For the past few years I’ve been something of a prophet for the Jefferson deadlift. It’s weird to be specifically known for one odd lift, but I think it’s for good reason. The fact is that I tell people about or show people the Jefferson lift, they try it out, and they find that it fulfills a clear need or lacking in their training. I have dozens and dozens of emails, tweets, and Facebook messages from people who have alleviated back pain or gotten stronger than ever before thanks to introducing the Jefferson.

When it comes to explaining why the Jefferson is so great the biggest reason that it’s useful is exactly that it isn’t a conventional sumo deadlift. Here’s what it’s not:

• Symmetrical – one side of the body takes more load than the other.
• Sagittal-plane dominant – you’re not moving straight up and down or forward and backwards.
• Linear – it’s impossible to perform without some degree of rotation.

As a result it changes everything about the movement and how it applies to the body. Your tissue is stressed in completely different ways and, well, based on results this seems to work incredibly well for people.

But this post isn’t about the Jefferson.

I’ve got a lift I want you to test that is in many ways even stranger than the Jefferson and is sure to rustle even more jimmies.

The lift I want you to test is the Behind the Back Deadlift, or Hack Lift. (Not to be confused with the Hack Squat which generally starts at the top with the bar being lowered to the floor. No, I want you to pick it up off the floor.)

Here’s a good Behind the Back Lift:

And here’s a fucking great lift. This guy is a freak show:

Why though? What is good about this lift?

I derive most of my assessment of the usefulness and validity of lifts not from theoretical biomechanics or from ideology about how things should be but from informed experience. I get to watch people move in the gym every day and observe what works. Better still, through biofeedback testing I am able to observe how people move as well as how their body responds to the stimulus. Here’s what I’ve found about the Behind the Back Deadlift:

When people come in who have been doing a lot of saggital-plane, symmetrical, linear movements (conventional deadlifts, sumo deadlifts, cleans, snatches) often times more of this type of movement won’t test well. Sometimes even Jefferson doesn’t test well.

But Behind the Back Deadlift does.

Often enough that I’m almost guaranteed to look like a genius when nothing seems to be testing well and I can with a wave of the hand offer BTBDL and it tests well.

I can’t prove it, but my hunch is that this weird looking deadlift tests so well because it’s the exact opposite of the movements people are doing so much of. Whereas in nearly every deadlift the load is anteriorally biased, the Behind the Back Deadlift is posteriorally loaded with the weight well behind the heels.

It’s an opposition movement – something that almost invariably tests well when you’ve gone too far in one direction.

Here’s how to do it, directly from Off The Floor:

If you watch videos of heavy BTBDLs you will notice an odd pattern to the movement where the knees have to come forward about mid-lift. This is normal and to be expected.  You’re not doing it wrong because that’s happening.

One note about a variation that is useful for restoring extension function as well as rotation: Use only one weight, such as a kettlbell, in one hand. This allows the body to make up for some of the lack of extension with some rotation, and it tests really well for people.

Ultimately you may not need or want to pursue insane levels of strength in this lift and that’s fine. BUT, having it in the back of your mind to test when other things aren’t working well or when you feel like you want an alternative just gives you one more direction to make progress in.

P.S. Off The Floor is on sale for HALF OFF this week only until Friday at midnight. It has been upgraded and expanded since the original release! If you’re serious about putting pounds on your deadlift, you owe it to yourself to take advantage of this opportunity!

 

It’s not like I created a rule or policy against headphones. In fact I didn’t even realize it was happening until mid-sentence when I was talking about community and the gym. No one at my gym ever wears headphones. I don’t mean generally. I mean it has literally never happened in all the years we have been open, and I think not only does it say a lot about the gym but there’s something you can learn from it.

What do most gym floors look like? A bunch of people all in their own little zone with their headphones on going about their workouts.  I’m not saying there is anything especially wrong about this because there are plenty of lone rangers who have gotten stupid strong or super jacked training this way and enjoy every second of their solitude. But here are a few of the things they’re not doing:

• Taking input and learning from a coach or their peers.
• Throwing out and receiving impromptu challenges: “Hey, can you do this?”
• Asking questions.
• Talking through their day or about what’s on their mind.
• Building relationships with like-minded people.
• Encouraging others or being encouraged.

