How I Became a Powerlifting Coach
By Josh Rohr

I had never really considered the possibility of personal training and helping people as a profession. I grew up on a dairy farm in a small town in Northeast Ohio, working in the barns before school in -10 degree weather during the winters. I guess I always just figured that I would be a farmer when I got older.
My freshmen year of high school I really got interested in football, mostly because I saw the guys in the weight room working out and noticed how big and strong they were. My sophomore year, I decided to play football for the first time. I was way behind the learning curve but I loved it. I learned a lot about the game and myself. I also learned a lot about weight training and I started learning some of the things I had been doing wrong. Read more…

 

Resetting Expectations
By Mike Tuchscherer

A while back, I went to go see the movie “Safehouse” with Denzel Washington. Something you should know about me is that I can be a bit picky about movies sometimes. I like movies that have a strong theme. Don’t just blow stuff up and use cool special effects – I’m a sucker for a really great story. Or at least a character that HAS character.

So when I first saw “Safehouse”, I thought it was okay. It seemed like a fun movie to watch, but it lacked the compelling theme that I really enjoy at movies. Regardless, something about it kept turning over in my head for a while. And probably a week after seeing the movie, I was finally able to put my finger on it.

Denzel’s character was obviously a great spy. One would imagine that he was one of the best. But if you watch what he does at key points in the movie, it’s not his ability to manipulate people or his tradecraft that makes him so tough to catch. It’s his ability to immediately accept the circumstances around him and make the best decision of his available options.

Read more…

Pendulums swing to and fro. That’s what pendulums do. I see another pendulum swinging lately and this one has to do with exercise specificity. Not long ago, the pendulum was as far away from specificity as it gets. Lots of lifters and popular writers talked about what assistance exercises drove their lifts the most. In powerlifting, you had guys who never actually trained the contest lifts, yet did all manner of other lifts with varying degrees of non-specificity. I’ll admit that at one time I bought into this, but I’m happy to say I was impressionable at the time and have since grown out of it.

Contrast that with what we see growing in popularity over the last couple of years. There has been a resurgent popularity in the SAID principle (specific adaptation to imposed demands). By in large I would say this is a very good thing, but like all things it can be taken too far. Some lifters are even ahead of this current trend and train only in hyper-specific ways (for example, ONLY perform their contest lifts and perform them using extreme loads at all times). The pendulum is swinging in this direction more, so I expect this to grow even more in popularity before it stops.

Read more…

A very good friend of mine recently asked me an interesting question. What does it take to develop a champion athlete?

I have given this question a lot of thought recently. Although it seems like a very big question, it might not be quite as big as I first thought. At first, I thought it would depend a great deal on the athlete’s natural abilities, their training age, and so on. But as I thought about things more and more, I realized that the answer for pretty much any individual is the same.
The coaching world – or at least the small segment of the coaching world in which I am involved – is undergoing somewhat of a paradigm shift. My thoughts have shifted quite a bit too. But in lots of ways, I have come back to where I started. Allow me to explain…

I was a strong kid in high school. As a freshman, I was above average. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had broken all my school’s lifting records. Some by a lot. Not only that, but I was the strongest high school student that myself or any of my friends knew. I’m not saying that I was the strongest ever. I probably wasn’t the strongest in the state. But in the context of my small-ish high school and rural region, I was a “freak of nature”.

Some of the guys on my team that were not-so-strong would often bring up “genetics”. That is to say, the reason I was so strong was because I was born with some genetic gift that allowed me to excel beyond what they could ever hope to do. That used to make me very angry because I knew there was more to it than that, but at the time I don’t know that I could articulate what it was. But now I can. You see, by the time I was a senior in high school, I had already been lifting weights for six years. That’s 150% of the time that most kids my age had been lifting. And even before that, I had probably a year to two years of bodyweight training. I didn’t take summers off like many others. I didn’t stop lifting in the “in-season” either. I was a one-sport athlete (football), so I had a very long “off season” in which I considered myself an in-season Powerlifter. I thought about lifting weights, practiced my technique, read about lifting weights, etc.

