Friday, 01.27.12: Motivation

Misha crushed all 15 HSPU strict! 

Now that New Years is long past some of your resolutions may be fading so here are some tips from Matt Kroc on how to keep up the motivation:

No matter how driven you are, if you stay in this game long enough, you'll eventually run into a period where you just aren't as motivated to go to war with the iron as you used to be.

This can be the result of outside influences. Perhaps you're working a lot or studying hard in school and the stress is wearing on you. Maybe you're in a relationship with a partner that isn't supportive of your lifting, or you've had to relocate and the training partners in your new gym just don't measure up.

Sometimes the reasons are internal. You're frustrated with your lack of progress and seem to be getting injured constantly. Or maybe training is just starting to seem a little too much like work.

I'm sure when you first hit the weights your enthusiasm and desire were strong. I was no different. As long as I can remember, I've always wanted to be big and strong. I remember as a child seeing some jacked dude and immediately thinking, "That's how I want to look!"

By the time I was nine years old I was training regularly with makeshift weights and doing anything that I thought would help me achieve my goals. I trained hard all year round throughout adolescence and high school, regardless of the sport I was playing.

While in the Marines I'd even train while we were in the field by doing chin-ups from tree branches or push-ups with a loaded pack on my back, and invented many other ways to keep training under less than optimal conditions. When living in the barracks I'd sometimes break into the gym in the middle of the night and train in the dark.

Even when I was going to pharmacy school, working countless hours and raising a family at the same time, my motivation to train and compete never wavered.

Despite being as driven as I was, I eventually reached a place where the hunger suddenly wasn't there. My goals didn't seem as vital as they'd once been. Surprisingly, it happened at the least logical time.

It was just over four years ago when I experienced my first real lack of motivation and what I later realized was essentially psychological burnout. Oddly enough, I was coming off some great finishes and things couldn't have looked better for me. In 2006 I'd won the Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic WPO Powerlifting Championships and followed that up in 2007 with a runner-up finish at the same event. I was training in preparation for a prestigious pro-meet with a substantial cash payout and hoping to break the all-time world record total in my weight class.

Yet in spite of all these factors, for the first time in my life I suddenly lost that deep desire to go to war with the iron. Fortunately, I was able to rekindle my desire. Here are the key strategies I used to keep the fires of motivation burning within me.

Focus On Your Goals

My goals have always driven me. On days I come home from work feeling exhausted and stressed, instead of crawling into bed I think about my goals and how rewarding it will be to achieve them. I know that if I continue to work hard that it's only a matter of time before they're realized.

I thrive on winning, and there's no bigger high for me than celebrating a victory at a big competition or achieving a goal that's been a long time coming. I live for those moments, and I know the only way they're going to happen is if I work harder than everyone else trying to beat me.

Remember Your Critics

Next to my goals, my critics motivate me more than anything. There are few things in life as rewarding as proving a naysayer wrong. I've been told all my life that I'd fail. Early on, many important people in my life, like my coaches, teachers, and my peers would dismiss my aspirations; even my own friends and family members have mocked me at times.

Sometimes I'd hear about it through others or overhear someone else's conversation, but often it was said to my face, as if my dreams were ridiculous and completely impossible. As painful as this was, it stirred a resolve deep within me.

I developed the mentality that if someone told me that I couldn't do something, I was immediately determined to prove them wrong. Even now while I'm training, in between sets I'll think about those that have said that I'd never achieve anything and then visualize doing exactly what they said couldn't be done.

Surround Yourself with Like-minded People

Good training partners are invaluable. I've been fortunate enough to train and compete with some of the strongest guys around and many of these individuals have become my closest friends. We've pushed each other further than we thought possible – at times maybe even a bit too far – but there's no doubt that training with a group of guys like this can increase your odds of success ten-fold.

No matter how bad of a day you may be having, with the right group of guys it's nearly impossible to not give 100% every time you set foot in the gym.

