no such thing as "weak point" training

[rickhussey]

www.lift-run-bang.com/2011/03/jim-echoes-my-thoughts-on-weak-point_01.html

i agree 100%

[Rosario-546]

Keep us posted when the programs are available, Id like to see them.

[rickhussey]

i posted a couple cycles he wrote awhile back: rawpowerlifting.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=training&action=display&thread=2824

when Big15 and Strong15 are available, i will post the link(s).

[George]

Fun article to read for the old school guys with a lot of truth to it.

[3speed]

I'm not sure if I disagree with his premise or his presentation. He states that weak point training is "hocus pocus" while suggesting deadlifts from blocks and pause squats are beneficial training exercises. Both are used to address weak points in your lifts.

Yes, if you are having trouble completing a lift, getting stronger will definitely help that endeavor. However, identifying and improving weak points in your lifts will help you to get stronger.

[realpc]

Hi guys!

Re pause squats and block deads -

I don't file those under weak point training because they are still the lift, you're just performing them in a way that makes overcoming the inertia harder. It's not like say, doing good mornings and box squats to make me a better deadlifter, all the while not ever pulling a heavy deadlift.

With the pause squat you take some of the myotatic reflex out of the movement, and you are forced to keep an upright position at the bottom rather than become "lazy" and use a bounce. This makes you stronger out of the hole. But you're still performing nothing more than a back squat.

With block deadlifts you change the angle of the knee and hip in relation to the bar, and again, makes overcoming the inertia more difficult. This is why so many guys have great results with pulling from blocks then back to the floor.

When I talk about getting over weak points I think of guys doing 15 different assistance exercises to overcome every "bad technique" or "I'm failing at lockout" mentality.

When you get stronger, you don't fail at lockout. You make the lift. Generally you just need to get stronger and nothing more. I think guys spend a lot of time spinning their wheels trying to find an answer every time they hit a wall or sticking point, rather than just push on through trying to get stronger.

If anything weight gain is the ultimate weak point fixer. LOL

[3speed]

We agree in part. There have been several occasions when asked "Why did I miss the lift? What am I doing wrong?", that my response was "You have too much weight on the bar". I have also been known on many occasions to tell people to stop doing so much assistance work because they simply cannot recover from the volume.

However, it appears that we are going to have to agree to disagree on the the aspect of weak point training. You can identify weaknesses in the execution of your lifts and you can do assistance work to specifically address that weakness and thereby make the entire lift stronger.

Weight gain is not the Holy Grail when it comes to getting stronger no matter what you have heard. There are often practical restrictions such as health concerns. I lift at 220. I have tried to move up, but this is the heaviest bodyweight that I can maintain without my blood pressure starting to climb.

Additional bodyweight can help you, but strength is not just about muscle size. It is also about neural efficiency - how efficient your nerves are at transmitting the messages snet from your brain.

Eat, Train, Sleep, Repeat will only get you so far in this sport. You have to be smart about how you do what you do if you want to reach your potential.

[realpc]

If you missed a lift due to execution, then that's a technique issue.

But just because you think you have weak points, doesn't mean you do.

Mike Tuscherer actually agrees with me on this subject as well. He diagnosed a fellows bench press, where he was having problems at lock out. Nevermind that the guy did a Shoot ton of lock out work and got stronger in virtually every movement. His lock out still sucked.

Mike analyzed his force curve and determined that he was missing at "lock out" due to lack of speed from the bottom. In other words, he just wasn't strong enough. Once he was strong enough his speed from the bottom improved, and his lockout issue (with that particular weight) went away.

Guess where this guy is going to have his next sticking point at? That's right. Lock out. Does he need to do lock out work? Nope. Just needs to get stronger.

Generally once your technique is down, it's all about getting stronger. And that's generally the bottom line. Trying to fix every sticking point in the world isn't going to make you stronger. Getting stronger will. It seems simple but a lot of people are still having trouble grasping this concept.

I blame WSB.

Thanks gents.

[3speed]

Mar 7, 2011 17:48:21 GMT -5 realpc said:

Trying to fix every sticking point in the world isn't going to make you stronger. Getting stronger will. It seems simple but a lot of people are still having trouble grasping this concept.

I blame WSB.

Thanks gents.

I understand the point you are trying to make. I simply do not agree with it. As I stated above, we will have to agree to disagree because I am not going to let this become an argument.

[thatnuckolskid]

you haven't defined "stronger."

if by "stronger" you mean the ability to lift more weight through a full range of motion, weak point training has merit. since the olden days, it's been established that isometrics can increase strength for up to 15 degrees of a joint angle, for example. if i'm missing 3 inches off the chest, i'd be crazy not to utilize weak point training to eventually be able to move the weight through the sticking point to be able to complete a complete rep with a heavier weight.