My point is that there was literally tons of work that went into my performance at the time. And at this point in my career, there’s even more work still. I was happily obsessed with lifting weights for years and still am to a large extent. Getting muscular and strong has been something I am passionate about and that passion has provided near-endless motivation for training, researching, experimenting, visualizing, and so on. Are there some genetic gifts that I possess that make it so these efforts are more fruitful for me than they are for others? Perhaps. But there’s no way to tell for sure and there’s not much I or anyone else can do about that. I can tell you that there is a ton of hard work that goes into it. It’s a level of work that many are not interested in doing. And that’s okay. I’m not placing myself on a pedestal because I’m obsessed with strength. It doesn’t make me better than anyone. In fact, outside the Iron Sport culture itself, it’s probably kind of odd. But there is a deeper explanation for my Powerlifting success than innate talent.

Part of this paradigm shift that I was referring to is a resurgent emphasis on the hard work required to become an elite athlete. We’ve always known that hard work was required, but I think it’s only been more recently that we’re learning just how much is required. In his outstanding book “Outliers”, Malcom Gladwell makes the case that to achieve mastery at any activity seemingly without exception, it takes about 10,000 hours of dedicated practice. Whether you want to be a master chess player, a master violinist, or a master Powerlifter, it takes about 10,000 hours of practice. That is, time spent practicing with the express intent to get better.

Ten thousand hours is a big number, so let’s break that down a bit. If you practiced two hours a day every single day with no days off, it would take you over 13 years to reach the 10,000 hour mark. What about if you do the more conventional 1.5 hours a day for 3 days per week? Well then it will take you about 42 years. In other words, you’re never going to get to the elite levels by being a recreational athlete. In fact, the earlier start you get, the better off you’ll be.

I’ve listened to speakers at seminars talk about how this applies to sports like hockey, basketball, etc. They have found that for all the strength coaching, cone drills, and medicine ball exercises we have invented, the best hockey players still play hockey more than their peers. Same with other sports too. Then you look at groups like Bulgarian weightlifters and you start to see a pervasive trend – lots and lots of practice. Then more practice. During one presentation, Jed Smith said, “Individuals that become professional athletes practiced on their own an average of twice as much as their teammates that did not make it.” That’s in addition to normal team practices.

The irony is that to reach the 10,000 hour mark, you don’t only need a lot of time practicing. In many sports you also need an early start if you are to get to the 10,000 hours at an age where you can grab other opportunities. If you practice 3 hours a day, 7 days a week (total of 21 hours per week), it will take you about 10 years to achieve mastery. Say you are trying to become a professional basketball player. If you don’t start playing seriously until you are 12 years old, then you only play 21 hours per week, you won’t reach 10,000 hours until you are 22 years old. By that time, you are probably not going to get to play on a major college basketball team because you’re too old and your opportunities for making it to the pros are greatly reduced. You could play more than 21 hours per week. That would help you get there faster, but it does have a cost.

One case study of how lots of practice can make up for lost time is the story of another lifter that I know. I’ll spare his name from this story though. This guy was a world class powerlifter. Then he got an itch to try his hand at weightlifting. He wanted to go to the Olympics. After making the switch, he rocketed to the top ranks of his weight class relatively quickly. At first, I chalked up his meteoric rise in part as natural born talent and also as carry-over strength from his Powerlifting days. But this was not the whole of it. When he converted to weightlifting, he became obsessed. Or dedicated, depending on how you see it. A friend of mine that knew him personally told me that the lifter trained 11 or more times per week. I’m not talking about dragging a sled or doing easy stuff. I’m talking about serious weightlifting workouts. Dedicated practice. And between those workouts, you would often see him miming his snatch technique and other practice. So even when he wasn’t training, he was thinking about getting better. And after leaving the gym and heading home for the day, he would watch videos of weightlifters and do visualization drills for hours. His whole life was aimed at the goal of competing in the Olympics. And the result of all that time spent was a very fast rise in skill for a lifter who was already kind of old to be starting Olympic-hopeful weightlifting.

