Exercises for Building Up The Three Lifts?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Powerlifting & Strength Sports
1

After finishing my current 6-week program that included squats, deads, bench, my maxes are:

squat - 385
deadlift - 405
bench - 285

I missed 405 on squat and 315 on bench. My misses were probably around one inch after coming up from the bottom of both lifts. I have not missed any deadlift attempts, but I do feel slow, again, mostly within the first couple of inches of the pull.

I am not going to do any of the normal three lifts for my next 6 week routine. I want to do some variations to help those sticking points I have.

Would setting the pins to chest level in the squat rack, and starting my bench from the bottom position help my sticking point in the bench?

Likewise, would setting the pins to just below parallel and squatting from the bottom position help my sticking point in the squat?

To improve my deadlift I was thinking of deadlifting from on top of a 45-plate.

Are these variations good choices? If not, what would you all recommend? I can’t really use bands and chains. I don’t work out at home or a hardcore gym, I work out in a crowded mainstream gym. Thanks for any help.

2

Your ideas are fine, although the squat I’d have to see exactly what you were doing.
Might I suggest some serious tri and back work to augment your bench
Good mornings would help you get out of the hole better on the squat.
Your plan looks solid as do your lifts.
Hope to here some good things in a couple of months.

3

[quote]sasquatch wrote:
Your ideas are fine, although the squat I’d have to see exactly what you were doing.
Might I suggest some serious tri and back work to augment your bench
Good mornings would help you get out of the hole better on the squat.
Your plan looks solid as do your lifts.
Hope to here some good things in a couple of months.[/quote]

I am going to include good mornings again in my next routine. I did them last time, and took a break this time.

I kind of scratch my head when it comes to my back. My horizontal pulling seems to struggle. I have trouble with 225lbs. on the bent-over rows, but my vertical pulling seems pretty good. I can get 3x3 of pull ups with a 55lbs. dumbbell, and I weigh 227lbs.

And my triceps I think are fairly strong. Doing dips, I can get 8 reps with an 80lbs. dumbbell.

What kind of back/tri exercises would you recommend? I really don’t lift for bodybuilding, I lift for football, so I avoid a lot of single-joint exercises, but if they will help me bring up my numbers for my big lifts, I am all for it.

4

[quote]bigvook wrote:
After finishing my current 6-week program that included squats, deads, bench, my maxes are:

squat - 385
deadlift - 405
bench - 285

I missed 405 on squat and 315 on bench. My misses were probably around one inch after coming up from the bottom of both lifts. I have not missed any deadlift attempts, but I do feel slow, again, mostly within the first couple of inches of the pull.

I am not going to do any of the normal three lifts for my next 6 week routine. I want to do some variations to help those sticking points I have.

Would setting the pins to chest level in the squat rack, and starting my bench from the bottom position help my sticking point in the bench?

Likewise, would setting the pins to just below parallel and squatting from the bottom position help my sticking point in the squat?

To improve my deadlift I was thinking of deadlifting from on top of a 45-plate.

Are these variations good choices? If not, what would you all recommend? I can’t really use bands and chains. I don’t work out at home or a hardcore gym, I work out in a crowded mainstream gym. Thanks for any help. [/quote]

I would be carefull with the bottom position stuff, especially in the bench if you are training it with maximal weight. Starting from the bottom in the bench like that with heavy weights can F%^K up your shoulders (from my experience anyways).

Also, I would say if you are going to ditch the 3 classical lifts in favour of some variations, then maybe devote another day to working on both technique and speed with those 3 lifts? Afterall, the faster and more technically sound you are the less chance you are to be beaten by a sticking point. That is, unless, the weight is just too heavy of course. Make sure your max attempts are ambituous but realistic.

One last thing, is bringing up these 3 lifts your main lifting goal? It appears that it is, but I just want to be clear on that. If it is in fact your main goal, then research (the archives here are a good start, elitefts.com as well) the BEST methods to bringing up these 3 lifts and go at it!

Cheers,

Tags

5

Pretty impressive. You stated you felt slow on the deadlift and had trouble on the bottom of both your squats and benching. Now would probably be a good time to use acceleration techniques like explosive squats and explosive benching. If you have bands, use them. They’ve helped me tremendously out of the hole.

For your benching, like you stated you had trouble with horizontal movements, which could account for the bottom of your bench stalling. You need tremendous lat drive at the bottom of your benching. You might even try pause reps to build your explosiveness.

Deadlifting off of plates and raised platforms is a good way to build your deads up. For the bench, make sure your tight in your technique and if you haven’t tried box squatting, it could be a big help. Westside Barbell don’t deadlift too much because they box squat. It trains the same muscles as the deadlift. Do a search and try it out. Good luck.

laquino1

6

Good mornings, RDL, Dimel deadlifts, sumo deadlifts,pull throughs, Glute-ham raise if you have access, reverse hyper if you have access, zercher squats, box squats, deadlifts standing on plates(2-5" deficit), speed pulls,speed box squats and bench(bands & chains help if you have them), floor presses, board presses, close-grip bench presses, jm presses, DB and barbell extensions, face pulls, DB cleans, rear raises, chest supported rows, seated horizontal rows, heavy standing cable crunches, spread eagle situps, heavy side bends.

Feel free to throw in split squats, step ups, lunges, bulgarian split squats. The exercises above should give you a good idea. basically emphasize your posterior chain-upper back,lats,lower back, glutes,hamstrings, and triceps and core.

7

if you are lifting for football then where are your explosive lifts. snatch, hang clean, power clean, db snatch. those are crucial exercises for a football player to develop speed, explosiveness and aggresiveness. i’m not saying to drop the deadlift but it certainly isn’t as important to football as are incline, squats, and the explosive lifts so i would treat it that way and if you really enjoy it put it at the end of a workout or on another day or something.

also i would suggest trying to develop your shoulders as much as possible. from what i read it seemed as though you kind of forgot about them. strong shoulders are important for performance and injury prevention. especially in football. my advice: bench, incline, shoulder press, close grip press your ass off. also keep hitting your back very hard with vertical and horizontal pulling. start using the explosive lifts especially the hang clean and hang snatch. front squat and back squat very hard and for assistance stiff leg deads, good mornings, lunges, step ups, one legged squats, side lunges.

8

[quote]CS wrote:
if you are lifting for football then where are your explosive lifts.

also i would suggest trying to develop your shoulders as much as possible. from what i read it seemed as though you kind of forgot about them.

also keep hitting your back very hard with vertical and horizontal pulling. [/quote]

Actually CS I do cleans regularly. I recently maxed at 275lbs. on the power clean.

I am also devoting more time to shoulder work, mainly just through overhead presses, db and bb. I worry about overtraining my shoulders because all of my exercises are compound lifts that use a lot of shoulder. I can’t bring myself to do front, side, rear raises because they are just so fluff and they cause me more pain than gain.

I am going to go back to weighted pull ups, weighted chin ups, and bent-over rows for my back.

I would love to do snatches, but I have never done them, I have no one to teach me, and my gym does not have bumper plates. It is hard enough to self-teach the deadlift and squat, and those, in my opinion, are not as technical as olympic lifts.

It is also already very awkward and noisy doing power cleans without bumper plates. Trying to bring the weight down in a somewhat controlled manner from a snatch position is even less safe and more noisy. None of these excuses are going to work much longer though. I know I am missing out by not doing them. I am going to have to find someway to work around it.

Thanks for the advice everyone!