[realpc]

Mar 7, 2011 23:38:50 GMT -5 thatnuckolskid said:

you haven't defined "stronger."

if by "stronger" you mean the ability to lift more weight through a full range of motion, weak point training has merit. since the olden days, it's been established that isometrics can increase strength for up to 15 degrees of a joint angle, for example. if i'm missing 3 inches off the chest, i'd be crazy not to utilize weak point training to eventually be able to move the weight through the sticking point to be able to complete a complete rep with a heavier weight.

The issue there is, it doesn't always work that way. See my point above about Mike T's guy missing at lockout because he wasn't generating enough speed out of the bottom. He did tons of lockout work, but that did not fix his lockout.

Often times guys did this "weak point" training because they think a muscle group is weak or they train a certain area of the movement pattern yet the same point in the ROM remains the sticking point.

So he just needs to get stronger.

I understand this is a hard thing for a lot of guys to get their head around because WSB and other philosophies have said that finding weak points is the holy grail of powerlifting, but guys in the 70's and 80's often just did the big 3 with some curls pushdowns and leg ext and leg curls. And yet most of those raw records still stand.

That's because their focus was so much on the big 3 and just getting stronger on them. Again, I know most people have trouble getting their mind around this but the strongest raw guys I know, don't do "weak point training".

Either way, everyone has to find their niche and see what works for them. I just don't think I would ever spend time trying to find "weak points" because weak points will ALWAYS exist. That's normal. Just rather than trying to fix them, just get stronger.

[craigrog]

From what I understand, Mike T just has a different definition of where the weak point is. If I remember right, he feels it's where acceleration starts to decrease. This tends to put the weak point way before the sticking point, where the bar simply moves at it's slowest.

[George]

This is an excellent thread!

Really good points being made all around. The irony of my opinion is that I rely on the big three primarily, yet have always believed that certain accessory work could bring about accelerating gains in weak spots. This thread had me weighing something I had believed for a while, back and forth.

The main reason I feel that there is merit to weak point training is illustrated in using the bench lockout sticking point. When I was gear traning, I was using band tensions that were close to two hundred pounds more at lockout than I was capable of doing raw and full range. I had, in fact, stopped raw full range altogether. At the time I stopped gear training and converted to raw I was around a 580-600 double ply bench. MY first raw meet only six months later, my best lift was 350!. My sticking point was within the range my shirt covered, once I was midway through I blasted the weight no problem.

After some serious raw full range training, my bench climbed to an even 400. At the same time, I attempted to still use a mix of band and chain accessory (old habit then) and noticed that the top end strength was quickly diminishing. Therefore, my raw bench climbed almost fifty pounds while my shirted max likely dropped by 50-75lbs. I feel this is a result of not keeping the CNS firing for the added lockout poundages, using less reliance on overall tricep strength and stabilizer muscles.

Using the above, I feel that if the lockout is weak, heavy top end movements as accessories may be able to increase a high sticking point for the reasons above. First, the added poundage demands more from the CNS for coordinating the muscles into stabilizing heavier poundages. Secondly, holding 100-200lbs more at lockout will likely have a mental effect in making a full range raw feel lighter.

While I agree that if a person was able to raise their overall strength from the bottom the high sticking point would dissappear, I would attempt to play cat and mouse to speed up the process if possible.

Another reason I feel weak point training has merit is based on the muscles themselves. Close grip benchers are generally considered to have more tricep involvement in the bench, while wide benches are said to utilize more pec and shoulder strength. If we can generally agree that these are accepted principles, then we have to say that the triceps and chest each play off of each oher, depending on style. With that (using hopefully more generaly accepted principles), the triceps are much smaller than the larger muscles of the chest. Therefore, the triceps can recover much faster than the larger chest muscles. Therefore, if a person experiences a sticking point that can be attributed to the lockout (triceps), why not attempt to do more for them in order to create more strength at lockout by taking advantage of quicker recovery time. (Besides, how many people have ever strained a tricep, let alone blew one out).

I undestand the idea that better starting strength off the chest will increase speed as the muscles change position throughout the movement (from chest an shoulder to ultimately triceps and stabilizers), however I feel that the triceps can be strengthened seperately enough to make a more efficient transition during this final phase.

Hopefully I keep gaining enough relying on the big three to not have to find out the hardway! (And there's the irony again).

[thatnuckolskid]

you still didn't define what you meant by "stronger"

[realpc]

Mar 9, 2011 22:56:31 GMT -5 thatnuckolskid said:

you still didn't define what you meant by "stronger"

I think getting stronger is a pretty clear term. I can lift more weight in X lift than I used to. I'm not going to debate silly semantics. Sorry.

[thatnuckolskid]

you should be willing to if you want to make your argument cogently. if that's your definition of strength, your entire premise is based on a classic example of circular reasoning:

to lift more weight get stronger, and getting stronger means lifting more weight. you see?