Of course this starts to get into some concerning areas. Who can maintain that kind of workload without burning out? Is it healthy to maintain that kind of single-minded obsession? I think this is where the conversation turns back to genetics. Or at the very least, to some other personality factors that are perhaps beyond the control of an individual. Clearly the people that can maintain the workloads required to meet their 10,000 hour mark are passionate about what they do. If they were not, then they wouldn’t put that kind of time in or at the very least, they wouldn’t be focused on getting better. So passion really becomes the lynchpin on which the whole idea of working toward mastery hinges. Where does passion come from?
Perhaps here is where we get to a more significant genetic cause. But passion for a certain activity is also just as likely to come from some sort of socio-cultural part of our upbringing. Using myself as an example, I obviously value strength. Perhaps my value of strength and subsequent passion for it is tied to my genetics. Perhaps it’s part of the way I was raised. But either way, I don’t think it’s something that can be faked.

I know a lot of people who have passion for what they do. Perhaps they don’t have the passion that my weightlifter friend has, and that’s okay. I’m not sure it takes that level of single-minded-ness. But it takes enough passion that you’re willing to put in the work. I’m sure that genetics play a role at some level. Even though some genes can be turned on and off, there is likely little that can be done about the genetic cards you were dealt. So if you’ve read this far, you probably have the passion for at least some hard work. So my advice to you is to not worry about genetics or other circumstances that are beyond your control. Work harder than anyone else and see how far your genes can really take you. If you don’t want to work that hard, it’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. But it also doesn’t mean that the other guy is just blessed with some unseen talent that allows them to be better. Chances are you’re just getting out-worked.

So to get more to the core of the question that was asked: what is required to develop a champion athlete? I think the answer to that is, more than anything else, it takes an extreme amount of hard work. That kind of work takes passion. So the centerpiece for any truly elite athlete is going to be passion enough to out-work their competitors.

About the Author Mike Tuchscherer is the owner and head coach at RTS. He has been powerlifting since 2001 and since has traveled all over the world for competitions. In 2009, he was the first man from USA powerlifting to win a gold medal at the World Games – the highest possible achievement in powerlifting. He has coached over a dozen competitors at the world championships, a score of national champions, and multiple world record holders.

Watch an old movie about boxing and you’re sure to see it. The young brash fighter wants the title shot, but his older manager isn’t sure he’s ready. “Why is this guy always holding me back?” the fighter thinks. He doesn’t get it. He can’t see what’s going on.

If you were to ask the manager why he wanted to wait, he’d probably say something like, “The kid isn’t ready.” The manager knows that confidence is critical to the fighter’s success. But it’s a lot more than just confidence. It’s momentum.

KNOW IT
The young fighter doesn’t know it at the time, but he needs to build his momentum in order to continually improve his skills. Strength athletes need this too. Momentum is a stem-to-stern concept. It starts with small stuff like improving your technique. It includes selecting attempts in a competition. And yes, it’s even about confidence.

Have you ever noticed that when you miss a couple of sessions, your strength drops off? Or on the other side, if you’re hitting big PR’s in training, you can usually expect a big PR in the meet? That’s momentum.
It’s not just training. You see it at meets too. Ever notice how if you miss your opening squat, it’s an uphill battle after that? And show me a guy who is 1 for 3 after squats and I’ll show you a guy who, more often than not, will miss at least one, probably two benches. And if he’s 2 for 6 after the bench, how do you think deadlifting is going to go? On the other hand, if you’re 3 for 3 on squats and benches, then you’re probably in a good place mentally and feeling “on” for the deadlift. That’s momentum.

