"FAST!" You Are Doing It Wrong

He tried to be fast.......

The dream of every serious lifter is to have a solid training cycle with no injuries. Arrive on meet day have everything go smoothly, get under a massive PR weight and have it feel LIGHT AS FUCK. You take the weight and it just fly's up looking like a warm up. When I first started training I would watch countless hours of high level lifters make their max attempts look effortless and I couldn't understand how they looked so smooth. So I researched a multitude of training methodologies and philosophies, thought about what I learned and started to understand how they made their movements so smooth. Dave Tate often says if you have a issue with a lift it comes down to one of three factors: Mental Technical Physical I thought about this for a long time and determined that once form and training is on point missing lifts really comes down to the following: Mentality Rigidity of torso Balance Ideally your squat would look like this:

Idalberto Aranda (Above)

Sam Byrd (Above)

But in reality what I see a lot of is people driving out of the hole with the intent of maximum speed. They make it out of the hole but then end up losing position and miss the lift or have a hideous grinder. I see that people are quite often taught to lift fast. This allows you to recruit more muscle fibers and move more weight. I used to think that if I wanted to make my lifts look smooth then I just had to be faster, a lot faster. This is unequivocally FALSE. Speed does help you when the weights lighter and it can even help you with heavy loads BUT people constantly trade speed for torso rigidity. Then you get lifts that look fast out of the hole and stall near the top as the torso starts to bend out of position. Instead I focus on being smooth rather than fast. When you try to move with the intent of making your lift smooth you stay rigid and relaxed at the same time allowing a more seamless transition and a stronger lift. Maintaining rigidity is what will allow you to smoothly transition your lifts to completion. When your torso stays tight and locked in position you will be able to drive powerfully and strong. The rigidity allows you to much more easily stay on your balance point and the strong tight feeling it created helps you mentally by making the weight feel lighter. Everything you do in the gym is done to keep your torso solid unless we are talking about the bench press, but even then you need to keep your torso rigid to avoid flopping around on the bench. Before I list some exercises you commonly do I think it's important I define what muscles make up your torso in this context.

Torso: Lats,Erectors,Obliques,Transverse and Rectus Abdominus, and your hip extensors Common exercises used to strengthen your torso even though you don't look at it that way. - Pull ups - Rows - All direct ab work - Squats:all variations - Press:all variations - Deadlifts: all variations - Back extensions - Carries - Etc etc.

Basically direct chest, arm, and calf work is the only things you do that isnt for your core. Why is this important? If you can train yourself to remain rigid no matter what you can grind through max loads while maintaining solid form. How do you go about doing this? - High rep sets moving smoothly in a touch and go style - Heavy weights, low reps, high sets

Recap time:

- Torso needs to remain rigid so form stays perfect

- Rigidity allows you to stay on your balance point and keep your form perfect

- Focusing on being fast usually exchanges speed for torso rigidity compromising form

- Focus instead on being smooth and remember slow is smooth, smooth is fast In conclusion when you try and be super fast out of the bottom of a lift chances are something is going to slip out of position. To avoid this you should train instead to be smooth out of the bottom position and accelerate to lockout faster every inch the bar moves up.