We'd feed off each other's energy and competitiveness, which often led to challenges within the group. Usually it was only for pride or bragging rights, but sometimes money would be thrown down on the gym floor to try to get each other to push even harder, especially when one of us might not have been having our best day.

The key was having guys within the group that not only wanted to succeed themselves, but also wanted the others to succeed just as bad or even more. While none of us ever wanted to lose a challenge, there was never any jealousy or back stabbing. We all supported one another 100% and were elated over each other's success.

If a new guy came into the group and exhibited selfishness or looked for his own success at the expense of another's, he was quickly given the boot, and over the years that happened more than once.

Unfortunately, our lives have lead us to different places and today we're spread all over the country, but we all stay in touch and continue to support and motivate each other.

When All Else Fails – Take a Break

No matter how bad-ass or hardcore you might think you are, the possibility of burnout still exists. I learned this the hard way. While many top competitive lifters would schedule breaks after big meets, I was always the type of guy that was back in the gym a day or two after a competition, no matter how beat up I felt. I saw any amount of time off as a wasted opportunity for progress.

Yet despite that level of drive, I reached a point after more than two and a half decades of training and over ten years of frequent competitions where I suddenly experienced a lack of motivation. While there were a number of factors in play, I realize that my penchant for pushing myself at a relentless pace led to an inevitable psychological burnout.

I was in the middle of preparing for a big meet when this feeling of apathy began to creep up within me. It started slowly but grew steadily, and soon my training was uninspired and lacked the usual intensity.

Shockingly, my training cycle was still going well, so I decided to compete as planned, but with the lack of desire and focus, I was called high on all three squat attempts and I bombed out of the meet.

The worst part about failing to get a single lift was that afterward it didn't even bother me. Instead of feeling immense disappointment and immediately resolving to do better, I experienced a sense of relief as if a great burden had been lifted from me.

Never having experienced this before, I saw it as a clear indication that it was time to walk away from the sport I'd been passionate about for so long. While my decision was rash and probably extreme given the situation, it seemed perfectly logical to me at the time.

I soon realized that all I really needed was a break. Along with my recent success had come an increased level of expectations and pressure. Without having allowed myself any type of break, it was only a matter of time before I started to feel overwhelmed and my desire faded. As simple as it sounds, it was a revelation for me.

However, it only took three weeks of not setting foot in a gym or picking up a weight. I woke up one morning and my desire for lifting had returned and in spades. I couldn't wait to chalk up my hands and get back under a heavy bar. I immediately threw on my training clothes, strode out to my garage gym, loaded up the bar and picked up right where I'd left off less than a month before.

Thursday:
Strength:
Deadlift 1 RM
or
Hang Deadlift 2 x 5
12 Minute Cap

OH Squat 3 x 10

WOD:
5 Thrusters 135/95
5 Toes to Bar
7 Rounds

Thursday, 01.26.12: Carbs and Nutrition

Rosie at SuperFit!

This is a good one, it is geared to bodybuilders but also highlights athletes and people who do strength training.  It highlights some of the issues of a strict paleo diet as it pertains to performance.  It also talks about what I have been mentioning in terms of Carb Cycling and making sure that first meal post workout has carbs (rice, oats, potatoes, sweet potatoes) in it.  Here is the article by Nate Miyaki:

Advice doesn't have to be complicated to be effective. The simpler the advice, the more likely it will be applied in the real world, thus the more likely it will produce the desired result.

If you can't summarize your theories in less than a few minutes, then either your kohai (student) won't understand it, you don't really understand it, you're trying to sound too smart, or the material is so complex that it won't work in real life situations.

Since I'm coming close to the end of my rookie season here on T NATION, I figured I'd give you a short, practical summary of what we've covered so far regarding fat loss nutrition. Colleagues, clients, and friends have called it a Paleo-meets-Sports Nutrition hybrid approach.

