It’s no secret that a big upper back is important for being strong at just about anything. And I feel like it’s a strength training rite of passage when you realize that in order to build a big bench press, you need to train your upper back like there’s no tomorrow. In Bench Like A …
At our Optimizing the Big 3 seminar this past weekend, we spent a good chunk of our lecture section talking about training philosophy and program design. When the topic of when to use a deload week came up, people had lots of questions. It got me thinking that my philosophy on deloading has changed a …
What if I told you that to become a better powerlifter, you should spend less time building muscle and take more time to build confidence? If you’ve been a powerlifter for any appreciable time, you’ve likely competed and fell short of your goals. It’s also likely that at some point during that subpar meet, your confidence …
God bless the internet. It gives everyone a platform to voice their opinion, whether others want to hear it or not. Particularly in the world of powerlifting, it provides plenty of opportunities to give unsolicited advice to other lifters about techinque. Few things bring out the keyboard warriors like the bench press arch. Post a video …
The Bench Press Arch: 4 Reasons Why You SHOULD Use It Read More »
The bench press likes to stall hard and fast more than any of the other big barbell lifts. There’s less muscle mass involved during the bench compared to the squat or deadlift, so there’s less room for technical error and less ability to “muscle” through heavy weights. A bench press plateau can take months or …
Power development for powerlifters sounds pretty redundant. I mean, they’ve got “power” in their name so they must be pretty powerful, right? Actually, powerlifters have the most deceiving title in all of strength sports. Strongmen are indeed strong and weightlifters do indeed lift weights, but by definition, powerlifters are NOT powerful. That’s because power requires …
Power Development for Powerlifters: 3 Underutilized Methods Read More »
I used to think the bench press lockout was something raw lifters didn’t need to train. If you lifted raw and you missed at lockout, it was because you messed up something in your setup. Or so I thought. While the geared lifters of the late 90’s and early 2000’s were preaching nothing but triceps to …
Nearly every female lifter I’ve ever coached has come to me with the same goal: hit a 300 pound deadlift. Along with Strength House founder Greg Robins, we’ve had the pleasure of coaching some incredibly strong ladies, many of whom have achieved their 300 pound deadlift and beyond. I asked some of these ladies to list …
Women’s Powerlifting Roundtable: Building a 300 Pound Deadlift Read More »
If there’s one thing that great lifters have in common, it’s the ability to attack the barbell with controlled violence. This lost art of focused aggression is often what separates the pretty strong from the insanely strong. Watch some of the best lifters in the world today, like Eric Lilliebridge, Dmitry Klokov and Jen Thompson, and …
The squat may be the king of all lower body exercises, but if you’ve ever squatted heavy, you know that it’s extremely taxing on the upper body too. So taxing, in fact, that many people experience shoulder pain during squats at one point or another. That nagging feeling in the front of your shoulder makes it …