CONTROL IT
If you try to force yourself into perfect technique or great PR’s, it won’t happen for you. That’s not how you control your momentum. Trying to control momentum this way is like trying to divert a river from downstream. You can’t do it – even with monumental effort.

A far better way is to start with small decisions. Do something small that moves you in the right direction. Let those effects snowball and become something great. You don’t make momentum – you give it a nudge and momentum emerges.

Here’s what I mean. If you’re going backwards and things are not going well in your training, try taking some weight off the bar and execute the session with good technique and make it successful. Sure, it wasn’t as heavy as you wanted, but you executed the session well. That’s better than executing it poorly. Then in the next session, make a small improvement over the previous session. Then another and another. It begins to snowball.

Setting a PR is not a function of one monumental effort to lift a weight. It’s a thousand small efforts over the weeks, months, even years leading up to it. It’s doing one thing right so that next time you can do another thing right. These things build on each other.

 

PUSH IT
It’s like pushing a big truck (which is why we call it momentum). At first, it’s hard. You push and push and it just barely moves. This is the beginning phase as you start building momentum. But once you get it going, it APPEARS easier to someone watching. Then you approach your top speed and it almost appears that you’re just running beside the truck. People standing by watching (who are all struggling with their own trucks) think, “Gosh, some guys have all the luck”.

But it isn’t luck at all. It’s maximum effort at each step. But each step snowballs on all the ones before it. You will always have to train hard and do things right. Emotionally it’s easier once you get moving because it’s easier to see your reward. It’s harder to see that the reward is a result of all the steps that came before it. And just like the boxer, you still have more momentum to build before you’re at top speed.

BUILD IT
No matter where you’re at or what kind of momentum you have right now, the next step is always the same. Do one more thing that furthers your goals. Make the choice. Remember each step builds on the one before it. Momentum can help guide your choices.

Things going very badly in your training? Take a step back and see where you really are. Then take a step to improve it a little bit for your next session. You’re just starting your momentum. The truck is stopped. So just move it forward a tiny bit. Don’t get me wrong – it’s still a maximum effort. But the expectation is just for some forward movement or at least less negative movement! And next time build on that first step, then the next one, then the next.

Things going very well in your training? Don’t ease up. If you’re pushing a heavy truck and you stop pushing, it slows down and stops. KEEP PUSHING. Keep doing the things that built your momentum to this point. Plus more. Remember, even when it looks easy to outsiders, it’s still a maximum effort. You still have to push as hard as you can to keep things moving.

How far can you take it?
This is important. Build it into your character. Building your momentum is what you need to do to improve in so many aspects of life – not just lifting weights. Look at your job. Look at your relationships or finances. Take a step. Improve your situation. Build on that step, then the next and the next. Gradually the momentum of your life builds and it takes you places you never thought you’d go.

Build your momentum. This is what we’re all about.

About the Author Mike Tuchscherer is the owner and head coach at RTS. He has been powerlifting since 2001 and since has traveled all over the world for competitions. In 2009, he was the first man from USA powerlifting to win a gold medal at the World Games – the highest possible achievement in powerlifting. He has coached over a dozen competitors at the world championships, a score of national champions, and multiple world record holders.

So this article is about why speed work doesn’t work — at least not for the reasons you think it does. I’m sure this article will make some people rejoice and make other people pretty upset. And for myself, since I rarely write articles that get such a divided response, I’ve gone over this quite a few times just to double check and make sure I’m not saying anything crazy.

My claim: It’s my professional opinion that “speed work” is not the optimal method for developing maximal force, particularly for trained powerlifters. Let’s stop there as this will give us plenty to talk about….

Speed Work Defined
For now, let’s define speed work as anything under a 7 RPE. If you complete a set and you could have done 5 or more reps, it counts as speed work. If you’re doing doubles or triples with less than 75%, it probably counts. If you’re doing singles with less than 85%, it probably counts. If this is just a warm-up to your heavier work, then it probably doesn’t count as speed work.

