Q&A – 6

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Happy PR Friday to you, sir. Or madame. Whatever. Post your PRs and training updates to the comments. Last week I asked what your least favorite lift was, and it seems that most of you hate front squats.
What is your biggest muscular weakness?

NOTaFlamingTrollCLown Says:

@ JUSTIN
i already fixed grip width thanks to you and my press shot up after being stalled @ 165 3×5 for a couple months so THANK YOU! yes i always have to remind myself to get under the bar.

This wasn’t really a question, but I just thought I’d point out how a proper grip on the press makes it mechanically efficient and properly utilizes the musculature of the triceps and shoulders.

Terrible Says:

I have stupid-long femurs and a short torso. Conventional DL feels the strongest, but I have to pull around my knees which is definitely not ideal (and makes any set longer than 1 rep a mess). I’ve pulled sumo for ~1 year as (obviously) sumo reduces the impact of femur length.

I still just don’t feel right pulling sumo. Could I theoretically make up for less-than-ideal anthropometry by having very good hip mobility (ie, a large amount of external rotation to get my knees out of the way)? Or would the amount of external rotation required be too hard on the hips?

6’2”, 220 lbs., sumo 1RM around 440 lbs., conventional 1RM unknown

Dear Terrible,

You won’t need to “pull around your knees” in a mechanically sound starting position that is followed by “pushing the floor away”. Methinks your butt is too low and stance potentially wide (see Q&A-4 for stance info). If you were able to get your knees out a bit with your shoulders slightly in front of the bar (putting your scapulae over the bar), then push the floor away, then you won’t have this “KNEES KNEES KNEES” business. Long femurs usually means long arms, so you could get by with a grip that is a finger width or so outside of the inside rings (the rings where the knurling starts in the center of the bar). The wider grip would allow your knees to shove out a bit more.

Keep in mind your musculature won’t currently be adapted to lift heavy weight well with the conventional technique if you’ve been doing sumo. In fact, I’d wager you have a hamstring weakness. But, like I said in the reply to your comment, send a video and I can say things definitively.

echo Says:

A question for Justin: a quick wikipeida WR comparison between the classes shows that the heavier the class the lower the total kg:class kg ratio. For example – the 56kg class shows a total that is 5.44 times the lifters body weight, but the 105kg class is 4.15. Why does this happen? Is it because the lower weight classes are shorter and don’t have to move the weight as far?

Dear echo,

There is not a direct correlation with body weight and strength among a population of lifters. There still is a correlation, but it isn’t linear. As with any physical attribute, there are diminishing returns. It’s just what happens. For example, my Facebook friend Klokov went 196/232 for a 428 total. If it were possible to replicate the 5.44xBW total of the 56kg class, that would mean about a 570 total. If his snatch were 84% of his clean and jerk (like in the WWC a few days ago), that would result in him snatching 260 and clean and jerking 310 to make a 570 total. Numerically we can see that this isn’t possible given that 260 is near the clean and jerk WR.

In any case, how many times the BW a lifter can lift is irrelevant since absolute weight is what matters. And even when it does — like in the Sinclair formula — larger amounts of musculature matter since Akkaev and Klokov (105kg lifters) placed 2nd and 3rd respectively in the Sinclair formula for the WWC.

Paul Sousa, Movember team member (and will be watching Twilight to raise money for Movember…), asks on the Facebook page:

Justin, for someone training 2 days per week who wants to try and linearly progress on press and bench, would going to 5×5 sets across be helpful? Just wondering if the bump in volume would offset the reduced frequency.

Paul has decreased his training frequency cause he’s about to be a daddy. I’m not a huge fan of using 5x5s in general, but especially when that lift is only done once a week. The 5×5 inherently uses a low percentage of the 1RM, and creeping it up over time would primarily get someone adapted to lower percentage, high volume lifting. Instead, I’d suggest using one week of an ascending 3×5 and a second week of an ascending 3×3. The bench and press, especially the press, respond well to encountering some heavier weights. In fact, this is the strategy I’ve used for at least 8 months, and I’ve PR’d at 350 on the bench and 240 on the press (with 250 in reach, methinks, but I’m currently focusing on the push-press).

Ascending sets will let you hit a higher weight on the third set, yet it should be done systematically. I suggest using 10 pound jumps as it will allow for more weight on the third compared to only increasing by 5 pounds (15 would be too large, especially on press). If you have a weak press, 10 pounds would be a greater percentage of your lift, so you could always use 7 or 5 pound jumps. I also like 10 pound jumps on the ascending 3×3.

