5 Ways Your Grip is Killing Your Lifts

Grip is one of the things many fail to pay attention to when lifting. Issues can arise from the grip and go down the chain to the proximal joint of the shoulder.

Here are 5 things to consider regarding your grip which you may not even be thinking about.

1. You are using the hook grip but not really making use of it.

The hook grip is a grip that should allow you to hold onto the bar with too much effort. But despite knowing that, you still grip the bar really tight as though you are at a sale and you are afraid of someone stealing your goods.

Properly employing the hook grip will allow the weight to sit in the hands instead of having to grab the bar too hard.

Learn to let the weight sit in your hook grip. That way, you will be able to take up the slack and have the feeling of the weight of the barbell combined with your centre of mass.

2. Squeezing the bar from the start engages the arms early in the lift.

Related to the first point, by gripping the bar hard, you may fail to take up the slack on the bar and transfer the tension into your trunk. This would then result in the arms being engaged from the start to move the weight or “pull” the weight off the ground.

Having the arms bend early can result in depending on them to perform the second pull rather than transfer force from the legs to the bar.

One way to establish the awareness to have the weight loaded within your trunk and properly engage the legs to initiate the movement rather than the arms is to gently lift the bar off the ground. As you initiate movement, feel that your shoulders are being pulled down by the weight of the barbell. Once you can establish that, then focus on holding tension in the shoulder blades to get the bar moving off the ground. This will help build the awareness of properly engaging the legs than using the arms early.

3. You are not aware of the angle of your wrists when you set up.

When picking up the lifts, there are already so many key points to keep to that sometimes you feel like it’s impossible to even perform the lift without spending 10 minutes thinking of what you have to do before the lift. How the wrist sits with the bar is something that can determine the proximity of the bar to your body as well as improve the rhythm and tempo of the lifts.

You don’t have to flex your wrists but keeping them flat and maintaining that angle until you have to turn the bar over will definitely help in keeping the bar close and having the bar at the hips when looking to perform the second pull. See this as my explanation for the concept of having the knuckles down from the start.

4. Not releasing the hook grip when receiving the bar COULD (and I repeat COULD) be detrimental to your lockout.

When turning over the bar, there are two approaches to how your grip should be when receiving the bar. One is to release the hook grip and the other is to keep the hook grip. My approach is to release the hook grip as it allows you to have a quicker lockout and it eases off on the wrists when not pulling on the thumbs.

Releasing the hook grip allows the arms to lock out faster and better after the turnover and when receiving the bar. Image credit to Catalyst Athletics

Most of the time, because there are already so many other points to think about, releasing the hook grip is not one of them. What happens then is active pulling of the bar during the “loop” or turnover. That causes more momentum added to that phase of the movement and increases the requirement for stability in the receiving position. Secondly, it makes the movement of the wrists more of a flick than a rotation around the bar to adopt the receiving position. Of course, if you are mobile enough in your wrists, whether you release the hook grip or not doesn’t really matter if you are not too active in the wrists during that turnover.

5. Trying to pull yourself under the bar doesn’t come from being active in the arms and pulling onto the bar.

Everyone wants to move under the bar fast. And yes, it is important to move under fast. However, transitioning under the bar comes from moving into lower limb joint flexion fast in order to move the body under the bar. Thinking of using the arms to pull under the bar results in unknowingly pulling up continuously on the bar.

Related to the previous point, if you are holding into your hook grip, this will force you to end up using your arms to pull yourself under the bar instead of physically moving your hips down under the bar into the receiving position.

Conclusion

So here are five things regarding your grip which I think could actually hinder movement in your lifting. And most of the time, we seldom focus on the finer points of our grip. I don’t blame you. There are already 99 problems and you think the grip ain’t one.

5 Lessons to Unlearn in Weightlifting.

As weightlifting is a skill that needs to be learnt, sometimes there are some mis-information going around as to what learning the lifts should be. I won’t say I have the best qualifications or experience but there are a few things I can definitely tell you for sure regarding some concepts in weightlifting that are commonly misinterpreted. Here are just five of them:

1. It’s fast from the get-go.

You are told you need to move fast. You are told it’s an explosive movement so explosive means fast. But we all know that pulling fast from the ground contributes nothing but poor positions later in the lift and you will probably struggle to make the lift.

Credit to Ironmind for the image.

Instead, it is usually a controlled movement off the ground, involving tension in the back and drive through the legs in order to be accurate with the positions you want to achieve. Only until you transition into a good position to develop force, that’s where you can be as fast as you want and in fact you need to be fast. More importantly fast in that transition from an upward direction to a downward direction of your body. This concept is simple. It’s one of tempo. Think of moving controlled then fast. Slow-fast.