[realpc]

Mar 16, 2011 14:06:14 GMT -5 thatnuckolskid said:

you should be willing to if you want to make your argument cogently. if that's your definition of strength, your entire premise is based on a classic example of circular reasoning:

to lift more weight get stronger, and getting stronger means lifting more weight. you see?

Because lifting is really that simple. People just want to overcomplicate it. And it's NOT complicated. So yeah, you got it right.

When I need to lift more weight, my PLAN is to get stronger. It seems simplistic to some people, but that's because it is. Worrying about every nuisance of training is the fastest way to get stuck in mud and go nowhere. When I dropped all that BS that's when I went from being stuck and Shoot started moving.

I should go 1800 no belt/no wraps @ 242 in the next 12-16 months because of this mode of thinking. Seems to work somehow.

[dbunch]

There are weak points. Every lift requires multiple muscle groups that are independent of each other. As a lifter increases the weight he is trying to lift eventually he will come to a point where it cannot lift the weight in front of him. If the no week point theory were true that point would be a catastrophic failure. In other word he all of the muscle groups involved in the lift would be unable to do work at that the same give weight. Because that is seldom the case and more often than not the lift fail at a given point during the movement it stand to reason that a given muscle group fail, and that by making that muscle group stronger by giving them a little more attention a given weight will go from a failed weight to an achievable weight.

[realpc]

Right, and what you're talking about does not EVER go away. If a guy misses his bench press a few inches off his chest, he's always going to miss there for the most part. When guys talk about deadlifting they talk about missing at the same spot over and over. Well when the guy gets strong enough to make that lift he won't miss there anymore. However when he tries a weight too heavy, he's going to miss in that same spot again.

This is not a "weak point" this is where his leverages change and where he's always going to miss lifts for the most part. Again, I understand it's hard for guys to get their head around, but worrying about weak points is a gigantic waste of training time if you really want to get stronger in the big 3.

When you look at the guys from the 70's who were probably the strongest raw guys ever, they didn't do "weak point training". John Kuc did pushdowns and leg extensions and leg curls and Shoot like that to supplement his powerlifting. Ed Coan used the same movements FOREVER, and if you go train with him, he'll put you on most of those same ones like stiff legs and pause squats.

That's because there are no secret "weak point" fixers that are going to take you from average to elite. End of discussion. So just get stronger on the main lifts along with some dips, chins, rows, curls whatever. Your assistance work is not going to fix anything for you the big lifts are doing.

Some guys get this, and get better, and other guys toil around forever trying to find all their "weak points" when "weak points" are always going to exist. You can't fix them because that is your leverages. And that's that.

[thatnuckolskid]

what you're saying may be hold water for some people, but saying that it is the undeniable rule for all people is ignorant. you've used 3 anecdotes of genetic anomalies to back up your sweeping claims. i'm happy for you that what you're doing is working. if you hit an 1800 total at 242, that would be a rather impressive achievement. however, you're making a mistake by looking at a few outliers and making broad generalizations.

vasiliy alekseyev used heavy step ups instead of squats: therefore, all olympic lifters should stop squatting

paul anderson never warmed up prior to squatting: therefore, no powerlifter should ever warm up again

konstantin konstantinovs rounds his upper back deadlifting: therefore, all powerlifters should round their upper back deadlifting.


that's the logic you're using


i understand your point, and in principle, it's not a bad idea. however, you're unbelievably inconsistent on what you say you have a problem with. john kuc used isolation movements, which were not "weak point" training. ed coan used paused squats (which help if your weak point is driving out of the hole) and stiff leg DLs (which help if your weak point is engaging your hamstrings once you pull a DL off the floor), but neither of those are apparently weak point training either.

why not just say "focus on improving worthwhile compound lifts instead of making sure each individual muscle group gets X amount of focus."?

thank you for admitting your entire argument was based on circular reasoning.

and yes, sticking points at leverage changes will always exist if you don't do anything to fix them. my "weak point" on the bench used to be 3 inches off my chest. i started doing 2-board press and my bench jumped from 335 to 405 virtually overnight, and i started missing lifts mid-way through my stroke instead.

[realpc]

Well at least you have all of the answers. I know I had em all at your age too. It was awesome.

You should go tell Jim Wendler, Kirk Karwoski, John Kuc (who did nothing but the big3 when he was prepping for a meet), Doug Furnas, Mark Chaillet, Marty Gallagher (who has trained a Shoot load of champions using almost nothing but the big 3), Brad Gillingham, etc how wrong they all are and how you at 19 got it all figured out.

If Karwoski had only worried about all his weak points he would have squatted more than a grand.

Here is the thing that you don't know. What you read on the net, and what people do in the gym, isn't always the same. You don't know as much as you think you know, but no one could tell me Shoot at 19 either. So it comes with the territory.

