What has been on my mind a lot lately is the limiting factor in a heavy deadlift. Yes, that’s the kind of thing keeps me up at night. Not really, nothing keeps me awake. But I have given it much consideration. Between spilling words writing my deadlift book, and deciding that I wanted to push my 1RM PR up, I’ve given a lot of thought to where the deadlift breaks down. As it happens, my buddy Bret Contreras is thinking about the same things, as my phone rang this afternoon with Bret on the other end breathlessly going on about Romanian Deadlifts and hip extension torque before I could get a word in.

After that phone call, I had to go to the gym to train. I worked up to a 1RM PR of 415 and 365×5 in the barbell hip thrust, and then came up with an upper back variation that I think could be very useful. It may not be anything new, but I’ve never seen it. Before we get to the variation, I have to show you Jen’s lifetime 1RM PR of 305 she pulled today. On her birthday no less.

On to the upper back. What you’ll do is set a power rack to a pin height where you can reach the bar with your knees and hips fully locked out, and only your upper back rounded. Depending on your arm length, this will be a few inches above the knee. Leading from the upper back and shoulders, you’ll stand up to full extension and a tall chest-out posture.

Start light if you’re not accustomed to a rounded thoracic position.

Test this out and let me know how it works for you.

I was asked by a major magazine for some tips on how someone jumping back into playing basketball should prepare in the gym. The content went unused, so I’m posting it here in case it’s useful to you. The intended audience here is sort of your mid-forties commercial gym-goer, but the concept applies to anyone. I substituted one of the magazine’s own strength programs for a solid program by my friend JC Deen.

The first thing you want to do when you’re preparing to play basketball, or any sport, is to have a solid foundation of strength to build upon. Think of this as the size of a glass. Once you have a glass you can fill it with sport-specific skills and abilities. The bigger the glass, the more you can put in it. One fantastic way to do that would be to use a strength based program like JC Deen’s great LGN365 program. [There’s plenty of free information on the Internet, but it’s awfully nice to have someone do the footwork for you and put together a comprehensive plan. If you do go ahead and purchase LGN365, remember to test everything.]

The next think you’ll want to do is up your jumping game, along with shoring up your knees and ankles (both the connective tissues and the musculature) to handle the stresses of basketball. Start out with simple box jumps to a height you are extremely comfortable with. Do no more than 5 reps per set, and make sure you are landing quietly every single repetition. As your ability to produce force in taking off as well as reducing force during landing increases, add height. Once you’ve reached a box height of about 20 inches, cut that height in half and do Depth Drops. To perform, you’re going to step up onto the box, and then step off the edge and fall to the ground. The goal is to land as softly and quietly as possible. No one should be able to hear you land – especially not in a busy gym.

Finally, to ratchet up your conditioning and improve your ability to change direction at the same time, stick with the old school Suicide Sprints (aka shuttle runs) you may remember from high school PE. In a gym or on a track, mark off 3 points about 15 feet apart in a straight line. Sprint from the starting line to the first point, then back to the starting line, then to the second point, and so on until you’ve gone to the farthest point and back to the starting line. That is one repetition. Rest as needed to maintain your speed. When you can’t perform another full repetition at the same level of overall speed, call it a day. Each training session, change the distance between the markers slightly, but there’s no reason to go long distances — the point is to get better at turning sharply, and trust me, you’ll get plenty of conditioning even if the cones are only five yards apart.

Recently, I posted an older video from last fall of me running through a deadlift medley at a strongman competition. The medley consisted of two lifts on a 2″ axle. A good friend asked how the 2″ axle compared to Fat Gripz on a standard barbell. I actually had no idea, so I set out to test it. A few months ago I had also posted a picture comparing the Fat Gripz and Fat Gripz Extreme on Facebook, but I think it would be useful to have archived here.

For the unititiated, Fat Gripz are cylindrical silicone grips that can be wrapped around a barbell, dumbbell, or any other equipment handle. The original blue Fat Gripz are approximately 2″ in diameter, while the new orange Fat Gripz Extreme are 2.75″, which may not seem like much but is an enormous difference in terms of difficulty. With the addition of these grips, a regular bell can imitate the strongman implements of yore.

They are, quite possibly, the cheapest and most useful thing you could possibly add to your gym bag. The amount of variety they can add to your training is hard to quantify. Want stronger and more healthy hands? Toss them in your gym bag, and rotate them into your normal movements on occasion.

I could go on and on, but I digress, because that’s not the point of this blog post.

Without further adieu, here are my numbers:

	2” Axle	Fat Gripz on Barbell	Fat Gripz Extreme on Barbell
Best Deadlift	305	265	225
		Fat Gripz on Dumbbell	Fat Gripz Extreme on Dumbbell	Sorinex Bosco Bell
Best One Arm Snatch		100	85
Best One Arm Clean		105	90
Best One Arm Deadlift		150	125	135-140

All the barbell lifts, and all the dumbbell lifts were done on the same day.

You can see that on the two-handed deadlift, while the diameter is essentially identical, the nature of the silicone grip makes it quite a bit harder than an actual axle. It’s hard to say what the transfer would be if someone trained exclusively with the Fat Gripz (whereas I have probably trained much more with the actual axle), but I think someone capable of a 300lb deadlift with Fat Gripz on a barbell would have at least another 20-30lbs in them on an axle.

On the single handed lifts, I think there is still a deficit compared to a solid handle, but it seems to be less. I don’t have Clean and Snatch numbers on the Bosco Bell (which is about 2.7″) yet because I’ve loaded it to 120, and that’s out of my reach for now. The Extreme size is every similar to the Bosco.

I hope this is useful to see how your training with the Fat Gripz compares to the implements they imitate.