Lifting
Hybrid athletes want to do the big three regularly, too! Whether you are a weightlifter and runner, powerlifter and cyclist, or a general gym-goer who strength trains and performs cardio, you will want some form of deadlift, squat, and bench press in your training program. These three exercises are the foundation of functional fitness regardless of training specificity. So, how do you do each lift? What are the common mistakes in each lift? And, how do you program these lifts in your training program?
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There are many ways to deadlift: conventional deadlift, sumo deadlift, Romanian deadlift, various single-leg versions of the exercise. Let’s get into how to perform a conventional deadlift.
1. Place your feet right underneath your hips. If you have your feet out a little bit wider, that is not inherently wrong, but you create more power when your feet are right underneath your hips. Keep your toes facing forward.
2. Line up the barbell so it's right over the middle of the foot. The barbell should nearly touch your shins as it will sit right over your shoe laces, if you are wearing shoes.
3. Grab onto the bar with an overhand grip. Hands should be in line with your shoulders. Think of your arms as chains to help guide you. If your barbell has knurling, you will likely grab the bar right around where the knurling starts. As the weight gets heavier, you may shift into a switch grip to remove your forearms as the limiting factor.
4. Hinge at your hips and open up your chest to allow your lats to pack down and your forearms to be in line with your knees. You won’t want your forearms in front or not behind your knees, but right in line.
5. From here, stand up. Although the deadlift is technically a pulling motion, you also want to think about pushing the floor away from you.
Common deadlift mistakes:
1. Not pulling the slack out of the barbell before the first rep. When you are in the hinge position or at the bottom of the deadlift, your elbows should be straight and your body should be tight. Elbows should not be bendy and loose, otherwise you may experience a jerking motion when you initiate the first rep.
2. Having the barbell too far forward. If the barbell is too far in front of you, it’s going to make it harder for you to find your center of gravity and you may end up not only wasting energy trying to get the barbell closer to you mid-rep, but also using more of your lower back than necessary to perform the deadlift. Instead, keep the barbell touching your shins throughout the movement.
3. Planting your feet too wide. As mentioned earlier, this isn’t inherently wrong, but it can make it confusing where your knees need to go when your grip ends up being slightly inside of the knees. When you do a conventional deadlift, aim to keep your feet right underneath your hips to develop more power.
4. Hiking up your hips before the rest of your body. This is common when the barbell is too far in front of you, although it can happen at any time. Hiking the hips up first means your back will be working harder than it needs to for the exercise. Although your back is a stabilizer in the deadlift, it should be a full body exercise where more of the work is placed on the legs compared to your back. Another great reason to envision yourself pushing the floor away from you in addition to pulling the weight off the ground.
The barbell back squat is only one of many forms of squats available. You could use various modalities, different grips, multiple stances, and a plethora of weight distributions, but let’s specifically get into how to perform the barbell back squat.
1. Set up the barbell and J hooks at about mid-shoulder height. This is so when you are underneath the barbell, you are not having to reach up onto your tiptoes or perform a half squat or more to unrack the barbell.
2. Grip the barbell where it feels comfortable based on your shoulder mobility. This will likely be somewhere between shoulder and elbow width.
3. Get underneath the barbell and set it on top of your traps. Your back should stay tight to support the weight and exercise, so this will help to create a shelf with your traps to set the barbell on.
4. Once you stand up to unrack the barbell, aim to take only 2-3 steps back to find your footing. You will want to plant your feet between hip- and shoulder-width apart with toes either facing forward or slightly angled out. Foot placement will depend on mobility, comfort, and even your bone structure. There isn’t one best foot position, test to see what works best for you.
5. Take a 360-degree breath in, hold to brace and keep your core engaged, and lower down into the squat. Aim to squat below parallel if possible. But, of course, always meet yourself where you are.
6. Stand up from the squat by using your quads and glutes and keep equal pressure through both of your feet.
Common squat mistakes:
1. Lifting the heels at the bottom of the squat. Whether this is occurring due to ankle mobility, hip mobility, or something else, lifting the heels is a solvable problem. You want to keep equal pressure through your feet throughout the exercise. If you find it difficult to do so, consider wearing squat shoes (they have a slight heel) or place wedges or plates on the ground to elevate your heels. This will eliminate some of the necessary ankle mobility. Additionally, consider adding some ankle mobility work into your routine to improve this over time.
