
How many times have you looked at your lifting technique only to wonder where you should be focusing? It seems like you need to build strength off the floor, but your lockout is also shaky but then you need to be building X-Y-Z as well and suddenly you have workouts that are twice as long as they should be and you’re under recovering.
🔑Here’s how to choose so you can avoid having that happen and actually accelerate the process: 🔑
Today’s post is focused on the deadlift but the strategy applies to most of the powerlifts (though you will need to look at starting position and how well it is maintained through the eccentric on the squat and bench press for powerlifting).
When working on developing technique in any of the big 3 powerliftings, your focus should be on improving ONE aspect of the lift at a time, not on trying to get better in general as this will only lead to a lack of efficiency in your training and possibly even wasted time or injury.
You should pick the “errors” to correct in your lift in a chronological order, based on the phase of the lift.
1️⃣ bracing pattern/starting position
2️⃣ strength and position preservation off the floor
3️⃣ staying “with the bar” through midpoint
4️⃣ clean lockout
Focus your training around one before moving to 2, and so on.
Only work on one aspect of the lift.
Each phase might be only a couple weeks, or it might be a couple months while you work on building strength and technique in specific steps of the lift.
Regardless of how long you spend on each phase, working on building the “floor” (ie the weakest link) of your lift will contribute to you raising the “ceiling” (ie your PRs) next time you test.
The way I like to explain this strategy is with the above “floor” and “ceiling” analogy wherein your floor is the weakest link and ceiling is your maximum strength. Often, I will see newer and intermediate powerlifters over focus on the ceiling in their training since early in training, adding more weight to the bar is what gets them stronger. As they progress, weak points develop though and the “floor” falls further and further behind the ceiling.
This results in large strength discrepancies between what an athlete “could” lift based on a rep max with lower weights (ex. if you squat 300 lbs for 5 reps, you should “theoretically be able” to lift 330-345 lbs for a 1RM) but their floor (weak link) prevents them from lifting this and their actual 1RM might only be 315 or 320 lbs because their ability to hold tension or produce force in the bottom of the lift is under developed.
In the above scenario, ensuring that the bracing, starting position and eccentric control are adequate before focusing a training phase around developing strength in the bottom of the lift would be the best course of action to take said powerlifter’s squat from a 320 lbs that is held back by weak points to 345+ in a short amount of time.
If you’ve got questions about this strategy, leave them in the comments on the above instagram post (thumbnail) and I’ll answer them for you.
PS – here’s 2 (more) ways I can help you add up to 200 lbs to your total and prepare for your first powerlifting meet:
1. Follow me on Instagram (@strongeryoupt) for free lifting advice, programs and more powerlifting content. You can DM me the word “BENCH GUIDE” and I’ll get you a copy of my bench variation PDF that outlines the programming style we used to add 40+ lbs to JR’s Bench.
OR
2. Apply to join my “Platform-Ready Blueprint” and become a case study. We’ll work with you 1-on-1 (in-person or online, depending on location) to consistently increase your PRs.
It takes less than 60 seconds to apply HERE in order to find out more information and see if you’d be a good fit.