Becoming the strength athlete: why understanding the basics is important
Picture this: You are just finishing your time as a small town high school athlete, let’s say a track runner. You were good, not great, but you probably could have gone on to be on the team for a small college, but you decided to go a different way. You always enjoyed your lifting a lot but never really focused on it other than the not-so-great workouts your coach threw together in the off-season. You recently heard from a buddy at your local gym that there was going to be a powerlifting meet a few towns over in a few months time.
This sounds fun to you- but the only problem is you have no idea where to start. So you just start to squat, and bench press, and deadlift just like Dan Green, who came up in a Google search for powerlifting. You follow a program that came up in that same search with front squats and deficit deadlifts and and chained benches. Come meet day, people ask you for rack heights and you don’t even have the right kind of underwear (who knew that was a rule?). It turns out to be a stressful day. But more importantly, without the bands and chains and all the fluff, your squat, bench and deadlift feel really off. You end up doing a lot worse than you thought you would.
The above scenario seems to be the case for many novice powerlifters. They find out how a lot of popular lifters train, or find some template out there on the Internet, and try to do deficit deadlifts and chained bench pressing just because it looks cool or a stronger lifter is doing them, so therefore you should do them to become just as strong. But the reality is that you should not simply copy another lifter’s training program if your goal is to get their level of strength. The reality is they put in hundreds, even thousands of hours perfecting their technique on the big three lifts. In other words, they understand the importance of their basics. This is something all powerlifters, especially the novice ones, need to realize
The Principle of Specificity
The primary of many reasons why mastering your basics is important is the principle of specificity. This governing law of exercise science is simple: To become better at a skill, you must perform the skill. What does that mean for us powerlifters? Simple- If we need our big three to be higher, than we should be focusing on the big three and only the big three. That’s not to say a little bit of accessory work or variations on those lifts to build up our body to support strength is not necessary, but it is saying that it is silly for a novice powerlifter with no experience doing a deadlift to be pulling from blocks with 20 lb chains on them. In motor learning, a field of exercise science, the idea of constant practice (doing a skill over and over) is recommended for novices. Studies have shown that novices just learning a skill produce far better performances when using a constant practice schedule, rather than using many variants (Haibach 2011). As such, we should stick to the basic squat, bench press, and deadlift.
Creating a Base for Strength
Beyond the mastering the movement skill, novices are novices because, after all, they still do not lift a lot of weight. And as such, you do not have a lot of muscle yet. You need to this base to express maximal muslcle. This is not going to happen by doing every exercise and machine under the sun. As a novice powerlifter its ill advised to try to create a base for your strength by doing bicep curls. The reason that all the best programs are so simple is because that is all you need- the compound movements give you a great bang for your buck in the gym. Compound exercises allow you to steadily progress and expose multiple muscles at once to heavier loads QUICKLY. We know from the general adaption syndrome that the body needs an alarm to begin to create proper adaptions to deal with said stresses. Bigger stresses will produce better adaptions, especially as a novice lifter. With more muscle will come more strength. With more strength comes preparedness to lift.
Form Breakdown
Another reason to nail down the basics of each lift is the idea of form breakdown. Often you will hear the expression of properly “greasing the groove” when lifting. This means getting in quality reps during your training so when it is time to lift under maximal loads, your muscle memory kicks in and you do not have major deviations in form. The issue here is that by trying to do too much, too fast in training, you won’t get in the quality reps that you need to be prepared to properly lift. A good example of this is a lifter that trains primarily touch-and-go bench not being able to bench as much weight with a pause because they cannot stay tight at the bottom of a paused rep. This again emphasizes the need to continue to practice the form of the lifts which you are going to perform on meet day.
Set-Up, Commands, and Energy Expenditure
Something else you will find yourself being a bit under prepared for by not nailing the basics is commands. At every meet there will be varying commands which you as a lifter must follow, unless of course you would like to just lift for no reason. By not having the basics of the lift down, you will not be prepare to listen to those commands. In the squat, for example, before the head referee yells the “squat” command, a lifter must pick the bar up off the rack, walk the weight out and let it settle. If you do not have this pattern down, especially under a heavy weight, there is a good chance you will spend a lot of energy getting yourself settled (Hailbach 2011). This is why repeating and rehearsing become so important in the competition setting.
Your set-up is also important to the lift as well. It is a part of the lift. A proper set- up is just as important as executing the lift itself. By repeating your same set-up, you will be able to treat the light lifts like they are heavy and the heavy lifts like they are light. In motor learning, we know that once a set-up preceding a skill is mastered, less energy will be expended preparing to do that lift. This will allow you to hit bigger PRs. This is also why people who do not perform their competition lifts as much in training have a more difficult time getting into a good setup.
All in all, the message is simple. Take the time as a novice lifter to learn the three lifts that you actually need to perform on the day of your competition. Why are you in a hurry to be advanced anyway? Gains come slower, and progress stalls. Enjoy your time as a novice lifter and be smart about your training. Keep your goals in mind, and that first meet should go just fine.
Works Cited
Haibach, Pamela S., Greg Reid, and Douglas Holden Collier. Motor Learning and Development. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2011. Print.