2. I need to get under the bar faster.

So you go on to do all your high-hang work, your block work from the hips. Then you realise you still can’t receive the bar fast enough. You always end up having the bar coming down on you and you are still on your way down to meet the bar.

At this point, you are heading down. But is the bar following you down? If it is, then you wouldn’t be ready to receive it.

Why so? The concept here is simple. You lost all the momentum of the bar which you tried so hard to develop in your pull. No momentum? What happens next? Bar starts coming down then. It’s not that you are not fast getting down into the bottom of a squat position. You just lack that timing. That transition which I mentioned in the earlier point. You need to let the bar do its work (many call it the weightlessness feeling) and travel up while you take that opportunity to travel down. If you constantly pull pull and pull and even try to pull yourself under, you are not developing momentum on the bar, you are placing it. Of course then, you will be too slow to get under.

3. Hip drive/hip contact.

This is even developed into a cue. Hip bump, bar need to bounce off the hips, the bar needs to be brought into the hips etc. Upon hearing this, you think you just need to feel the contact and everything should fall into place. Or you try really hard to “sweep” that bar into place and end up pulling with your arms. Or worse still, you attempt to hump the bar and end up getting a bruised hip.

How the hip and the bar moves following this point is critical to how easily you will receive the bar.

Instead, you should be looking at hip contact as a result of you and the bar moving upwards and meeting (rather than colliding). Also, hip drive should be seen as part of the whole action of using the legs and not just hip extension. Stand up straight and keep your legs straight. Now open and close your hips; it doesn’t go up in any way. It goes back and forth. My point exactly. You want the bar to go up, not back and forth. The hips and the bar are two moving points and should be seen as two moving objects. If they move in the same direction, their speed increases due to momentum but if they collide, speed is lost.

4. I need to feel my weight being distributed in the different areas of my feet.

You are told you need to start with the weight in your mid foot, then you feel it move back probably to the middle of your heels then back forward into your forefoot (some say balls of the feet). All these when pulling. Tough task isn’t it? Try walking and feeling that you are trying to land heel to lateral side of your foot to the medial portion of the ball of your foot everytime you take a step.

Weight distribution taken too far to the limits not only force you to lose balance but also cause you to work harder than you should to bring your balance back to the centre.

Weight distribution is indicative of how the centre of mass moves over the bass of support which are your feet in this instance. It is not something you actively control by forcing yourself to get weight distributed that way but it’s a result of the actions of keeping yourself centred. More importantly, think of trying to drive force from your toes or only balls of your feet to perform a vertical jump. I do this in my seminars and workshops all the time to introduce the concept of base of support and the number of eyes that you see realising that being flat-footed when jumping makes things a lot easier to get the legs going. Why not the same for your lifts. Forget your feet when pulling. Think of your legs.

5. This is the ‘s way and they have many world champions so I should learn their technique.

You see the Russians, the Chinese, the Armenians lifting a certain way. You see a certain weightlifter lifting that way and getting big numbers overhead. You watch them lift and think I need to do what they do to hit my 100kg snatch. I need to do their program or do whatever exercises they do and I’ll lift like them.

Know not only what they do but why they do.

I’m sorry but no. The Russians lift loke the Russians because they are Russian. The Chinese lift like the Chinese because they are Chinese. Rather than following the exact technique or learning the exact technique, you need to understand the concept of their lifting. Not the “how they do it” but the “why they do it”. You understand the why and you will understand what works and what doesn’t work for you. Blindly following a certain style may not be the best thing for you. Having a style that suits you allows you to move better. All styles or methods follow the same concepts and should lead to the same point: lifting more weight.

Conclusion

Learning is something that is very important in weightlifting. The desire to expand one’s knowledge is key to getting you understanding the lifts better, building better awareness of the movements and subsequently lifting better. However, there are always going to be sources of information which have been taken out of context. Hopefully, these lessons I have mentioned will help you clarify just the basic concepts related to the weightlifting movements and give you a clearer picture to make a more informed decision to what you should or should not be doing in the lifts.

Squats in Weightlifting: 10 Thoughts to Share

Squatting in a weightlifting program is a staple exercise and its uses are aplenty. It’s seen as an exercise indicative of leg strength and is “somewhat related” to increasing your snatch or clean and jerk numbers.

Here are 10 thoughts I feel should be made known about squatting based on my playing around with technique as well as programming and now I’m sharing with you to give you alittle more insight to how squats should be viewed in weightlifting.

