I told you how a few nights ago my wife and I were hanging out with my step dad, Nasko, and a family friend Dmitri for dinner and drinks. Dmitri and Nasko are both gymnastics coaches, my wife is a math teacher, and I’m … well you know what I do! What was cool is that we ended up doing what people who love their jobs do: we talked shop. And, some of the lessons that we discussed are not what you’d expect. Last time we discussed “punishments” and “rewards”. This time, we learn about how ALL coaches lie to you … if they’re any good.
I had this friend in High School who failed nearly every class he took. Not because he wasn’t smart enough. He was a very intelligent guy – he just didn’t care, so he never did any homework or anything else for that matter. He spent most of his time screwing off with friends, smoking weed, and listening to the Doors.
Eventually he dropped out of high school at 16 years old and continued to screw around until he was about 19.
Then, as though a switch got turned on, he figured out what he wanted: He wanted to be a mathematician. (See why we were friends!)
He enrolled at the local community college and in 2 years – and nothing but straight A’s later – transferred to the University of Oregon to finish his math degree. He then went to UCLA to get his masters in math and now works for NASA.
My friend is doing pretty well for a guy who never got his high school diploma, a GED, or anything equivalent. He skipped right over all that and just went to college when he finally decided on what he wanted to do with himself.
This is Part 1, read Part 2 on how Coaches are ALL Liars here.
Last night, my wife and I went over to my step-dad Nasko’s place for dinner along with our family friend, Dimitri. Both Nasko and Dimitri are Bulgarian, were once members of the Bulgarian national gymnastics team, and competed at the world level. They are now coaches here in the Portland area. My wife, as you know, is a middle school substitute math teacher. After throwing me in the mix, it was like the set up to a bad joke:
“A weightlifting coach, two gymnastics coaches, and a math teacher walk into a bar …”
Here were four educators sitting around a small table with too much home-made brandy, wine, BBQ chicken, and Nasko’s heavenly Bulgarian salads (which he thinks of as “chasers”) while blasting traditional Greek music. In other words, nothing out of the ordinary for us.
Bulgarian food is a heck of a lot like Greek food (they share a border) and the cultural habits are also rather similar. If you’ve ever seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding you’ll have some appreciation for the style of our family gatherings: Loud, fun, relaxed, long, and infused with much alcohol, meat, and greek-like salads.
Environments like this inevitably lead to wandering conversations where the loudest of the bunch often do the steering. Dimitri, Nasko, and I are all VERY loud.
Given how much we all love our jobs we obviously spent most of the time talking shop.
The result was a massive explosion of great ideas surrounding what it takes to effectively coach/teach people complex and technically difficult subjects like gymnastics, math, and weightlifting. The next few articles will each go over what I think are the most relevant to you. It doesn’t matter if you are a coach, an athlete, or just someone who finds lifting weights fun – these lessons apply to you.
Make Them Climb The Rope
Dimitri and Nasko work with a lot kids far younger than I do. The youngest kid who has ever been in our gym was 14. Most of my members are adults, with the “young” folk being college-age.
These guys deal with 10 year olds all the time – sometimes younger! And, they teach them to do things that are potentially VERY dangerous – Dimitri nearly ripped off his biceps catching a girl who fell off the high bar last week!
With kids so young, discipline is an issue. What do you do if the athlete is NOT doing what you need them to do?
“Make them climb the rope”
“Why the rope?” I ask Dimitri.
“Because it is something that makes them better at gymnastics. You don’t want a punishment that is not making them better.”
I laughed and said, “Do you ever find fault in what they’re doing just so that you can make them climb the rope?” I said it intentionally to be a joke.
Surprisingly he said, “Yes, all the time! Sometimes their landing will be almost perfect, but they didn’t point their toes just right, so … Climb the rope!” He laughed.
For Dimitri, its climbing the rope.
For us, it’s either more squatting or more back-off sets on the snatch.
Often I’ll see a lifter struggling to hit a 1RM for the day that would otherwise have been easy and I have a decision to make. What do they do next?
One option is they can get off the platform, head to the squat rack, and spend some quality time moving up and down with the bar. When I honestly think a lifter just can’t possibly do anything technical that day, that’s the go to. More squatting for a weightlifter is just like more rope climbing for a gymnast. It builds the underlying strength we are going to need later. And you can nearly always do more of it.
Another option is to have them spend a lot of time doing back-off sets. If the lift was the snatch, then we’ll drop the weight by about 20% or so and start going for doubles with a focus on whatever they didn’t do correctly with the heavier version.
