Above the Rest Training Systems

How you get down to the bar matters because it determines the position you are pulling from.

When you start your deadlift setup, push the hips back while letting your arms hang straight toward the floor. Think of your arms as a measuring tool. Once your hands reach your knees, that is your signal to stop sending the hips backward.

The goal is not to push the hips as far back as possible. The goal is to move them back only as far as necessary to create space for the bar to travel vertically from the floor.

If the hips continue moving backward beyond that point, you increase the horizontal distance between the hips and the load. That increases the moment the bar can create around the hip and gives you more work to overcome at the start of the pull.

At the same time, keeping the hips too far forward can create its own problem. The knees and shins can interfere with the bar path, making it harder to keep the bar moving straight up.

That is why hip position should not be treated as an arbitrary setup preference. Keep the hips as close to your midline as possible while still moving them back far enough to give the bar a clear path.

Hands reach the knees, then stop pushing the hips back. It is a simple checkpoint that can make your setup more consistent.

Your stone load isn’t failing at the platform; it’s failing in the transition.

If you’re shorter and trying to hit a high platform, you’ve probably felt this: you stand up hard out of the lap, you’re fully extended… and the stone is STILL low on your body.

That’s the whole problem.

A clean lap position has you deep, torso behind the stone, and the stone tucked high under your chin.

But then the transition happens.

Most lifters fire out of the lap like they’re trying to pop it. The stone slides down out of the rack, and now you’re forced to “throw” it the last few inches. That works with lighter stones because you can belly it up and cheat a little height at the top.

With heavy stones, you don’t get that option. Heavy weights slow you down. You either keep the stone pinned high… or you miss.

That’s what I mean by STRAINING on a stone load: squeeze hard enough that the stone doesn’t change position on your torso from lap to extension.

One of the best ways to train that is the Atlas Stone Good Morning.

Keep the stone high on your chest. Hinge. Lower it. And fight like hell to keep it pinned in the exact same spot the entire rep.

If you build real workload there, your comp load stops feeling like a “pop” and starts feeling like control.

Try this next stone day and tell me what changes: do you lose the stone in the transition, or do you keep it high?

The push jerk can be one of the most efficient ways to move a heavy implement overhead, but only if the timing is clean.

A common mistake in strongman is treating the jerk like the double dip is the only technical piece that matters. It is important, but the receiving position matters just as much.

The goal is to have your elbows reach full lockout at the same time your feet land. Those two events should happen together.

When the feet land first and the elbows finish later, you are no longer receiving the implement in a stable position. The weight has more time to move around, force gets lost, and what should have been a clean jerk often turns into a press out or a save.

That is why the cue “land and lock” is so useful. It gives the athlete one clear timing target instead of trying to manage several technical thoughts at once.

This is best trained at moderate loads where you can repeat the same movement pattern without fighting the weight. Film the reps and check whether the feet and elbows finish at the same point.

If you want a better jerk on the log, axle, or barbell, do not only focus on dipping under the implement. Learn to receive it with the landing and lockout synchronized.

That timing is one of the pieces that separates a technically sound jerk from an overhead rep that simply gets finished.

When you make a major technical change, it should not immediately feel natural.

That is one of the hardest things for experienced strongman athletes to accept. You may have years of practice on an implement, but if those years were spent reinforcing a less effective movement pattern, changing that pattern can make you feel like a beginner again.

I recently worked through this with a lifter on the log press. We made several significant changes to their setup and ex*****on. The new version looked better on video, but it felt completely unfamiliar to them.

That does not mean the change is wrong. It means the athlete does not have enough quality repetitions with the new pattern yet.

Technical mastery is built by repeatedly practicing the correct movement under conditions where you can actually control it. That usually means lowering the load, filming your reps, reviewing what happened, and repeating the process until the correction becomes more automatic.

This is also why constantly searching for a cue that immediately feels comfortable can be a mistake. Your old technique feels comfortable because you have practiced it thousands of times. Familiarity is not the same thing as efficiency.

If you are making a technical change this week, take it to submaximal weights and give yourself enough quality repetitions to actually learn it.

