Today we´re going to discuss the standard for squat depth, comparing and contrasting the positions in high squats with proper squats.
In Starting Strength, coaches like Rusty from the Wichita Falls Athletic Club have the reasons why they want to be squatting to the proper depth. It involves the hamstring, back angle, knee angle, most muscle mass… In this post, I’m just going to be talking about what that depth looks like.
Today we´re going to talk about a common movement error starting the bar in the press that throws the bar forward and how to stop this from happening.
Starting Strength coaches teach a hip movement when doing the press. The trainee dip the bar and drive through the bar. The bar stays midfoot at the beginning of the press because it’s got to be in front of the neck. And then, we want to get it back to the shoulders as quick as possible.
Today we´re going to explain what a deadlift bar is and how it can be used. Let’s first talk about the difference between a deadlift bar and a regular standard bar. Some examples of stardand bar are:
The Texas Strength System bar. It has really good knurling. The only thing that it doesn’t have is the center knurling.
The Starting Strength Bar that Buddy Capps Welding makes. It’s very similar to the previous one but it has a center knurling.
Today we’re going to be talking about the Olympic lifts. We’re going to be talking about the snatch and one of the best accessory lifts to do for the snatch.
The snatch and the clean have a similarity: it is a rapid extension, then a drop to get under the bar and then a hard lock out with the elbow. A press out doesn’t count. A press out is when you get it about halfway or 3/4 of the way, and then you actually push on the bar. The rapid extension throwing the bar and then dropping under the bar is what makes the lift a lift. That’s what the snatch and the clean and jerk have in common.
As you progress in your lifting and in your pulls, you will need to use some kind of an aid with your grips, especially if you’re doing rack pulls, if you’re doing heavy shrugs or if you’re doing a lot of volume on your pulls. Sometimes just alternating the grip or hook gripping is not a good idea because of the positions that the bar will start in, or just general fatigue in your hands. So what you’ll do is you’ll use straps.
We’re going to talk about bench press tips. These are three quick tips that Starting Strength coach Pete Troupos brings us. He thinks they might help out your bench press. Hopefully, you find them useful.
The first tip is going to be about grip and gripping the out of the bar. The harder you grab the bar, the more likely you are to be able to control your wrists and elbows and get them to do what you want them to in the bench press. It also works for the press as well, but taking a deliberate grip and squeezing the bar tightly is going to help you manipulate the bar and your joints in a way that you want. So, give it a try.
Josh Wells is a Starting Strength coach and he´s been doing Olympic weightlifting for over 26 years. Today I’m going to explain to you based on the experience and knowledge of coach Josh Wells about how to improve foot position in the split jerk as you move under the bar and then recover to the finished position.
In the last post we talked about the close grip bench. We explained why you would do a close grip bench, how to do close grip bench… Now, we´re going to talk about the way is teached the regular bench press, that is to say, the standard bench press from the blue book that Starting Strength coaches teach. I’m going to talk about elbow position, forearm position, and shoulder position, and why we want those positions the way we have.
The width of your grip on the bench press is a relatively important variable in the training effect you obtain from the exercise. A wide grip on a bench press is typically what is used in powerlifting meets because the wider grip in the bench press reduces the range of motion that the bar has to travel. It is thought that a shorter range of motion would enable you to bench more weight. And if you get used to doing it with a wide grip, that’s probably true. Most bench press records are set with a wide grip. In fact, the inside score mark on a bar is the widest permittable grip for the bench press. In other words, your index fingers have to be making contact with some part of that inside ring, and that’s the widest permittable grip.
We’re going to explain about how to warm up during the Starting Strength novice linear progression (NLP). We have to know the difference between work sets and warm-up sets. Work sets are done for the stress that we’re going to apply for today’s workouts. An example might be 200 lb for 3 sets of 5. That would be the goal today when we come into the gym. But we’re not going to walk into the gym and just load 200 pounds on the bar. We’re gonna go through a logical warm-up that gets us ready for the workout that we’re going to do.