The good thing about this set up is that every 5 or 7 weeks you could always single on up. It’s a way to test the 1RM (if you want), but it also provides an extremely high percentage stress that usually resonates well when going back to the regular press sets. I never systematically used singles; whenever I got into PR territory with the top triple or set of five, I would try a single. Earlier this year I was only hitting around 215 for a triple, and then I used it for a set of five before attempting the 240 press (previous PR was 230). I typically pressed Monday, benched Wednesday, and use weighted dips on Friday (after sn/cj, or something like that).

I write more about this method in the Texas Method: Part 2 e-book that is almost done (I finished writing the last chapter yesterday), so be on the lookout for that.

EVERYONE asks:

What silly things are all of you doing to raise money for Movember?

Dear EVERYONE,

Several of us will be doing something to raise money and reach our goal of $5,000. I will be doing one clean and jerk for every $50 raised (starting with the total on Wednesday morning) at the end of the month, Stroup is going to be deadlifting or something fucking stupid, Cloud is going to be abiding, and Paul Sousa is gonna be watching Twilight (I would never agree to that shit). I really don’t know the specifics despite the fact that Stroup, Cloud, Brent, Briskin, and I chatted for two hours the other night. Tomorrow I’ll put up a post clarifying what we’ll be doing so you know where your donation money is going.

Mark Motherfucking Marotta asks via telepathy:

I’ve been thinking about using snatch grip for my DE Deadlifts for the increased R.O.M. Is this stupid, smart or are you indifferent?

Dear the Mark,

I know that you are a powerlifter, so the first thing that comes to mind is, “How will these benefit you more than regular speed deadlifts?” You’ll use less weight with abnormal mechanics. The good thing with how I would normally program someone with intermediate deadlifting programming is that they pull a full ROM deadlift 3 times a month (with the other week being rack pulls, most likely) and that’s accomplished with speed pulling — more on this in Texas Method Part 2 e-book.

If you are keen to try it, then let me know how it goes. If I were coaching you I’d have you work with regular speed pulls, emphasizing the fast lockout (after the knees) as it’s more applicable. I’d consider snatch grip stuff worthy of a try for a powerlifter later in their advancement, if at all. This doesn’t mean they won’t be beneficial, but after my analysis, I’d rather you use conventional style.

All right, that’s good for today. I’ll see you guys on the field.

64 thoughts on “Q&A – 6”

  6. @Welyn, I’ve struggled with something similar for a while now. I lose tension in the bottom of the squat and tip forward. Whenever it happens my weight is on my toes. I fixed it recently by taking a few sessions and REALLY focusing on sitting back. Like exagerating it on the descent, training with a relatively limited range of motion until my hamstrings are super stretched. After a few sessions and some more weight I could no longer get that tension in the hamstrings but I’d essentially coached myself into keeping my weight back and I’ve had nothing but prs to show for it.

    Squat prs this week:
    365×5 (40# 5rm pr)
    385×2 (never had 385 on my back before)
    330×10 (10rm pr)

    My weakness is my skeleton. It likes to inflame itself and slow me down.

  7. Squat: 365 4×1; 290 5×3–PR
    Bench: 275 4×1; 220 5×3–PR
    OHP: 155 4×1; 125 5×3–PR
    Deadlift: 405 7×1; 325 5×3
    Row: 220 4, 4, 3

    Progress continues on the Hepburn program. I really enjoy it, especially now that I’ve gotten to reset back to doing fewer reps. Plantar fasciitis pain has returned with some severity; I had to skip power cleans on Friday because I could hardly walk. I suppose that means my greatest weakness is my plantar fascia tendon and/or calf/heal flexibility. For now I’m stretching, golf ball rolling it, icing and resting but I’m probably going to have to get prednisone injections into the afflicted tendon again. Those things certainly build character. Came closer to killing Bambi’s father than ever before yesterday but alas he was out of bow range.

  8. @dschmale
    Thanks for the advice, I know the feeling exactly of tipping forward. I usually sit more down into the squat because I squat high bar and when I sit back into the squat it hurts my lower back. So do you mean just use the half squats with sitting back as a stretch or do you squat low bar?