Believe me there are times when the music selection would drive any reasonable person to want to put in headphones. But they don’t, presumably because they’re getting far more out of the environment than they’d gain by going to their fortress of solitude.

This isn’t meant to be an ad for my gym, especially because I know there are tons of gyms in which you’ll never see headphones, like most Crossfits and hint-hint this is what makes it so popular. That’s not the point. The point is the environment and what it does and does not facilitate.

My question to you is – what do you get out of your gym environment? Is it the best you can do?

 

Volume is the driver of strength training. Not only that, but volume is the driver of all training. You know how I get better at skydiving? Moar skydiving! Want to build more muscle? Moar volume!

Volume is the foundation that you build all the levels above upon, as well as the mortar that goes between the bricks. While certainly not the only important metric in strength training—you can’t increase volume indefinitely, and to do so would be ignoring the other directions you can make progress in—it is immeasurably important to your progress.

The surprising truth about training volume is that most people don’t do enough of it, and most people can handle much, much more than they currently do. Don’t believe me? Add up your daily volume from your past five workouts and find the average. (Don’t have a training log? Shame on you.) My money says the over-under is 8,000 pounds and I’ll take the under.

I’ve been precisely tracking training for myself and every member of The Movement Minneapolis for over four years, and have over 500,000 rows of valuable data. Sifting through this confirms a pattern that experienced coaches will find familiar – the people who make the most progress are moving about 15,000 pounds per workout with an average weekly volume of 50,000 to 60,000 pounds.

At the risk of oversimplifying: want more strength gains and better physique improvements in less time? Do more volume.

Yes, the intensity (the absolute or relative weight you’re lifting) with which you lift matters, as does the density (pounds per minute), but both my data and the body of scientific evidence available points to the same conclusion: neither matters as much as total volume.

Greg Nuckols discussed this phenomenon in his episode of Evil Sugar Radio. The Russians’ blunt tool to solve training problems is more volume. Based on results, this tactic seems to be working for them.

Three years ago, I took on a personal challenge to lift a million pounds of volume over the course of one month. I wrote about that experience here.

My challenge to you is to take on Million Pound November yourself. As a gym, The Movement Minneapolis has created a team challenge. Teams of members from the gym will be attacking this challenge collectively, pooling their volume to reach a total of a million or more by the end of the month.

Accomplishing this task alone is no small feat and is not for beginner or even intermediate lifters. You need both a solid foundation of strength, as well as a keen understanding of your own physiology so that you reap rewards from the challenge instead of it leaving you worse off than before.

For a bit of perspective, if you train three times per week for a total of 12 workouts, you would have to perform 83,333 pounds of volume per workout. Most people average 8,000. Training twenty times still means 50,000 pounds per workout. Training daily with occasional breaks leaves you with a more reasonable per-session volume.

Here are a few suggestions of ways to tackle #MilPndNov:

• By yourself, for the truly daring, and those who are ready for the challenge.
• In a small team of two or three training partners as a realistic and achievable goal, as well as a target on which to focus a month of training together.
• In a larger team of eight to 10 people, be they local or spread across the globe, to stay accountable and chip away together at a mountainous achievement.

No matter how you tackle it, the #MilPndNov will net you several rewards:

• Setting a habit of consistently getting to the gym and putting in the work.
• By and large, more volume equals more results. If you put in the work, your body will respond and adapt. You’ll like what happens.

A few guidelines are in order, but this isn’t a strict challenge and you’re welcome to interpret as you see fit:

• The main drivers of training volume are the big, compound lifts such as squats, deadlifts, ballistics such as swings, rows, pull-ups, and pressing. Heavy partials can massively inflate your training volume, and certainly have your place, but would skew the data. Stick to whatever variations test best for you, but don’t try to game the system by just doing partials just to rack up volume. You’re just cheating yourself. Or do, I don’t really care.
• Be reasonable with how you count your bodyweight exercises. Unless it’s in a handstand, you’re not pushing full bodyweight in a pushup, so estimate and adjust accordingly.
• You are the only one who stands to gain or lose here, so keep it easy and stay in a eustress state (i.e., don’t push through lifts that feel awful). Pushing to hit an external number might feed your ego, but it’ll break your body.

Throughout the month, I will provide resources to help you stay on track, keep you inspired and motivated, and also throw out the occasional door prize to keep it fun. And possibly a million pound meme or two.