Small mistakes in technique: Undermine your max lifts

One of the big benefits of being a powerlifting referee is that you get to observe competitive lifters attempting to produce their best performances. It is a chance to see how the most skilled powerlifters do their best and what mistakes some make.

In short, it is a great coaching clinic.

 

Veteran Mistakes vs Rookie Mistakes

By the time someone has built their skill to the point where they are ready to enter a powerlifting contest, they have mastered the fundamentals of doing each of the powerlifts. They have devoted a huge amount of time to perfecting their lifting technique.

When they fail to do a lift in accordance with the rules it is almost always because they have developed some small flaw that subverts their best effort.

Correcting tiny flaws in execution is why major league baseball teams have batting and pitching coaches. Professional golfers have swing coaches and NBA players have shooting coaches. This is to help high paid professional athletes eliminate small errors

The point is that for high level athletes who perform complex movements there will always be small flaws that will emerge over time that will undercut their best performance if not corrected.

Novices on the other hand struggle to perform a rough approximation of most power lifts. Their lifting technique is often terrible. But they are not trying to do maximum lifts in according to strict rules in a competitive event in front of three referees.

 

Small Flaws big Impact

Recently I refereed at a powerlifting meet where most of the lifters were both experienced and well coached. Here are the most significant errors I noticed.

In the squat the few lifters who missed a lift because of not going below parallel did so because they tilted slightly forward on their descent. This distorted their body alignment to a small degree which made it hard to get the top of the thighs below the top of the knees.

Most kept their chest up which prevented this. However, the few who missed getting low enough had leaned forward ever so slightly.

I observed the greatest number of flaws on the bench press. Every lifter began their bench press with full body tension and no muscles relaxed.

However, a common issue I observed was that the whole-body tension that was evident at the beginning of the lift diminished when the bar contacted the chest. In some cases, the lifter allowed the bar to sink into their chest muscles.

Relaxing any muscles when doing the bench press will drastically limit what even the strongest lifter can do.

Other common flaws I observed were landing the bar on the upper chest rather than on the solar plexus and relaxing the legs when pushing the bar upward.

The most common flaw I observed in the deadlift was failing to take the slack out of the bar before pulling. This means putting significant upward tension on the bar before pulling it off the floor.

By loading the bar in this manner the lifter is reducing the amount of weight they are attempting to move from a dead stop. The bar weighs the same but the amount of weight being moved in the first pull off the floor is reduced.

 

Bottom Line

Experienced lifters will ONLY make SMALL errors. When you are in the process of doing the lift these small errors can be imperceptible. That is why it can be of great benefit to make regular videos of yourself when lifting heavy.

If you have an experienced coach, they can critique your lifts to find the tiny flaws that can limit your max.

Otherwise, examine your own videos carefully to check for any issues that appear only when the weight gets heavy.

Mr. Gravity never takes a day off. So we need all the help we can get to beat him.

Lift Big!

Richard