Here are the Cliff Notes:

• A Paleo/caveman-style diet is a simple template from which everyone can start. Eliminating most man-made, modern, processed, and refined foods and emphasizing natural foods that we evolved from can go a long way in improving health markers while helping achieve physique enhancement goals.
• However, high intensity exercise creates a unique metabolic environment and changes how the body processes nutrients for 24-48 hours upon completion of a training session. If you exercise 3-5 days a week, your body is virtually in recovery mode 100% of the time. It's an altered physiological state beyond pure resting conditions, thus its nutritional needs are completely different from the average, sedentary, overweight office worker.
• We should keep in mind that surviving in the wild during caveman times is different than achieving elite performance or physique goals in modern times. "Life extensionism" at the cost of a sickly appearance, low libido/Testosterone, and an overall lack of "bad-assery" is not what the average T NATION guy is looking for.

At the same time, an awesome physique at the cost of poor health or early death isn't what the majority are seeking either. How about an intelligent plan with some balance?

• Just like the sedentary person shouldn't get caught up in following Food Pyramid dogma, the strength-training athlete shouldn't get caught up in following no-carb dogma. Treating sick populations (insulin resistant, obese, etc.) is not advising athletes. Targeted carbohydrate intake can help the athlete fuel, recover from, and respond to intense strength training sessions.

The athlete should look at adding back in some low fructose, non-gluten, or "anti-nutrient" containing starches (potatoes, yams, rice) into their plan.

This is my approach, based on my education and experiences. But it's not the only way. I encourage you to take some personal accountability and self-experiment to find what works best for you.

Just remember, there's more than one way to skin a cat, or more appropriately for us, to peel off body fat.

The Lost Art of Post Workout Nutrition

I've talked a lot about Paleo Nutrition specifics. This time around, lets talk about some Sports Nutrition specifics. Efficiency means starting with the most important thing first right? The key, core concept in Sports Nutrition is post-workout nutrition.

Before the rise of information overload, practical advice regarding post-workout nutrition was simple – down some damn protein and carbs as soon as you can after finishing your workout.

Lately, I've seen a disturbing trend rising amongst the gym population, particularly amongst those who fall victim to over-intellectualizing or over-theorizing everything. Turns out some scientist or evolutionary theorist somewhere stated that carbs in the post-workout period inhibit the fat burning environment created by exercise.

Thus, people are starting to believe that to maximize fat loss, you must go low carb all the time, even in the critical post-workout window.

I can hear Donnie Brasco right now, "Forget about it."

The result is that the Sports Nutrition principle that's more important for producing physique development results than anything else, namely combining protein with carbs in the post-workout period, has been lost. These days I have to fight with people to get them to include some damn carbs in their post-workout meal.

That's crazy!

Unfortunately, a few T NATION readers have fallen under this spell. I've had to help several regular Nation readers uncover the underlying problem concerning their lack of physique enhancement results despite consistent and intense training protocols.

The #1 culprit was a lack of carbs in the post-workout recovery period. For too long, many of us have been living on "A Nightmare on Carb Street."

It's time to wake up.

What to do can be explained in a sentence: down some Surge Recovery and/or eat a post-workout meal combining protein with carbohydrates in a 1:1 to 1:2 ratio after every strength training workout. Whole food examples include fish and rice, egg/egg white mixtures and rice cakes, chicken and yam, steak and potato, etc.

If you're already doing that, you're done. You're probably getting good results and don't need to read on. The rest of this article is geared towards those who've somehow been confused into thinking that post-workout protein/carb combos are detrimental to their physique goals.

Unfortunately, the why – the science behind simple practical recommendations – can get pretty complex. However, it's a worthwhile endeavor to learn a little bit. It gives you the knowledge-base necessary to separate fact from the brown stuff that comes out of a bull's backside. It helps you stick to the fundamentals of physique enhancement and not get pulled off track by highly intelligent theorists, but equally lacking in real world practical experience.