Just for the sake of clarity, I’d say those percentages are bottom-tension percentages of a 1RM in whatever lift it is that you’re doing. Usually peak force is at the bottom of a lift like the squat or bench, so this seems to be the most relevant number. Also for the record, I tend to place more value on the RPE than the percentage, but I figured I’d put percentages up as guidelines since a lot of you don’t use RPE yet.

Reason #1: Force Output During Speed Work Is Crap
If you attempt a squat in a meet and grind it for 15 or 20 seconds, but complete the lift for white lights, yet your competitor completes the same weight in 3 seconds, who wins? Assume both of you move up 5 pounds and miss. The answer is you tie (or win/lose based on bodyweight which is pretty much a tie) because there is NO time component to powerlifting. Despite the name, power (in the physics sense) is not what you care about as a powerlifter. You care about force. It’s common meathead knowledge that force equals mass times acceleration and many of you can cite Russian manuals that state, in theory, you can maximize force by maximizing the mass on the bar or the acceleration.

I’m here to tell you that doesn’t work in reality. I’ve tested it.

Peak force production is tied to the weight on the bar. Are you trying to maximize force? Add weight. In real life, you won’t be able to accelerate enough to produce force like you can in a max lift. No way around it. Sure, a set done with maximum acceleration will produce more force than one done with an even tempo. But only if the weight on the bar is similar. If you always accelerate maximally, you will produce more force if the weight on the bar is heavier, even though acceleration is less.

For those who want a reason why, here it is. It takes time for your body to ramp up to maximum force (Fmax). In a heavy lift the bar speed is slow enough to get there (or get close). In a light lift, the bar speed is too fast for you to have time to get to Fmax.

Force, the most important quality for a powerlifter, is not practiced with speed work. Doing speed work does not produce maximal force. In theory it should, but in real life it doesn’t. My numbers indicate that even at 75% of 1RM (too heavy to be considered “speed weight” by most), force production is still only 85%. When you consider that increasing the weight to 90% or 95% yields near-maximum levels of force production, it’s easy to see that when it comes to practicing your ability to produce force, you can’t beat heavy weights. And if you’re worried about spending too much time with 90-95% loads, please read my previous article “You are not overtrained”. Don’t be scared.

The Data
I’ve gathered data on peak force production values in each of the three powerlifts by measuring force with a tendo unit as well as using motion analysis software on videos of the three powerlifts. Peak force production with highly sub maximal weights (defined above) does not approach peak force production values generated by heavier weights REGARDLESS OF INTENT TO ACCELERATE. Sure, trying to accelerate produces more force than NOT trying to accelerate. But it still doesn’t produce as much force as using a heavy weight. Measurements of peak force production using 75% of 1RM were approximately 85% of the peak force that was measured when using 90% of 1RM for the same number of reps. In other words, lighter weights produced about 85% of the peak force value that the heavy weights did.

During peer review, many thought using peak force production was an error and instead I should use average force production. I did collect data on that and average force production was even more linked to bar weight than peak force. I decided to look at peak force because that was the variable that responded more to outside influences. Things like intent to accelerate, fatigue, and load all affected peak force. Load was the only factor that seems to affect average force.

The real question in any training discussion is not “what works”. Rather, you should ask, “What is optimal?” As Dr. Hatfield says, it’s always a question of good, better, best. The evidence shows we can get higher peak force production by increasing the RPE beyond 7. To do this, should increase the weight until you are getting RPEs of 8+ for the number of reps you are performing.

Additionally, if you’re seeking a greater volume of work, I think doing that volume with higher peak force values will be more beneficial unless you are having recovery issues (and then speed work acts as a band-aid for a larger problem). If you’re trying to support muscle mass or develop your technique, I’d suggest that there are better options out there than doing speed work. Even for pure power development, I think there are better options available. Remember, good Better BEST!

