Making your strong points...stronger II - Strong from the bottom up

My soapbox on "weak point" training and the bullshit that surrounds it, is that it shouldn't be about training muscles but movement patterns.  And that movement pattern has to essentially be the movement itself or strengthen the pattern at the weakest position.  This is why doing more work on the main lift is generally the best "assistance" work.  Not only that, if you are going to gear your training towards getting stronger and overcoming weaknesses, train them in the least favorable positions.  This is also why I don't call this style of training "weak point" training because that particular term has become focused around making muscle groups stronger for the most part.  And, most people have no idea how to train weak points.

Geared powerlifting methodologies towards training the top part of the movement is generally a complete waste of time for raw guys.  Maximizing top portions of a lift are great for guys who wear supportive equipment that gets you out of the hole or through natural sticking points.  However for guys who don't wear it, it's fairly useless.  Above parallel box squats, 3-5 board presses, etc.  Not really good for anything as far as the majority of raw lifters are concerned.

And let's not get into the whole "CNS" bullshit.  You can't "train your CNS" nor is your CNS concerned with lifting weights.  I've written plenty about this before.  It's "bro science", i.e. bullshit.

The theory behind this version of weak point training is, you need to train these portions of the movement because it makes you stronger in them.  For example I see raw guys doing board presses to strengthen their lockout. 

Why?

The majority of guys miss a bench prior to lock out.  So then they say "well I use a 1-board or 2-board to strengthen that area."  

This misses the mark too.  Because of the myotatic reflex when you lower to a board, you're still benefiting from the reflex action in that range.  The range you should be worried about getting stronger in, is right there at the chest, the start of the movement.  The stronger you are off the CHEST, means the more force you will be able to apply through the rest of the range of motion.  In other words, you overcome the sticking point because you are stronger at the area that generates the most momentum to overcome the worst leverage point, i.e. where the transition from chest to triceps take over and then the lockout.  If you can't generate enough momentum for the triceps to finish the movement, it won't matter how strong your lockout is, you will still fail.  

Don't think so?

Ever had someone spot you on bench, and as the weight slows and you know you aren't going to make the lift?  Do they have to pull on the bar hard for you to finish, or can they can do something as little as touch the bar with a finger and you can finish the lockout?  Generally it's the latter.  That slight amount of extra momentum is all that was required.  How much was it?  Not much.  But without that momentum you fail to make the lift.  So generating more force from the very bottom of the lift with greater velocity is what actually powers you through the "sticking points" or "weak points".  Not training at the actual "weak point" itself, like the lockout or training the lockout itself.  

The only caveat with this is the deadlift.  With the deadlift, there is very little myotatic reflex because you are pulling from a dead stop obviously.  Second, when you work the deadlift from angles below the knee, like at mid-shin when you pull off of blocks, the angle of the knee, back, and hip are less favorable than when pulling a regular deadlift off the floor.  This is why for a lot of people they actually pull less weight at the mid-shin height than from the floor.  Pulling right below the knee puts the body back into a more favorable position, and most guys can pull more from there than they can from mid-shin or off the floor.  But that's still a good area to pull from.

A lot of guys think that pulling off of a deficit will immediately carry over to pulling from the floor.  They are generally surprised when it doesn't happen right away.  I found that I was able to get a lot of squatting type motion involved in pulling off of a box, i.e. standing on it.  So when I went back to the floor, the movement felt awkward and I got very little out of it.  I wasn't any stronger in my regular deadlift.

When I pulled from heights where the weight felt more "dead", like at mid-shin, I got immediate carryover to my floor pulls.  Again, the harder the assistance movement was, the easier the main movement became.  The more force you can generate from the hardest portion of the movement, the easier you will glide through the "weak points".

Essentially, you just have to get stronger.  There are no short cuts, no weak point training, no shit like that.  You just have to get stronger in do it with specific means in mind.  Specificity will always reign king no matter what anyone tells you, so make sure when you train to get stronger in the hardest portion of the lift, you use the lift itself or a variation that makes it harder from the start.

Squats -
Squats
Pause Squats

Bench -
Bench
Paused Bench

T-Shirt Benches - I stole this from Bill Gillespie.  Bring the bar down slowly and touch your t-shirt with the bar as lightly as possible.  Then press it back up fast.  You should barely graze your t-shirt.  This will make you work hard off the chest.

Cambered Bar Benches

Deadlifts -
Deadlifts
Block Deadlifts and all pulls below the knees

You notice that the main lifts are listed first?  That's because they should always be the staple, no matter what.  The work you do after that should be enough to strengthen the main lift.  That's it.  That's all.  2 sets of pause squats for 3-5 reps after 8-10 sets of squatting should be enough.  If you want to run a cycle of pause squats only, make it a max of 4 weeks or so.  I've done this with good results.

For bench, always pause the first rep.  Then as your back off sets do 2-3 sets of 5 pausing every rep.  The next week do the cambered bar for 2x5, then the next week do the t-shirt benches for 2-3x5.  Rotate back to the paused benches for 2-3 sets of 5 the next week.

For deads I would pull from a specific height after your regular pulls, or alternate them out.  So pull from the floor for all of your main sets, then pull from a height for 2 sets of 5-8 following that.  Or pull from the floor one week, then from mid-shin or right below the knee the next.  Scott Yard has figured this out to a science.

That's it.  Yes it works.  It's simple and that's why it works.  You don't need special bars or chains or bands or foam or any shit like that.  Train the main lift in a way that makes it harder than the competition lift.  Get strong as a Cape Buffalo in those areas.  Then the main lift is cake.  And then, you can have your cake and lift it too.

:::ba donk splash!:::

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