The Problem with No Carbs Post Workout

When most people think of getting shredded, they think of fat loss only. This often results in extreme calorie/carb cuts and exercise protocols that can be counterproductive in the long-term due to the presence of a chronic catabolic environment. For example, hours of cardio a day and cutting out lettuce because it contains 1g of carbohydrate.

Short-term catabolism is beneficial, as it helps us break down stored energy nutrients for fuel, both as glycogen or body fat. But chronic, long-term catabolism is highly problematic for physique enhancement goals. This ultimately leads to muscle loss and body fat gain despite high activity levels and low food intake.

So physique athletes can't just think about "burning" stuff off all the time, even during fat loss phases. We also have to pay attention to recovery and muscle growth, or at the very least, lean muscle maintenance. Enter post-workout nutrition.

I like to think of this as the "yin & yang" of physique enhancement. We need balance in everything in life.

When one side is unbalanced, such as when a sedentary person consistently eats refined carbohydrates, insulin is chronically elevated, and there's too much "anabolic" activity – the body is always in storage mode, including storing body fat. If this isn't offset with "catabolic" activity or the burning off of stored nutrients through exercise, the net effect is "Pillsbury Doughboy-ville."

What happens when the other side of that equation becomes unbalanced is a little more complicated.

If you lean too much in the other direction (i.e. performing intense activity while chronically restricting calories/carbs, especially post-workout), there are negative consequences. Most notably, a lack of physique development and body composition change despite sincere effort.

Exercise is a catabolic activity. We all know it causes microscopic damage/tears in the muscle tissue. But what some have forgotten is that this catabolic process must be offset with an anabolic recovery period for physical adaptation to take place. Muscular repair – an anabolic process – only occurs with proper nutritional intake.

If you perform high intensity strength training but don't include some protein and carbs for recovery, what you end up with is cortisol over-dominance and a constant catabolic state. This over-dominance of cortisol is compounded by two lifestyle factors:

• Our modern lifestyles, especially those of career-driven professionals, are highly stressful. Cortisol levels are chronically high due to the stress of corporate life. You don't want to add to this negative hormonal environment with improper post-workout nutrition. Otherwise, what's intended to be beneficial (exercise) ends up being counterproductive by contributing even more to chronically elevated cortisol levels.
• Those who lack real anaerobic fuel from carbohydrate intake often make up for it with artificial energy coming from stimulants (coffee, energy drinks, fat burning pills). Now there's considerable research that caffeine, in moderation, is beneficial for fat burning, but the key, as with most things in life, is moderation.

Needing to drink 84 oz. of coffee or 6 energy drinks just to get through the day is not moderation. It's chemical dependency. If overdone, cortisol remains chronically elevated, and contributes to the "stubborn body fat" syndrome.

This is the exact scenario that plays out with many strength-training athletes who strictly adhere to low carbohydrate diets. They're confused, thinking the low carb diet plans that are the best for sedentary populations are also the best for them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The result of this hormonal environment is the "Skinny-Fat Syndrome." Guys and gals who consistently train hard, follow the low-carb trend, think they're doing everything right, are lean everywhere else, but hold flab right around the midsection. Oddly enough, it's too low of a carbohydrate intake, and it's the refusal to offset catabolic activity with an anabolic recovery period that's keeping them fat.

These athletes may be improving performance parameters (improving strength, endurance, ability to perform a specific like max pull-ups, deadlift max, etc.), but their appearance isn't changing. In many instances, it's getting worse.

It's much easier to improve performance on a sub-par diet than it is to improve appearance. Fact is, for the person with average genetics and choosing a natural route, it's impossible to improve appearance on a sub-par diet.

Yes, if carbs are overeaten it will inhibit the fat loss process. Chronic elevation or overproduction of insulin can of course lead to fat gain. But in the right amounts and situations (i.e. following an intense workout where insulin sensitivity is high), it can be a good thing (anabolic, anti-catabolic).