1. You NEED to be able to squat consistently.

Pretty straight forward right? But many don’t back squat consistently to reap the full benefit of the exercise. And in many S&C coaches’ eyes, you miss out on that transfer of strength/power to your lifts. Consistency here refers to the fact that from the set up to the re-racking of the weight when done is consistent. Every rep is the same from start to finish. Always strive for that kind of consistency so that you load your legs correctly all the time.

2. You SHOULD learn how to back squat well.

What is back squatting well? Tight trunk, load up the legs and keep position at the bottom while remaining stable. Correct breathing/bracing technique. None of that sitting back on the heels, knees can’t go past the toes etc stuff or getting aggressive just because you want to be fired up. Being composed allows you to do things well; so why not be composed in the squat and your other lifts?

3. You need to be back/front squatting at least ONCE a week.

You should be performing the back squat and front squat at least once a week. Back squat to build muscular strength/strength endurance in the legs; front squat to build strength in position for the clean and to reinforce the rack position. Overhead squats? For weightlifting, perhaps beginners who struggle to maintain the bottom of the snatch can do some overhead squats. I wouldn’t advise to go heavy though.

4. Calculate your tonnage/poundage/weight used.

Being objective with your squat numbers can help you monitor your progress and see if you are squatting enough or too much (which is most of the time). Percentages are important in squatting and so is volume. Not taking these into consideration will just crush your squat and hinder you from progress. You can also see if you are overtraining or properly over-reaching; they are two different things.

5. Frequency is more important than intensity.

This is related to the first point about consistency. Being consistent in your movement is equally as important as being consistent with your training. Especially in squatting, loading up the legs constantly will build accumulation to fatigue and subsequently increase strength/strength endurance. If done properly, it should fall within the periodization plan of the program and allow you to peak following a good taper period.

6. Too much frequency/volume can be detrimental WITHIN your weightlifting program.

That’s where the blurred line of squats positively contributing to your lifts come in. Squatting a lot may build strength/strength endurance but also takes away a lot of energy in your legs and will affect the ability to produce force for the lifts. Add the accumulated fatigue on top of that, it is like staying tip-toed off the edge of a cliff. Lean too far forward or in this case, push yourself too regularly with squats and you may end up falling off and crashing rock-bottom. You also have to consider that there are many other lifts like pulls or even your classic lifts that build the ability to produce force in your legs.

7. It is alright to spend a period of time focusing on squatting for leg strength BUT not all the time.

I find this extremely important. It’s like building a house. You can’t build the house and lay the foundation at the same time. You need to lay the foundation THEN build the house. It is not going to happen if you want to build leg strength while increasing your snatch and clean and jerk numbers at the same time. Focus on one job at hand and do it well.

8. You don’t have to be squatting maximal or close-to-max all the time.

It can be good to work up to a heavy double or single but the more crucial element is the volume. It is more important to build up the resistance to fatigue in your legs so that you can continually produce force for the weightlifting movements. That way, you have more in the tank to produce force in your classic lifts or pulls in your weightlifting program. But testing it once every cycle is good for you to track progress and ensure that the program is on track with your goals.

9. Going low doesn’t mean hitting end-range of your bottom position.

When squatting, you always try to go as low as you can. You are even told to go ass-to-grass. Yes. You should go low. You should hit below parallel but you need to be able to do a few things if you want to gain that depth. You need to be able to feel that your legs are still loaded at that transition from the descent to ascent.

If you can’t feel tension at that point, you may end up putting the strain of the load onto your joints or even muscles not meant to be supporting the joint and result in injury. Notice that many lifters when receiving at the bottom pull themselves down not to rock-bottom position. This is so that the legs can be loaded up to resist the load coming down on them, allowing them not to lose stability at the bottom.

10. You squat to get stronger legs, not bigger lifts.

Many embark on a squat program in the hope of getting bigger numbers for their snatches and their clean and jerks. And their sole focus on their program is to get that leg strength (see point 7) which is not wrong! But squats help make the lifts easier. It does not make you lift better. You still need to put in the same consistency in your lifts as in your squats if you want to see your numbers go up. You squat to squat bigger numbers. You snatch to snatch bigger weights. As simple as that.

Conclusion

Hope this clarifies the use of squats and its appropriateness within a weightlifting program. Being strong in your legs is definitely important but if you are looking to be better in your weightlifting movements, there are other things to consider which could be more important than squatting.

Stay Strong And Keep Squatting,

The Training Geek