Search Results for: jefferson

Last week I stopped by to visit at a friend at Invictus (Crossfit) in San Diego and it just happened to be the first Friday night of the CF Open so naturally I got to watch a bunch of freakshow athletes suffer through something you couldn’t pay me any price to do.

And it got me thinking about something with regards to resilience and injury.

One of the movements in this open WOD was the one-arm dumbbell snatch, naturally for high reps. Now you might look at this (combined with burpees and box jumps) and you might think man that is a great way to jack up a back.

Yet I have been paying attention to open workouts for many years now, and through observing trends on Facebook I can see which ones are jacking people up and which ones (sometimes surprisingly) aren’t.

And this one isn’t.

Why? And how does it relate to the deadlift?

Well first of all you have to recognize that the dumbbell snatch is basically a one-arm deadlift done with a light weight and brisk movement. It’s nothing like a barbell snatch, and with the light weight done for high reps it’s simply a hip-dominant movement with minimal knee bend done explosively. In other words a deadlift.

And it doesn’t jack up peoples backs because it’s asymmetrical.

Perfectly symmetrical movements force a body that is not symmetrical (in the vast majority of people) into a position of symmetry that is not natural to begin with, and then there’s no room to move or to move away from tension or stress because of the symmetry. Check out this screen cap:

All that rotation and asymmetry allows the body to involve more tissue and more variability in the movement. Sure there’s some rotation in the spine, but it’s ok for the spine to move like that. What little risk there is in rotation is more than offset by the fact that there is so much more tissue involved to bear the stress of the movement.

So what’s the takeaway?

Don’t be afraid to stagger your position or otherwise introduce asymmetry. One of the places I always start when I’m nursing someone back to health after a back injury is with asymmetrical deadlifts because they are almost universally well tolerated. Not so for conventional symmetry. This is why I’m such a fan of asymmetrical deadlift options like the Jefferson.

Even if you don’t have any issues, I’ll wager that it’ll feel better with a bit of asymmetry. Ideally, you can always test and find the best option with biofeedback.

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!

 

I looked across the gym and instantly recognized the strange lift. There was a guy doing a Jefferson deadlift. I wasn’t in my own gym, so how could this be? I legit had a moment of glory thinking that my quest to make the Jefferson deadlift universally known and adopted was reaching a critical mass before I remembered that the guy doing the Jefferson was my friend Greg Kowal, a physical therapist who is currently working in northern Minnesota, whom I had brought with me to this gym. Oh well, maybe next time.

Asymmetrical training, using lifts like the Jefferson deadlift, is one of the things I have become known for being a big proponent of. The interesting thing is not that I necessarily think that asymmetrical training is ideologically or automatically better, it’s simply that once you start following your biofeedback you find that asymmetrical is often better.

Towards the end of my lift, Greg was finishing up a session on the ergometer. He waved me over and started telling me about what he had been doing lately in his rowing sessions. Immediately I knew this was too useful not to share, so I had him back up and shot a video. I’ll let Greg take it from here:

Big ups to the moron doing half-rep barbell glute bridges and grunting for the sound effects toward the end.

Off camera, Greg and I went on to discuss some of his other thoughts on rowing training. I will be the first to tell you that I know nothing about competitive rowing – but I do know some things about movement and despite what indoctrinated sport coaches like to think, sports are not special — they are just movements.

In addition to testing the slight asymmetry on the actual erg, smart rowers would be wise to test their gym training. When it comes to sport training, the gym is an opportunity to hit contra-specific or opposition patterns. For example, Greg enlightened me, in sweep rowing the athlete is getting hundreds of repetitions per session of a very uni-lateral movement in one direction. This is a prime candidate for testing opposition rotation and extension patterns in the opposite direction to the rowing position.

Greg’s application of biofeedback testing to rowing is a perfect example of asking better questions. Rowing may test well, but Greg wondered if he could make it test even better for him. Better questions lead to, as you heard him say, better results. What if you were to apply biofeedback testing to your sport or activity?