As counterintuitive as it sounds, some carbs in the diet can offset the catabolic activity of exercise (insulin is a counter-regulatory hormone to cortisol), can initiate the recovery and repair process, can help build lean muscle, and can help burn fat in the recovery period.

I've worked with physique athletes who got over their misconceptions and "carbophobia," leaned up, and reached personal, record low body fat percentages by adding carbs back into their diet; starting of course, with the post-workout period.

Wednesday:
Deadlift 1 RM
or
Romanian Deadlift 2 x 5
12 Minute Cap

Bench Press 8 x 3 @60%
40 Sec Rest

WOD:
Power Clean 185/125
Explosive Push Ups
5,4,3,2,1,2,3,4,5

Wednesday, 01.25.12: Don't be ignorant on the Deadlift

Great piece by Mark Rippetoe.  I think this is EXACTLY what Rip means when he says "Drag the bar up the leg to lockout"  This is the last week of daily deadlift/hamstring work.  We will be pulling 1 RMs later this week for deadlift.  Here is the article:

It's not always apparent, and is often poorly understood. Stated succinctly, stupid is not your fault – you were born that way. You're just dumb. You can't learn.

Ignorance means you just don't know. Ignorance probably is your fault, because you've failed to inform yourself. This is especially true since the advent of the internet has enabled the most universal and thorough dissemination of information in the history of human communication.

The obvious problem is that 95% of that information is wrong, which follows my popular maxim: 95% of all the shit that occurs everywhere is completely fucked up. The internet is no different.

But you can, with a little diligence, tease out the facts if you want to. If you're interested in a subject, it eventually falls upon you to distill the truth from the bullshit.

This you'll do gladly, if you're interested enough to devote significant amounts of time and effort to it, because an intelligent person realizes that bullshit is a waste of time. A stupid person might not appreciate this, and therefore continue to be ignorant of the truth of a matter.

Take the deadlift, for example. It's the most basic, obvious movement in barbell training, the one with the most carryover to everyday tasks and the easiest to learn of all the basic exercises.

You just step up to the bar with a vertical-jump stance width, with toes out and your shins about an inch from the bar, grab it just outside your stance with your knees still straight, then bend your knees forward and out a little bit until your shins touch the bar, squeeze your chest up until your back is flat, take a big breath, and drag the bar up your legs until you're standing up straight.

See? One (admittedly run-on) sentence describes the whole thing.

But just because a task can be described simply doesn't mean that there aren't any important details. Fortunately, they can be built into the instructions, if the instructor is clever. Our one-sentence deadlift instruction carries a lot of important information, and if it's followed correctly and intelligently, it'll result in a perfect deadlift every time.

Let's take it a step at a time and see what we can learn from this simple approach to an uncomplicated movement.

The Uncomplicated Deadlift

Stance Width

The stance width of a vertical jump is narrower than most novices' deadlift, but it shouldn't be. A push into the floor should have the mid-foot directly under the hip joint, and this is the stance width that allows you to push the floor without losing force to any shear that will develop along a laterally-angled leg (the sumo stance intentionally widens the stance to artificially shorten the legs, and trades the benefit of a more vertical back for the inefficiency of the angled legs – but we're not sumo-ing right now).

Toes

Most people jump with toes pointed slightly out, and this toes-out stance is very helpful for the deadlift. It gets the thighs out of the way of the belly, which helps set your back flatter and it gets the groin muscles and the external rotators involved in the pull. Konstantinovs demonstrates this when he pulls, as have many great deadlifters through the history of powerlifting.

Bar Position

Placing the bar about an inch from your shins puts the bar directly over your mid-foot, precisely where the bar wants to be anyway, because that's the point over which the load balances.

When you stand up straight with your feet even, where are you in balance? On your toes? On your heels? Bad idea. In either of these positions, you have to exert more effort to stand than when balanced in the middle. The mid-foot is the place that's furthest away from both those positions of imbalance. This also applies to the deadlift.

