“Lately i’ve been noticing weird things going on. Like I’ll be going to class sometimes and I notice different things. It just feels very strange. Even when I’m talking to other people I’ll just notice the things that they’re saying. I know this is expected since we are in college now blah blah blah but I didn’t expect it to be so prominent. Is this normal?”

Nerd Lifts Weights in the Hood

To motivate the slight insanity of what I just did, here’s a quick timeline:

April 15: After only training deadlifts during the previous month of Ramadan (this could be its own post), I deadlifted 365lb right after my APS112 final presentation (this could be its own post). Right before I did that, I failed a 375lb pull which I couldn’t even get off the floor. This is still my deadlift PR without straps, and I don’t own a belt. Since this point, I have not trained deadlifts.

May 11: I decided that I wanted to buy some more weight for my basement gym so I could start deadlifting again, as I no longer had access to my school gyms.

May 18: I picked up the new plates I ordered from a Victoria Day sale, but I was so excited to test them I deadlifted 375lb with straps^ despite not training that lift for the last month. This was a new PR, and it was done without any special preparation. Interesting.

June 5: I realized that I was obligated to make a blog post about lifting for two years. I thought a 405lb deadlift sounded cool to write about, so I tried to lift it despite not training for it at all because I figured I wouldn’t injure myself trying. I failed, but I was close enough that I decided to rest for a day and try again, albeit with slight form tweaks to band-aid fix my weak muscles that I wouldn’t be able to develop in time.

June 7. I deadlifted 405lb with straps. It’s an ugly lift, but considering it’s a 30lb PR jump that I didn’t train for on a lift I have been doing for two years^^, it will do for some content.

^I found the bar slipping on lighter weights because I had no chalk and I was too lazy to buy it so I decided to use straps from now on. This wasn’t a problem at the school gym.

^^A 30-lb weight jump in 2 weeks isn’t unheard of for a brand-new lifter who is just learning the technique/doesn’t understand what “max effort” means, but I have been training for 2 years and I was still able to make that jump. This suggests I am more of a beginner than I thought I was.

Technique Critique

My celebratory exam-period 365lb pull would have counted in a powerlifting meet. My current 405lb pull would only count in a strongman meet, as I was using straps and ramping.

My biggest struggle over the last two years was breaking the weight off of the floor. I understood (or thought I understood) the technical parts of the lift, including bracing, setting lats, using leg drive, and hinging at the hips, but pulling off the floor felt incredibly weak. The only times I ever failed lifts were when I outright failed to lift the weight off the floor or lifted the weight barely above shin-level before dropping it.

As a result of this, I’ve slowly adopted a stance favouring strength at the bottom, pointing my feet forward to increase knee travel over the bar, giving my quads the greatest mechanical advantage to initiate the pull^. This worked quite well until I tried lifting 405lb. The first time I tried, I stalled with the bar at my knees. Rather than driving through with my hips to finish the lift, my knees travelled forward under the bar and my head tilted back, all while my hips stayed bent, and I fell over as my centre of gravity got a bit messed up. This was a new problem: I was weak not at the bottom, but near the top of the lift, and I only figured this out once I went heavy enough.^^ It should be noted that this technique is not inherently a problem if you’re not a competing powerlifter, but it is indicative of a weakness.

There are many reasons why this would happen. I may have gotten out of position at the bottom, or my upper back, hips, and glutes weren’t trained like my lower back, lats and hamstrings were. This is a strength issue. For my next attempt, I pointed my feet slightly outward to push my knees a bit more outward, externally rotating the hips and making it easier to finish the top of the lift.^^^

^Imagine bending your knees before a maximum vertical jump

^^If a lifter “almost” deadlifts the weight, that means they got stuck at the top. This is a much better problem to have.

^^^The top of the deadlift is a bar hump. Imagine humping (something) with your toes pointed inwards, then with your toes pointed outwards. Outwards should feel more powerful (:flushed:).

First 405!

(2 45s, a 35, a 25, 2 10s, a 5, and a 5lb sandbag (yes I checked) on either side on top of a 45lb bar = 405lb)

My adjustments worked well enough. Examining the successful pull, we see a few issues:

  1. I knock the bar forwards at the bottom, causing me to have to pull the bar backward when I lift. This compounds the next issues and is highly inefficient.
  2. When I get the bar to my knees, I exhale (bad, losing my brace), throw my head up, knees forward, and heels up (bad, means my hips aren’t strong enough to straighten out my body, you can see my hips stay bent for a while here, also back angle change due to neck movement, also a ramping call, also my feet not being firmly planted on the floor implies instability and poor weight distribution). ^^^^
  3. At the top, my grip starts to slip as I had set my grip a little loose w/ the straps. This is why I appear to be struggling at the top; I can hold that position for unlimited time otherwise.
  4. I still have tons of energy to lower the bar, implying that I have more juice to give for a heavier attempt.
  5. The position of my hips when I start and finish is a bit different.

^^^^Look up an Olympic clean. My pull is similar to that with the head tilt back + heel lift.

On top of deadlifting more in general, I can begin more hip hinge practice w/ RDLs, good mornings, and rack pulls, a stronger upper back w/ shrugs, stronger quads off the start with pause/box squats, speed work, banded work, and buying and learning to use a lifting belt.

Still a Beginner

The fact I didn’t train and pulled a PR out of my ass despite recognizable issues suggests I still have much work to do. Discussion about perfect form is useless and I don’t think it exists (what would the Platonic form of a deadlift be anyway?), but most people concerned about this haven’t lifted heavy enough to see if their perfect-form deadlifts actually hold up. I was always better at deadlifting lower weight for higher reps; the neurological adaptation (psychologically and physiologically) was not as demanding as a true max in which all tissues need to be firing properly instantaneously. There is a reason I don’t listen to music when lifting something heavy and it’s the same reason I don’t listen to music when working on a problem set. As an aside, I think a 500lb deadlift is entirely feasible within my lifetime.

To Do:

  1. 500W on getting doored by soccer moms.
  2. Finish reading the Masnavi.
  3. Get some more muscles and
  4. deadlift 500lb.