As I’ve stated, power itself does not play a large role in powerlifting. Sure, there IS a time limit when exerting Fmax. You can’t just grind away all day. But the time component is limited by your ATP and Creatine Phosphate stores. At maximum intensity, these can last around 10 seconds. So if you’re not grinding out 1RMs for longer than 10 seconds, you aren’t limited by your ATP/CP. And even if you do take longer than 10 seconds to complete a maximum attempt, studies have shown it only takes .15 seconds and .25 seconds to reach Fmax in pulls. My own measurements show time to Fmax as being significantly less (.10 to .17 seconds) in movements with an eccentric component. If you’re slow, that still leaves you 9.75 seconds to grind away. If you could double your RFD (which would be quite a feat), that still only gets you an extra .125 seconds. I can’t remember seeing a lift and thinking, “Man, if he could have just kept grinding another .125 seconds, he would have gotten it!” I think a powerlifter’s training economy would be better spent developing a higher Fmax rather than focusing on RFD.

And before anyone balks at the apparent contradiction, let me clarify – it only takes a quarter of a second or so to reach Fmax. But when using lighter weights, the measured Fmax is LOWER than the Fmax that is measured with heavier weights. That’s a narrow difference, but an important one.

Reason #2: Technique Is Not Perfected
This is where my observation of the data ends and my interpretation of it begins.

If you have decent form (i.e. you know what good form is and you can demonstrate it with light weight), then speed work will not help you get better. The weights are typically so light that they involve a different motor pattern than will be used on heavy weight. Besides, it makes far more sense to do technique practice with a weight that challenges your technique (and thus requires you to pay attention and practice) than to do technique practice with something easy.

Increased strength is an adaptation of the human body. The body adapts to stressors and when it does, it supercompensates. Couple that with knowledge of mylination, skill development, and the data above and I think it’s fair to say that doing speed work as defined in this article will most likely not increase peak force production values. The primary drivers of success in powerlifting are force production and technique (mostly because good technique supports force production).

With that being said, speed work has other training effects that may or may not help you reach your goals. It gets you more training volume, which is almost always good. This can support muscle mass, improve skill to somewhat, and improve power generation. It’s important to note that power generation typically won’t matter to a powerlifter, but it is probably more important to other athletes. It’s also possible that speed work sessions are easier to recover from than bouts with heavier weights, though some people have the opposite experience.

Peak force production is tied to the weight on the bar.

The Drama
I’m not trying to engage anyone in religious debate. If you care about your training method with religious fervor — to the point where you’re unwilling to try to understand my arguments or form logical ones of your own, then please don’t try to talk training with me. I don’t insist that everyone agree with what I say, but it’s a good thing for everyone to challenge their own assumptions from time to time. I’m willing to have a mutually respectful discussion on this or any training topic. Similarly, if you do speed work and I question its effectiveness, it doesn’t mean I’m disrespecting your guru of choice. Nobody gets a free pass in the realm of ideas. No person, because of the things they have done or said in the past, deserves to have their thoughts accepted without question. In fact, respecting someone’s ideas involves questioning them to see if they hold water. Good ideas deserve to be debated and questioned. What’s more, it’s the quality of a person’s logic that determines whether or not their questioning is good. The notion that the one who popularized some idea must grant someone “the right” to question them is absurd.

I also don’t mean to insinuate that any entire program doesn’t “work”. Anything will work given the right circumstances. But as I said, it’s not even about what “works”. “Does it work” is the wrong question! It’s about what is optimal. There is NO program or system that is perfect and we all have more to learn. What I’ve presented here is something I’ve learned and my intent is to share it so that others can improve their programs as well.