Time matters. Quality matters. Without both, skill does not develop.

Box jump height is a measure, not the goal.

A lot of athletes treat the box like a scoreboard. Higher box means more explosive, end of story.

But here is the thing. You can fake a big box jump without actually moving your hips through space. You hit the floor hard, snap, and then you just pull your feet up fast. The feet travel. The rest of you does not.

So you have to ask a more honest question. Did you create a violent push into the ground, or did you create a violent knee tuck?

The box is useful because it gives you feedback on efficiency. If you can get higher without turning it into a panic tuck, that is real. If the height goes up because your jump turns into a feet race, you did not build what you think you built.

From a coaching standpoint, I would rather see a lower box with a bigger hip rise, clean landing, and the same intent every rep than a max height circus rep that does not transfer to anything.

Keep it as high as possible, and as low as necessary to stay honest about what you are actually training.

Pay attention to this on your next jump day. Are you jumping, or just tucking?

Tempo work is not about making a light exercise unnecessarily difficult. It is a way to control where tension is being placed and how long the target tissue has to produce force.

Muscle growth requires meaningful tension through the ranges of motion you actually want to develop. If you rush the eccentric, bounce through the bottom, or use momentum to finish the rep, other structures can take over and reduce the amount of work being done by the muscle you are trying to train.

Slowing the lowering phase changes that. Adding a pause changes it even more. Both strategies remove some of the momentum that normally helps you through difficult positions and force you to produce tension where you are weakest.

This can be especially valuable during accessory work. Rows, pulldowns, pressing variations, leg work, and isolation exercises are not just about moving weight from one position to another. The goal is to load the intended tissue and make that tissue do the work.

A simple place to start is a three second lowering phase followed by a one to two second pause in the position you want to strengthen. Use a load you can control for every rep and keep the effort around RPE 7 to 8.

The load may need to come down. That is not a problem. If the target muscle is working harder and you are creating more tension in the range you want to develop, the exercise is doing its job.

Tempo and pauses are tools. Use them when you need more control, more targeted tension, or more strength in a specific position.

If you only chase outcomes in training, your subconscious will fill in the process however it wants.

That is where technique gets messy.

Your conscious brain sets the ask. Move the dumbbell. Hit the rep. Make the lift.

Then your subconscious runs the movement pattern that is most available. Not the one that is best for you. Not the one that transfers. Just the one it can get away with today.

So if all you measure is the outcome, you accidentally teach your body that the shortcut is the skill.

That is fine in a peaking block. I want outcomes there. I want to see the number move and I want to see the comp lift getting cleaner under heavy load.

But in most blocks, hypertrophy, GPP, strength work, variations, accessories, that is not the job. The job is building the positions and the mechanics that make the outcome repeatable later.

If your dumbbell press turns into “whatever shoulder angle gets the rep,” it won’t carry over to an axle or log. Same with rows. Same with leg press. If you let the knees cave and just survive the set, do not be shocked when the transfer is trash.

So ask a better question in your training.

Not “did I get the rep?”

How did I get it, and did that process match the reason I am doing this lift in the first place?

What is one lift you know you are chasing the outcome on right now? Drop it below.

Missing a rep does not automatically mean you need more aggression. Sometimes the better response is to figure out exactly why the rep failed.

One of the most valuable skills a strongman athlete can develop is the ability to diagnose a problem quickly. Did you lose balance? Was the implement out of position? Did you lose tension? Did you rush the setup? Those questions give you something useful to work with before the next attempt.

Getting angry can create more intent, but it can also create new technical faults. You may complete the rep while moving farther away from the technique you actually want to reinforce.

Instead, take a few seconds and identify one thing you can change. Use a different cue, adjust your setup, correct the implement position, or change your strategy. Then take the next rep with a specific purpose.

This matters even more in competition. You will not always have familiar equipment, ideal conditions, or events that behave exactly like they did in training. When something goes wrong, you need to be able to process it quickly and make a useful adjustment.

Practice that skill during training. Miss the rep. Diagnose the cause. Make one correction. Execute again.

Do not chase the rep. Chase the cause.