2. Losing upper back tightness. This is common if there’s a lack of chest and shoulder mobility or general trunk/core stability. Aim to maintain upper back stiffness throughout the exercise to support the barbell and keep the chest open.
Let’s get into how to perform the bench press.
1. The first thing you want to consider when you're setting up your bench press is the J hooks. Depending on your gym’s set up, the J hooks may be stationary with 1-2 options or adjustable with several slotted options. If they are adjustable, you will want to place the barbell in the slot where when you are laying on the bench and reaching your arms up, your wrists line up with the barbell. The purpose of this is to ensure you are not having to get out of position to protract your shoulder blades nor having to complete half a rep to unrack the barbell.
2. Line up your eyes with the barbell. This will allow you to not be too far down on the bench where your lats are overly involved when you unrack the bar nor be too high on the bench where you are going to accidentally bump the J hooks mid-rep with the barbell.
3. Dig your shoulder blades into the bench. You may have a little bit of an arch in your low back and that is okay. As long as you are bracing your core 360-degrees, using leg drive, and keeping other stability factors involved, you are not putting your back in a poor or concerning position by having an arch in your low back.
4. Grip the barbell where it feels comfortable for you or aligns with your training goals. If you are using a barbell with knurling, aim to grip the bar somewhere between the start of the knurling and the second or third knurling notch. The narrower your grip, the more your triceps will be involved. The wider your grip, the more your pecs will be involved. Both grips and all in between involve the pecs, triceps, and anterior delts, just to different degrees.
5. Keep your wrists strong from your elbows to knuckles as you lift off the barbell. Think about punching the ceiling.
6. Let the bar come down to your chest with elbows right underneath your wrists. You will want to keep your forearms straight and perpendicular throughout the exercise.
7. Press up over the chest as you exhale.
8. When you are finished with your reps, keep your arms straight as you slam the barbell back into the rack and let it slide into the J hooks.
Common bench press mistakes:
1. Bending your elbows as you rack the barbell or shifting one side of the barbell back into the rack one at a time. Work smarter, not harder. Once you have finished your reps, aim to keep your arms straight and send it straight back to rack the barbell.
2. Not using leg drive. Your glutes and hamstrings are used as stabilizers in the bench press. If you struggle with tippy-tappying your feet throughout the exercise, place a plate under each foot to encourage more leg drive.
3. Tucking your chin or looking at your chest. Your chest isn’t going anywhere. Keep your eyes straight ahead and look up at the ceiling.
4. Putting the clips on when bench pressing by yourself. If you have a spotter, putting the clips on is totally understandable, but if you are bench pressing by yourself, leave them off in case you need to fail the lift and dump the weights from side to side. Don’t be a hero! Having to roll the heavy barbell down your body to get out of the lift is not fun! (Speaking from personal experience)
It’s likely safe to say that if you are reading this blog, you are aiming to improve your deadlift, squat, and/or bench press strength alongside some sort of cardiovascular training. The key to successful programming in the hybrid world is volume management. First things first, you need to meet yourself where you are. Jumping into heavy volume is a quick one way ticket to burnout and potential injury. Whether you are more of a lifter who is adding in cardio or more of a runner who is adding in strength training, volume management is necessary to ensure proper recovery and improved performance.
Since these three big lifts are compound exercises, aim to perform these at the beginning of your workout. Think: warm up, plyometrics/power, compound exercise(s), accessory exercises, then isolation exercises. For compound exercises in general, consider keeping the reps low aiming for between 1-6 reps, maybe up to 8 reps in some cases. This will help you manage training volume, as well as encourage strength gains over time.
As a hybrid athlete, it’s very possible that you are completing 1-3, maybe up to 4, strength sessions per week. Depending on your goals and strength training frequency, you may end up doing squats and bench press or deadlifts and bench press on the same day. Consider not performing heavy squats and heavy deadlifts on the same day to better manage leg training volume, recovery, and adaptations.
Learning how to train the main three compound lifts can level up your functional fitness and hybrid training in general. Save this blog post for future reference to improve your form and avoid common mistakes in the deadlift, squat, and bench.
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