Warming up can take many forms when it comes to strength training. Lifters tend to go one of two ways. There are those who spend 20-40 mins performing all manner of dynamic stretches, myofascial release work, ‘muscle activation’ and CNS Potentiation drills.  There are also who do a set of 10 reps on the empty bar on the first exercise they are training that day and then start working up in weight.   Which is right?   Well in actual fact, neither and both. Context is key and intention trumps the specific content of the warm up.   When warming up, you should be attempting to achieve a state of readiness to perform the exercises and tasks of your workout. Which way you do this, provided the outcome is positive, will come down to a certain amount of personal preference and will be specific to the person. So what should

When it comes to the exercises you use to build up your main primary lifts (accessory work), many will often procrastinate which exercises they include, and yet when it comes to the effort which goes into training them, some can be a little lacklustre in their efforts. Lifts are built up through dedicated accessory work and must be developed to be proportionate to the degree of strength you are intent on displaying on your primary exercises. In other words, if you are a targeting a 150kg bench press, but only use 15kg dumbbells for your incline dumbbell presses then this is not going to transfer as useful strength work to build to the 150kg bench press.  If you deadlift 300kg but use 100kg for your Romanian Deadlifts then your posterior chain needs greater stimulus in order for this hip hinge focussed exercise to benefit your maximal deadlift. Whilst there is

When training any lift, after a period of time progress slows down and what’s needed is some familiarisation with heavier weights to acclimatise your joints, muscles and C.N.S. If you are stuck in a rut and struggling to make that leap to a next big milestone in weight, then you might like to try some overload methods.  Whilst some of these bench press overload methods can be overused and don’t always solve the problem entirely, they can build confidence with heavier weights.  A huge part of lifting, especially bench pressing is tied up in your confidence to handle the weight so these methods can enable you to get over the fear and ‘break in’ weights you will soon hit in the future. Here are some examples of benh press overload methods which you can try… Board Presses These reduce the range of motion so very often enable you to use

Gaining Traction on the Bench Press This is, despite what you might think from the title, not an article about breaking plateaus.   Instead I am speaking literally and want to discuss in this article the matter of maintaining shoulder positioning on the bench without sliding or slipping. Maintaining ‘grip’ on the bench pad seems to be an issue that lots of people struggle with but very few seem to address.  Firstly let’s talk about correct use of leg drive on the bench press.  A lifter should generate force with their lower body driving themselves back up onto their upper traps. This drive should not stop and start sporadically throughout the lift but rather should remain constant.  Despite the fact that the glutes must remain in contact with the bench pad, there should be virtually no weight through them, so all the weight should be bridging from the feet to

Deadlift overload movements My deadlift has made significant progress since I stopped relying on heavy overload movements to massage my ego. I am a big fan of using a variety of exercises to build the deadlift, but for a long time when my deadlift was not going as well, it was all too tempting to regularly default to movements which allowed me to use the most weight. Reverse band deadlifts, higher block / rack pulls and things like the trap bar are all useful tools when used sparingly. It is less likely though that these exercises are the missing link to what’s stopping your deadlift from improving. Occasionally it’s good to overload the movement, break in the feel of a new weight on the bar you haven’t handled before and I’m all for this being done sometimes but the numbers you can hit on these movements will not always be

“Working on your weaknesses” needs to be more than just a catch phrase. It holds no worth if you can’t identify what they are! Here’s a hint. If you are disproportionately good at a variation, and can heavily overload the exercise beyond your competition max…… perhaps, just perhaps, it isn’t training a weakness. Nothing wrong with high box squats, high block pulls or reverse band lifts when used sparingly, however very often they aren’t the missing link and what’s stopping you from lifting those weights in competition. To be able to train and programme yourself you need to have the wide base of knowledge to evaluate your movements, muscle imbalances and strengths and weaknesses. This knowledge and skill can obviously be developed but I believe that it takes at least a decade before you really can properly ‘go it alone’. Until that point, even if you programme for yourself you

Failing Reps and Self-Confidence are intrinsically linked   “[We] are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act, but a habit” – Will Durant, on Aristotle Someone who fails regularly is not practicing success, but is instead practicing failure.  Failure is a harsh reminder of your limitations and leaves lasting damage to a lifters confidence.  Failing a few reps here and there may seem insignificant but a lifter’s self-confidence is linked with a sense of optimism as to what they are capable of and if they fail too often, then this optimism very often gets a harsh hit of reality and eventually becomes pessimism.  Regularly failed weight haunts will haunt you and become harder and harder to overcome. Iron plates are heavy enough without adding the weight of past failures. Failing reps catalyzes further training failures Missing a rep purely due to a technical error might constitute a reason to retake a

Spotting in powerlifting is not easy. Each lifter likes the bar lifted out on the bench a different way and you always want to give the person the best chance of making the lift. A good training partner will be as happy to see you succeed as they are to succeed themselves. Whilst competition can and often does exist to some degree, if you are worth anything as a training partner then you want your training partner(s) to hit their attempts in training and on the platform. The same applies for coaches not wanting to see their lifters fail lifts. A problem can arise, however, from a lifter’s coach or training partners not wanting to see them fail so much they protect them from this by some rather over-generous spotting. Obviously on the deadlift a person is pretty much on their own, but on the squat and bench a tactical