Retrenchment Part II
21 December 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
As I mentioned on Monday, after our sixty day anniversary Kirk Karwoski and I revamped the Cat Herds training and nutritional approach across the board in order to tweak progress. The nutritional approach and winter cardio adjustment will be gone into depth next week. When we turned our attention to the progressive resistance portion of the Purposefully Primitive fitness triad, we decided to drastically crank back the weight training poundage, up the repetitions and really hone in on the technical aspects of the three lifts. The only weight exercises we perform are squats, bench presses and deadlifts. This is the single most controversial aspect of our Obesity Solution program: the three lifts are done three times a week, one after another for three sets. It takes thirty minutes and no other exercises are performed. For the first sixty days everyone made progress every session in every lift. No big deal for untrained individuals learning a new trade under expert guidance Im quite sure if youd never driven a racecar and suddenly were to study stock car racing under Richard Petty for sixty straight days youd get pretty good, relatively speaking, pretty fast. The progress bar graph for each of the five participants went straight upward. Kirk and I knew that this couldnt last so rather than actually encounter the inevitable plateau we made changes a few steps before inertia actually occurredreduce poundage, retrench, stress technique, technique, technique and lets start a second slow spiral upward. Monday we talked about the squat subtleties we instituted and today well finish up by going into the finer points of bench pressing and deadlifting.
Bench Press: So many new wrinkles were incorporated that its hard to know where to start…we instituted a pause with a verbal, press! command on every rep of every set. Six rep sets were used and will be for the next three weeks. Pause benching is a learned skill: you lower slowly and precisely, stop the barbell, listen and when you hear a verbal command react explosively. The pause procedure alone reduces training poundage by 20-25% when compared to a standard touch-and-go bench press. The touch point, where the bar contacts the chest before being fired upward, was evaluated for each individual and consistency stressed. Kirk and I insist on a low touch point, more towards the feet than the neck: almost every bench presser touches too close to the neck and this forces the press to be done from a disadvantageous leverage position. By touching lower on the sternum you have room to work. We had them squeeze their shoulder blades together in order to maximize chest height, improve leverage and bring more pectoral into the action. Squeezing the shoulder blades together was combined with a spinal arch. All our lifters use a wide grip and combined with an arch, a maximally inhaled chest and squeezed-together blades radically shortens the distance the bar need be pushed. The final technical point was foot placement and leg drive: instability, a reoccurring problem manifest as wobbling side to side on the bench as the reps are done, was eliminated by insisting that the lifter push down hard throughout the set. We tried to set the feet forward and incorporate a technical subtlety that required the lifter push down harder every time they heard press! This sent a shock-wave jolt upward through the torso and helped in the initial burst off the chest. It all sounds complicated but wed concentrate on one aspect per session and this gradual implementation worked well. With another five weeks to concentrate on these bench tactics the Herd should become bench technicians par excellence.
Deadlift: Here is a seemingly easy lift bend down, grab the barbell, stand up what could be easier? In reality the deadlift is incredibly complex and bio-mechanically difficult. We have four conventional deadlifters and one sumo style deadlifter. The properly executed deadlift culminates in having everything arrive at once. What does this mean? Typically the legs straighten first and this leaves the back to power itself erect. If the lift is done properly legs and back lock out simultaneously. Visually, this is the easiest way to see if the lift is being done properly. Legs are more powerful than hip and erectors and the mind sends a subconscious signal to the legs, Hey legs, lets push through to completion: lock the legs out and lets be done with our portion of this task; lets take what we can as soon as we can and as quick as we can and be done with it. This literally is taking the path of least resistance. In almost every case we have to work at either speeding up the back as it moves towards completion or slow down the legs as they approach lockout. Usually by being made aware of the problem and receiving a verbal command as the lift is happening this tendency to lock the legs out prematurely can be overcome. Most problems can be corrected before they occur by executing a proper launch. The lifter takes a narrow stance if they are a conventional puller and uses a narrow grip: the wider the grip the lower the start position the lifter must assume. I tell them to use a takeoff tactic first taught me by Mark Chaillet (880 deadlift weighing 269) Put upwards exerting a 50% pull on the bar - then launch it! If you are deadlifting 100-pounds we avoid going from zero upward pull to 100-pounds of upward pull needed to launch the weight. Instead, apply 50-pounds of upward pressure, enough to engage and tense all muscles then launch the weight by pushing down hard with the feet to break the barbell from the floor. Going from 0 to 100 results in an initial jerk that can cause injury to the biceps and inevitably causes the hips to shoot upward as the legs seek to straighten in order to improve their leverage. The legs tell the back muscles, The hell with you, were going to take care of our part of the deal and leave you to fend for yourself. We have the deadlifters pick out that spot on the ceiling and keep their eyes glued on it throughout the set. In addition, as each rep is lowered, it is lowered slowly and precisely: great tension is built in all muscles as we lower slowly, kiss the platform so lightly the plates make little if any noise, then explode the bar upward. Bad deadlifters lower without any tension, crash the weights on the floor and try and jerk the next rep upward. Good deadlifters lower slowly and precisely and come up explosively. And everything arrives at lockout at the same time.
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