Jim,

I have a question regarding weak points on the squat. When I fatigue during a set of raw, full depth squats, my weakness seems to be in my donkey coming up out of the hole first to force a goodmorning type movement through the rest of the squat. My knees also tend to buckle inward when this happens. How could I correct this weakness?

Thanks,
Alex
Alex,

You "weak" point is common especially when you are fatigued. In fact, this is completely normal. As usual, I recommend the following for "weak" point work.

* Legs - Leg Press, GHR, Leg Curls
* Low Back - GM's, 45 degree back raise, back raise
* Abs - ab wheel, sit-ups, hanging leg raises

Basically, what I'm telling you is that you don't have a weak point -you just need to get stronger in all areas. Have THAT attitude

Go let Jim know he doesn't know Shoot and just uses circular reasoning. After that let Marty know the same thing kid. I'm sure your vast experience in said matter will blow them the Hades away.

Now before you respond with "Jim recommends exercises to fix weak points" he's not, and I think that is clear. But just to drive it home....

Jim,

My squat technique sucks, so I am learning a lot with Matt Wenning's So You Think You Can Squat vids. Here's my problem...

I have a long torso, short legs, and I tend to fall forward/donkey disappears under my back when I get deep in the hole. My shitty gym doesn't have a reverse hyper, a GHR(there is a 45 degree back raise) or a safety bar (as suggested in the SYTYCS vids). I am over three hours away from anything resembling a PL'ing gym so switching gyms is not an option. What can I do to strengthen my lower back and glutes to keep from falling forward when I squat? Any help is appreciated.
Joe,

I'd probably ask Matt Wenning about this as you are learning how to squat from him. I'd always recommend the following:

Squat
Leg Press
GHR
GM
Back Raises
Hanging Leg Raises
Ab Wheel

I'm not a big believer in the Con of the Lifting World - aka Weak Points. Everything on me is weak, so I might as well make it strong.

He's saying the same thing I am. Just get stronger everywhere. Don't worry about training "weak points". Just get stronger overall, and quit worrying about or talking about "weak points". Because they don't exist. You just need to get stronger. I don't need to define what stronger means, everyone knows what the fudge that means.

I've said what I gotta say. I have a big total to start training for soon.

[thatnuckolskid]

and....more anecdotal evidence. i appreciate that you have a theory about training that is working for you and has been effective for some genetic outliers. i also appreciate that you're an adherent to what jim wendler is saying. he has accomplished a lot and i have great respect for him and what he says. however, i'm not saying i know everything at 19. a lot of my lifting knowledge comes from travis mash who i trained with for several years when i was starting out. he definitely believed in training weak points, and he is the man who broke coan's 220 total record. i was just pointing out that it's ludicrous for you to say your training style is THE way to get strong. if weak point training was ineffective, louie simmons wouldn't be the most successful powerlifting coach in history.

[realpc]

"You're an idiot if you avoid anecdotal data, pure and simple. And I will not be associated with idiots," - Mark Rippetoe


You had me until you brought up Louie Simmons. I know more about Shoot related to him and WSB that I won't ever talk about because of the guys I promised that I wouldn't. But you're off there. And let's just leave it at that. Not of a fan of the methods they use at all. I don't really care about geared totals either.

My stance is, train to get strong top to bottom. That will work. For everyone.

Second, if you ever have read my blog I am EMPHATIC about the fact that way is THE WAY to get strong. Hardly. I am very opposed to dogmatism and absolutes. However my rant about weak point training is that it is an overused term without any real science behind it. People have "weak points" because they aren't strong enough. So my philosophy is, rather than worrying about curing every weak point, just save yourself time by getting stronger all over. Squats, deads, stiff legs, rows, chins, benches, inclines, overheads, dips, shrugs, etc. Pick 8-9 lifts and get as strong as possible on them. If you could lunge for 30 reps with 315 you don't have weak quads. If you can chin with 100 pounds around you for 10 you don't have weak lats. This is my philosophy. Just get as strong as you can on everything. This is the "weak point" cure, if you will.

Didn't mean to get off on the wrong foot if we did. I am not a dogmatic lifter at all. However I do often rail against things I believe people are wasting their time with.

Thanks for the discussion.

[thatnuckolskid]

haha, if you would have posted your previous post to start with, you wouldn't have heard a single disagreement from me. i didn't have a real issue with your philosophy, persay, just how you presented it and went about defending it. i just started reading your blog. since you've set up an account on here, are you planning on posting a log on this forum? it would be good to have someone else with experience and success on here to learn from.

[realpc]

I generally post all my workouts on the blog so they get mixed in with my mindless rantings and ravings on the blog. But I have no problem throwing my worthless .02 in here every once in a while.