When I was younger, still very natural, and still very underdeveloped, I often found myself completely dismissing the opinions, takes, and general experience of enhanced athletes. In some respects, I was absolutely right to do so… but, overall, I was missing the point. Their information wasn’t “bad” or even necessarily “wrong” — it just often… Read More »
There is nothing more demotivating to the powerlifter than the persistent feeling that they aren’t making progress and there is nothing more destructive to your literal progress than getting hurt. An injury that is serious enough in nature can potentially prevent you from being able to train one, or more, of the lifts. If you… Read More »
One of the more intriguing phenomenons in powerlifting circles is “poverty bench”. Poverty bench simply refers to an individual whose bench strength is largely out of line with their lowerbody strength. This is actually more common than you’d think. At the end of the day, there is really only one cause of poverty bench press… Read More »
If I had to pick one “injury” that is by far the most common among all the powerlifters that I’ve worked with, it would easily be some kind of tendinitis from low bar squatting. Whether that manifests as shoulder pain, bicep pain, or elbow pain, this happens to seemingly every single powerlifter in existence at some… Read More »
As most of you should know, wrist straps, not to be confused with wrist wraps, are not allowed at powerlifting competitions. Does that mean you should NEVER use lifting straps in your training? Well, no, not exactly. If you’d rather watch than read: Hand Injuries and Hand Pain One of the primary reasons to… Read More »
Depending on how you view such things, Ed Coan is perhaps the best deadlifter of all-time. His deadlift success is so outstanding that the “Ed Coan Deadlift Program”, which he didn’t even write, is one of the most popular routines of all-time. That said, the thing about Ed’s deadlifts that perhaps sparks more interest than… Read More »
One of the great questions that I was asked recently is how one should go about the process of trying to change to a new powerlifting technique. For example, maybe you want to shift from high bar squatting to low bar squatting or maybe you want to try out sumo deadlifting for a time. Now,… Read More »
One of the oldest and most controversial topics in terms of lifting weights is whether or not you will get hurt from rounding your back when you deadlift. Opinions tend to run the gamut. You’ll hear people suggesting that you instantly reset the weights you’re working with whenever you get even the smallest hint of… Read More »
The recent trend on all of my training videos is to make some sort of comment about my bench arch. People want to know what my secret is to having such a big arch. Well, in this article, I’m going to reveal what I believe to be the secret to a big bench arch. If you’d… Read More »
In powerlifting, there is one number that is paramount above all others: The Total. One of the most important, and yet forgotten, aspects of technique selection for each movement is not only how it will affect that lift, but how it will affect your total. For example, many people claim that benching with a big… Read More »
I participate in several powerlifting forums and one of the ever-controversial topics that has come up quite a bit lately is high bar vs. low bar squats. Opinions range from “anything can work, just gotta find what works for you, brah” (the powerlifting broscientist) to “low bar is universally better for every single application, ever”… Read More »
Before we get started, I’d like to say that I drew heavily from the concepts I learned in Starting Strength to create this material. While Starting Strengthis not a book about powerlifting, it contains more than 300 pages of biomechanical analysis directly relevant to the powerlifts. If you grasp this knowledge, you will begin to… Read More »
I’ve mentioned this at the beginning of every article in this series and I’ll continue to do so here: I drew heavily from Starting Strength to create this material. If you enjoy biomechanical analysis, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Starting Strength. There is literally no other book in existence that… Read More »
I have to make it abundantly clear that many of the biomechanical principles and physics applications in this article are derived from Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength. If you enjoy discussions on leverage and optimizing technique, do yourself a favor and grab a copy of the book. Of the three powerlifts, the conventional version of the… Read More »