I don’t have very many “go to” exercises. I don’t believe that you should! There are only a few things that are honestly deserving of the title “The Basics” in any sport. Everything else is a luxury.
Two of those in weightlifting are technical work on the snatch and more squatting! 9 times out of 10, if someone is struggling, I’ll default to one of those two things and have them hammer the hell out of them.
Beyond the Rope: Consistency is Key
Dimitri’s point wasn’t that you should go around punishing people randomly and haphazardly, but that your training system needs to be coherent. No matter what you have someone do, it needs to fit in with the program.
Heck, you’re students don’t even have to know that you are “punishing” or “rewarding” them. Those words, in fact, miss the point!
The goal is to make them better at what they are doing. To do that, you need to alter their behavior patterns as much as their body. But, that doesn’t mean you have to be direct in your approach.
Subtle things make a big difference when added up together.
When I see problems arising I don’t start flipping-out on my lifters. I instead start implementing systematic changes that will steer the boat in the direction I want to see it going. This happens without their knowing it in nearly every case.
A tweak to the program here, a shifting of the schedule there, an altering of how I respond when a lifter makes or misses a lift, an inclusion of certain exercises or the taking out of others … these aren’t just simple program adjustments. They can result in attitudinal adjustments in the athlete.
Find a few things that are fundamental, and keep going back to them – over and over and over. No matter what the problem is, your solution must be in line with the goals. If your solution is something like, “Climb the Rope” (or your sports equivalent), then you’ll be consistent naturally.
Always default to the basics.
Take Home Lesson for the Athlete
Obviously, if you are not a coach but an athlete, then this stuff still all applies to you. Why? Because you ARE a coach – of yourself!
You are the most important coach that you have. The coach you hire is there to give you advice, to write programs for you, tell you what exercises to do, how to do them, etc. But fundamentally it is you who must decide what you will do and what you won’t do.
You will make the vital decisions daily about how much effort and energy you’ll put into your workouts. Only you can decide if you are going to “try harder” or quit.
My best athletes are the best self-coachers. They take my advice, and they put it into action.
They also know when it’s time to Climb the Rope and get back to basics – which is nearly all the time.
Next time I’ll relay our conversation about how coaches are all liars … and how that’s a GOOD thing!
The Hip Thrust isn’t exactly the best known exercise in most gyms. And that is doubly true in weightlifting and CrossFit clubs. But, don’t think that its lack of popularity is based on some inherent ineptitude on its part. Sometimes good things just can’t get popular without a lot of heavy promotion.
Bret Contreras has been the major pusher of this exercise (see his awesome book on Glute Training) for a few years now and somewhere along the line it worked on me. I tried the Hip Thrust out. I added it to the programs of my lifters. And then something happened: I got converted.
Why the Hip Thrust for Weightlifters?
To say that I love this weirdo exercise would be an understatement. Not only does it have a great name; not only does it look awfully funny to perform in mixed company; but, it WILL make you a better weightlifter.
Why? Because weightlifting is all in the hips. And the Hip Thrust is one primo hip exercise!
There’s a lot of talk about the sport of Olympic weightlifting being a quad-dominated activity. There is truth to this. Our quads are required to be a bit oversized – just take a look at a good weightlifter in their competition spandex!
However, properly performed, the pull on a snatch or clean ends up being finished not so much with the quads, but with the posterior chain. At the end of a snatch you finish by pushing your hips “through”. What that means is that you get a slight hyperextension at the hip-bone via a Powerful Booty Action ™ – squeeze the butt!
You do a hip thrust every time you snatch or clean - literally. The only difference is that you do it while standing and with straight legs rather than sitting/laying with bent legs. As far as your hips are concerned, they are the same motion.
What NOT to Do
What often happens with beginners is that they try to mimic the look of good weightlifters by hyperextending their lower backs so that their body gets into that “banana” position. This is HORRIBLE!!!
Do NOT hyperextend at the lower back. Ever.
The look of that extension happens because weightlifters hyperextend the hip and then extend backwards at the thoracic spine which is built to handle such things. (Watch any video of Caleb Ward or my own lifter Brandon Tovey to see what I mean.) You should be very mobile at the mid spine. But, you don’t want that kind of thing happening at the low back. You WILL hurt yourself. It’s just a matter of time.
The solution is to learn how to properly move your body.
