Tag: Powerlifting

Deadlifting without Calluses

francodeadlifting

I’m a big fan of the deadlift.  It’s one of those foundational strength and mass builders that packs on muscle like few exercises can.  This exercise has a tendency to give me calluses on my  hands, and that used to be fine with me: I considered them a badge of honor in my younger days.

But my wife hates them, and this has changed my attitude considerably.  I started wearing training gloves (something I never did in my single days), but that didn’t seem to help very much.

That’s when I ran across this helpful tip: try gripping the bar in a slightly different way.  Grabbing it in the middle of your palm (like you are going to bench press) really doesn’t make much sense because it will pinch the skin as it pulls towards your knuckles.  Grab the bar lower in your hand (where it’s going to end up as you pull) and you’ll avoid calluses.  I tried this today and it works–I didn’t notice any reduction in grip strength and it drastically reduced the pinching/callusing.

The point of the deadlift is to build strength and muscle–not nasty, bleeding hands.  Check out the video below for a visual.

Training to Failure

A good friend emailed me a while back asking if he should train to failure.  Some of the websites/forums he was reading gave him the impression it was necessary in order to get big and strong.  I thought I’d share my views on this somewhat controversial topic in the iron game.

Let me first define the term: training to failure means you perform a certain exercise until you literally cannot continue.  This means you either drop the weight or (more commonly) require the assistance of a spotter to do more repetitions.

I hardly ever train to failure, and I don’t recommend it for other trainees.  Here are my reasons:

1.  The majority of the experts I follow don’t recommend it.  By “expert” I mean guys who have years of training experience and/or an impressive personal resume of competitive powerlifting.

2.  It burns out the central nervous system (CNS). Training to failure tends to take its toll on the CNS, which will hurt your progress, delay your recovery, and may make you weaker in the long run.

3. It sets you up for injury.  Here’s a typical scene I’ve seen played out in the gyms:  A young guy can only do four good reps on bench press with a given weight.  But he’s determined to do 6-8 reps, so his spotter ends up doing a lot of pulling on rep number 5.  “Two more,” the eager trainee grunts.  The lifter and spotter end up being at risk for injury in this situation.

4.  It doesn’t make sense from a psychological perspective.  In other words, you want to teach yourself how to successfully perform every repetition with good form.  The goal is to lift the weight–not drop it or hand it to a spotter.

What I do:

I normally stop once I know I will be unable to do one more repetition with good form.   I was advised to train this way years ago, and it has served me well.  My own personal strength records came from smart training (like periodization); not going to failure.

Having said all this, there are times when you may want to try certain specific (advanced) techniques that require training to failure or near failure (drop sets, rest-pause training, etc.).  But I think these instances should be exceptions, not staples, in your workouts.  Just be sure there is a specific strategy involved in everything you do.