  9. There’s a simpler answer to echo’s question, and one thing noel didn’t get quite right. The reason the totals for bigger lifters are a smaller multiple of their body weight is the same basic physical law that effects everything from buildings to animals or anything else you care to apply force to or with. Strength, whether of a flexing steel beam, or a contracting muscle, is a function of its cross section, while its mass is a function of its volume. Cross section is a squared function, and volume is a cubic function- so mass increases faster than cross sectional area as a critter (or anything else) get bigger, and so smaller things will always be have greater relative strength, whether it’s a person or a rock. If a man is a million times heavier than an ant, he will only be (everything else being equal) one million to the two-thirds power stronger, or 10,000 times. It’s why an spindly ant can lift fifty times its body weight and a stout elephant would probably collapse under the weight of another- or for that matter, why ants can get by being spindly and elephants have to have pillars for legs.

    Of course, not everything is precisely equal. If you have a fixed weight of non-force producing gut and bone, and you improve the ratio of stuff that contracts to stuff that doesn’t by adding muscle mass, you can thus get both heavier and relatively stronger, and you can improve the mechanical advantage around a joint, and the biochemical and neural properties of muscle are of course trainable, and thus there are heavy men that can jump and rock climb and have a billion pullups and little girls that can put more weight over their head and so forth, and some athletic tasks, like jumping and climbing, are dependent on force generated per unit of opposing force (namely, your weight) and others, like moving a rock, care only for the amount of force you can generate, bodyweight be damned. But as you can see in those world record ratios, that one scaling law always wins in the biggest picture.

    Good comment; thanks for furthering the discussion.

    –Justin

  11. @welyn, I squat low bar. I squatted high bar for a time because it allowed me to stay more upright but if you’re forward, you’re forward. Sitting back needs to happen in a high bar squat too. I didn’t quarter/half squat so much, depth was close to legit when the weights went up. The focus was on really feeling a stretch in the hamstrings. That’s probably going to be difficult to do in the high bar position so, if you insist on high bar, just make sure your staying back, maybe even so far that you’re slightly unstable when you practice. I had a disc herniation last year so I know about low back pain. I’d bet that any pain that you’re experiencing is not from the low bar position itself as from that good morning that’s taking place. That would probably go away with some work on sitting back. Get it on film too. I thought I was tipping crazy far forward but it wasn’t really that bad. When I got over that fear of the good morning I was more confident and powerful and less distracted. Hope that helps some.

  12. To the question about why a smaller lifter will lift more per pound of bodyweight, this is because increases of volume increase as a cube of Linear size, but cross section only increases as a square of Linear size.

    So because in the comparison between two differently sized lifters the weight or weight class directly relate to volume, and strength is directly related to the cross section of the muscle (not the volume), it is simple physics that strength per pound of bodyweight will always decrease as the weight classes go up.

    This is why some insects can lift 800 times their bodyweight and some fleas can jump 3 feet, many times their height. If you magically scaled a human being down to 1 inch high, he could do similar thing. If you magically scaled an ape up to 1000 times normal size, he would probably be too weak proportional to his bodyweight to even walk.

    Kind of takes the fun out of monster movies and “Honey I Shrunk the kids”, doesn’t it?

    Thanks Glenn.

    –Justin

  13. PR’s – Ring pullups 3×3 w/+50lbs
    I weighed more than 150# for the first time in months.
    Also taught myself to transition from and L-sit to fully inverted (handstand) on the rings. Super fun.

    @Justin, Noel, kasei-
    Thank you all for your input. Justin originally summed it up as diminishing returns, and you two added some great detail to back him up. Discussions like this are what makes this site so valuable.

    ‘I’ve got something in my teeth,
    can you get it out for me?
    That’s Freakin’ Teamwork!’

    When it comes down to it, no one really cares about how much of your bodyweight was lifted. Well, the little guys like me do. But that’s mainly because I don’t lift as much as the bigger guys, and I need something to cling to. And anyways, all things being equal, I am supposed to be capable of lifting a higher BW%, and bigger guys are supposed to be capable of higher absolute numbers. So it’s not like I’m ‘beating’ the bigger guys at the x%BW game anyway…

    I’ll just keep focusing on getting myself stronger and leave it at that.
    Muscular weakness = triceps. Switched up my press style a la Justin’s press post is helping though.

  14. @glennpendlay – we must have been typing at the same time, thank you as well for the input.
    ‘60000lb ape found in Central Park today, we don’t know how he got here, but he’s having trouble rolling over.’
    Also, you just ruined my favorite Rick Moranis movie series. Thanks.

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