Every beginner in our club starts out learning two key strength moves: The Front Squat and The Hip Thrust. If you can’t properly front squat you’ll never learn to properly clean. And, if you can’t properly Hip Thrust then you’ll never finish your pull correctly, be truly powerful, and not hurt yourself.
(Obviously, some athletes get it right straight out of the gates. They can do a hip thrust motion correctly on the first try. But, that is quite rare, especially among adult lifters.)
My advice is that you Hip Thrust before EVERY Olympic lifting session. You can’t really burn out on this exercise. I’ve tried. You can work up to a “heavy” 3 or 5 reps daily no problem. For quite a while, you aren’t going to use it as a strength builder but as a primer. It is teaching you how to extend the hips fully with your glutes.
Key Points:
- Use the hips/glutes to hyperextend NOT the low back
- Start out trying to get a straight line from the knees to the shoulders (as seen in the video)
- Then … push the hips up by squeezing your butt maximally!
Now, get to flexin’ that booty!
The Video
By the way, in the recording of this video I said a line that I cut out (but might bring back in a blooper real), “You literally hip thrust into a snatch.” And then I started laughing and screwed up the video! … The possibilities for juvenile jokes in this sport are endless – thank God.
Yes, I know, I did this while wearing my ubiquitous cowboy boots + jeans + jewelry combo. I promise I don’t actually wear them when I’m working out! … Most of the time 
There’s a lot of question about what makes someone a beginner, and intermediate, or an advanced lifter. In some sense this question has been answered, especially when we’re talking about young athletes or the progression of new person through the “ranks” of advancement. It isn’t a mystery. But, when’re talking about an adult who is new to Olympic lifting it isn’t as clear anymore.
Steve Jobs is a cult figure. And with his untimely passing that status is only going to rise. Like all great cult figures the man left us with a myriad of great quotes and passages. What is surprising isn’t so much that they are good lines – constructing an interesting turn-of-phrase IS a tough skill, but alone it’s worthless – but, that his words are quite reminiscent of some of the better lines out of the Hagakure (The Book of the Samurai). And they apply surprisingly well to your weightlifting.
One
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Starting with a quote like this is sad in its irony. But, because of that irony, it is even more poignant. I’ve lived by this principle throughout my adult life. It is HARD to seriously contemplate on a daily basis your own death and the inevitable deaths of the people you love the most.
But, if you don’t, it is impossible (in my opinion) to honestly live life with the level of empathy, purpose, and compassion that we say we prize so much. When you are in the gym, it is much easier to take a heavy attempt, push yourself, and not give up if you are able to keep it all in perspective.
You WILL die. The struggles you go through in the gym are a joke compared to the reality of this.
I’ve got another snatch drill for you today. The idea is the same as before in that you will do twice the thing you are trying to work on. Today that something is getting your knees back as you move from the floor to the knee position.
While in the beginning I prefer a lifter to err on the side of staying on their heels the entire way through the pull – which can, unfortunately, lead to them zigzagging the bar around their knees – eventually, you want to be able to ALSO get the shins perpendicular to the ground by the time the bar is at the knee WHILE staying on your heels.
It’s one thing at a time in any type of learning.
If you have been practicing staying on your heels throughout the use of the Fab-5 Snatch Drill, then it may be time to start playing with this one.
Benefits of having shins vertical (Knees back, however you want to say it) at the knee position include:
- Straighter bar path – the “S” curve is made more skinny
- Stronger, more powerful pull – it’s like your are Spring-Loading the Hamstrings before you Explode!
- You work the hammies and booty more – so if you’re doing this simply as an exercise to make you better at other sports, this will help to make your posterior chain more explosive.
- Works exactly the same for the clean!
- You look more Awesome.
Video:
NOTE: Sorry, I should have had Brandon use an empty bar so that his shins and knees were more visible! Oh well, the point still gets across. Live and learn! LOL
How To Hit A PR Everyday By Becoming a Ninja Turtle: A Lesson for Athletes and Coaches
On Monday, six of my lifters hit a total of Nine PR’s (Personal Records) at PDX Weightlifting. Many others matched all-time best PR’s or came close. While that is high, it isn’t at all unusual for us to have days where many PR’s are set all at once. It happens once a week, sometimes more.
While weightlifting is a game of patience and you will have more off days than on, if you aren’t trending toward the positive, if you aren’t breaking records on a “consistent basis” on major lifts, then you are doing something wrong.
As ironic as it sounds, I’m about to show you (in 2 steps) how to hit more PR’s by acting more like a beach-bum Ninja Turtle! Kowabunga, dude.