An intelligent person will verify this by watching YouTube videos of heavy deadlifts where he'll see that every heavy deadlift travels up in a vertical path, sliding up the shins from a fairly vertical shin angle. Even if the lifter starts with the bar forward of this position, the bar will roll back to the mid-foot before it leaves the ground.

Likewise, this same intelligent person will notice that the bar locks out at the top directly over the mid-foot. Why would you intentionally pull the bar from a position that's horizontally different from the one you're pulling it to? Well, you wouldn't unless you're stupid, so that's where the bar starts.

Grip

Your grip should be designed to make the bar travel the shortest possible distance to lockout, and this means that the arms will hang parallel to each other when you grip the bar. This is accomplished by taking the narrowest grip you can without your hands rubbing your legs on the way up. So your grip will be where your hands line up with the widest point of your stance.

Most novices take too wide a stance, and therefore too wide a grip. Most elite lifters take a close grip. Verify this for yourself. If your stance is correct, your arms will hang straight down when seen from the front and you'll have pulled the bar the shortest distance it can travel to lockout.

During the process of taking the grip you do not move the bar, because you just intentionally put it exactly where it needs to be, over the mid-foot.

Setting Up the Pull

You haven't bent your legs yet, but now you need to drop your knees forward until your shins touch the bar. This motion places the shins at a slight forward angle that leaves the bar over the mid-foot while in contact with the shins.

If you drop your hips, your knees will travel forward and shove the bar forward of the mid-foot. So don't drop your hips.

Remember, don't move the bar. That would be stupid.

Just after you touch the bar with your shins, push your knees out very slightly. This keeps your thighs lined up with your slightly pointed-out toes and allows your groin muscles and lateral hip muscles to engage during the pull.

If you're a bigger guy, you'll immediately notice that it's easier to get in position over the bar if your thighs are out of the way of your gut, as mentioned earlier. The knees-out motion takes full advantage of the toes-out stance, the smartest thing to do as you prepare to pull.

Chest Up, Back Set

Now comes the most important part of the procedure. Squeeze your chest up to set your back. Don't drop your hips like everybody else does, and like you've been doing, too. Just leave your ass where it is after your shins touch the bar and set your back from the top down by squeezing your chest up into thoracic extension and letting that wave of extension carry itself down to your low back.

Watch Brad Gillingham do his 881-pound deadlift and you'll see that it can be done quite effectively without a drop of the hips. It's hard, because your back is fighting with your hamstrings for control of your pelvis and your back has to win. It may feel odd the first couple of reps, but as you warm up it will get easier. Regardless, the chest-up motion will always be the hardest part of the setup.

The fact is, if it's easy, you did it wrong.

The Deadlift is Not a Squat

You must understand this: you're not trying to squat the weight off the floor with the bar in your hands. This doesn't work, as you may have noticed if you've watched enough deadlifting to be informed about what really occurs when heavy weights are pulled off the floor.

When the weight gets heavy, you can drop your hips as low as you want to and push the bar as far forward as it takes to make you happy, but what actually happens before the bar leaves the floor is always the same: the bar comes back toward the mid-foot, the hips come up until the shoulders settle into position just in front of the bar, and the bar comes up in a straight line, if you haven't fucked up the pull too badly.

The shoulders-just-in-front-of-the-bar position is a feature of all pulls that are heavy enough, whether deadlift, clean, or snatch. I take a shot at explaining why in the new 3rd edition of Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training (hint: it has to do with the lats).

By now you've looked again at all the deadlift videos and seen this position establish itself every time, regardless of whether the lifter initiated the lift correctly or incorrectly (if the lifter initiated the lift incorrectly, the hips rise and the back angle changes until the shoulders are just in front of the bar anyhow).

You can identify this position because the arms don't hang straight down plumb, but rather hang at a slight angle when viewed from the side. While you were looking at them again, you also noticed the bar travels a vertical path. In fact, if you fuck the pull up too badly (i.e. let it get forward of the mid-foot anywhere in the pull so that the bar path isn't vertical) it won't go up – unless it's a sub-maximal attempt.