Some of my friends include speed work in their training. I don’t think it’s optimal, but they don’t take it personally. Conversely, there are things I do that they don’t think is optimal. I don’t take it personally either. We can discuss it like adults. Hopefully with good discussion, critical thinking, and careful review, we all get closer to the truth over time. I don’t expect that you, the reader, will change your mind on speed work immediately (though you might), but as a courtesy, just let what I’ve said here sink in for a few days. Maybe it causes you to question what you were previously doing. Maybe it doesn’t. Life goes on.

So why do people do it?
Powerlifting is a pretty simple sport. There is force and technique. Not much else plays a role. Speed work can contribute to hypertrophy, but it’s not ideal. So why do people seem to get gains from doing speed work?

First, it’s hard to say that speed work gave them the gains. These programming changes are almost never made in isolation, so it easily could have been some other aspect of training. It could have been the increase in frequency. Most lifters go from one heavy squat season a week to one heavy and one light session. In that case I would say that although speed work isn’t ideal, it’s a net win because frequency went up.

It can also help those who are chronically beat up. Since it typically involves lighter weight, it should cause less structural stress, so it can sometimes result in fewer injuries, which allows people to improve more over time. With that said, I think proper volume management and good general conditioning limits the need for this kind of thing for the vast majority of lifters out there.

And lastly, it’s a case of good, better, best. Speed work would likely produce results in someone if they were untrained enough. But that doesn’t mean it is ideal.
If you use speed work in your training, I encourage you to gradually migrate to something heavier. Don’t over-complicate it. Just gradually use heavier weights. Your prime work sets need to be at least an 8 RPE if not higher. No need to thank me — your future PR says it all.

About the Author Mike Tuchscherer is the owner and head coach at RTS. He has been powerlifting since 2001 and since has traveled all over the world for competitions. In 2009, he was the first man from USA powerlifting to win a gold medal at the World Games – the highest possible achievement in powerlifting. He has coached over a dozen competitors at the world championships, a score of national champions, and multiple world record holders.

Probably the most frustrating part of powerlifting is KNOWING in the marrow of your bones that you can do a task, then being unable to do it for some pain-in-the-ass detail. This could be an injury, a technical “tick”, or one of the most frustrating for me personally, a failing grip.

Dropping an otherwise easy deadlift due to grip issues is a special kind of suck. It’s an awful feeling that leaves many lifters looking at their hands in disbelief. It’s also incredibly stubborn. Many, many lifters have tried all kinds of crazy stuff to improve the grip. Almost all of it fails.

Stuff that just doesn’t get the job done
Reporting negative results is just as important as reporting successful trials. And boy, have we tried some things and failed some things!

There are a ton of gadgets out there that all promise to improve grip. And perhaps it’s a little misleading because there are so many different kinds of gripping strength and the hands are such complex organs. But one way or another, we tried a lot of them that did nothing. Crushers, fat bar work, active grippers (like Grip 4orce), rolling, etc… none of that helped me or my lifters.

Even the old wisdom of doing more double-overhand work didn’t help. In this idea, you would do double-overhand work (without a hook) until you couldn’t any longer. Then you’d switch to a mixed grip. Some even advocate extra double-overhand work in the form of rows and similar lifts. This too got us nowhere.

Read more…

This past June, I went to Russia for the IPF raw world championships. I met one of the Austrian lifters in the 120kg class — Alex. He was a real nice guy and we had a good chat about training and such. Fast forward until a few weeks ago. Alex emailed me to let me know he would be on a road trip and they would be passing through my neighborhood. So they stopped by yesterday and we trained. It was really cool to have a training partner, even if we did tend to chat too much between sets.

One of the things we talked about was the feeling you get after going to a big competition. For both of us, it’s this imperative feeling that you MUST train more. You MUST find a way to get better. In lots of ways, it makes the obsession deeper. It’s a reality check of sorts. “Hey, there are plenty of other strong folks out there. I better get back to work!” Speaking for myself, it makes me want to train more, train harder, and basically pour more effort into perfecting this craft. Read more…