So squeezing the chest up as the best way to set your back merely incorporates the facts that you've gathered by watching the videos and informing yourself. If you set your back in the position it likes to pull from anyway, you minimize wasted motion before the pull and you create a simple procedure for doing it the same way every time.

The Lockout

All that remains is dragging the bar up your legs to lockout. "Dragging" implies contact, and contact all the way up ensures the vertical bar path; if you let it go forward as it passes your knees on the way up, you'll have let it drift forward of the mid-foot, and thus gotten out-of-balance.

But if you've set your back correctly and started the pull with the bar over mid-foot, it will come up your shins and your thighs in a straight vertical line, which I'm sure you'll agree is a mechanically pleasing configuration.

Less Bounce to the Ounce

Of course, you have to keep your back flat, and that takes strength in the lumbar erectors that can only be built with heavy deadlifts done correctly. It has become fashionable in random exercise/"functional movement" gyms to permit the use of bumper plates and a bounce off the floor for all the reps of a set of deadlifts after the first one.

This isn't "functional" – no sane, responsible person picks up a heavy object by bouncing it off the floor because that might break something. An informed person knows that if you don't use a muscle, you won't train that muscle. Common sense dictates this fact, and no particular intelligence is required to arrive at this conclusion.

Simple observation tells us that people who bounce their deadlifts aren't very strong off the floor. Experience informs me that if a 185-pound man with three years of barbell "training" comes to my seminar lacking the ability to deadlift 300 pounds with a flat back, he's probably been bouncing his deadlifts.

The lumbar erectors are the muscles that hold the lumbar spine in extension. If you fail to use them for that purpose during a deadlift, they won't adapt to this isometric task, and you'll have turned the most basic back exercise in the gym into a ridiculous circus trick.

Let's be honest: you bounce your deadlifts because it's easier to do more reps that way. But you know this already, because you were never that ignorant.

Reset all your reps and make your low back get strong enough to hold itself flat during a maximum deadlift attempt. Even if more reps are the goal, a stronger back is the only way to achieve it.

There may be a slight tendency for the bar to drift forward as it comes off the floor. When this happens, it's usually because you've rocked forward during the setup so that your weight is forward of the mid-foot. Shoes with heels can do this, as can a misperception of your start position.

If this happens, you're probably too far forward, with your shoulders too far in front of the bar and your back too horizontal. To correct this, rock back off of your toes, reset your chest up, and think about actually pushing your mid-foot into the floor, instead of pulling on the bar.

That Wasn't So Hard, Was It?

Deadlifts are one of the easiest lifts to learn and do correctly. It usually takes me about five minutes to fix an incorrect deadlift, and everyone I fix tells me that the movement feels "shorter." We know that the trip from floor to lockout is pretty much the same distance, wrong or right, unless your grip is very wide, so what is responsible for this change in perception?

There are two components of the system – the lifter and the barbell. If the bar travels the same distance from floor to lockout, it can't be the source of the difference in perception. It's the lifter, whose ass is no longer waving around in the air before the lift starts. This decrease in body movement and increase in efficiency results in the perception of a shorter pull, even though the bar travels the same distance.

So, now that you're not ignorant, stop acting like you are. Do your deadlifts correctly, efficiently, and with impressive weights. Usually, the simplest method is the smartest method to use.

Tuesday:
Box Front Squat 10 x 2 @ 60% (fast)
Rest 40 Sec

Speed Deadlift 8 x 2 @60%
Rest 40 Sec

Olympic Strength:
Clean Pull x 3
High Hang  Clean x 3
3 Rounds @ 80% of 1 RM Clean
12 Minute Cap

WOD:
10 Box Jumps 24/20
10 KB Swing 32/20  or Move up a KB from what you normally swing
Rounds in 5 Min