Attacking The Rep

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8TH, 2011
All Classes 11:00am

ATTACKING THE REP
70's Big

About two years ago I was doing my squats on the Intensity Day of the Texas Method program I was on. I was doing singles across at 495 (my memory has always been doubles, but I can’t find it in my training log), and the third and fourth reps looked really ugly. The fourth one was what I like to call a holy grinder (sung to the tune of Holy Diver), and Rip looked at me and said something like, “Well, that was bone on bone. You’re done.” I didn’t like that and said, “Nah, I’ll get the next one.”

So I saddled up for the fifth rep with adrenaline leaking out of my ears and aiming to bounce the shit out of the rep. At the time I remember that I didn’t really remember the rep; but I bounced it so hard and fast that Rip was stunned at how easy I made it look given that the previous rep was so hard. This, my friends, is the difference between going through the motions and attacking the rep.

There are two sides to a successful heavy lift: the volitional violence at a critical point in the lift coupled with a pre-existing shot of adrenaline. This post concerns the former.

It’s easy to get in a habit of merely stepping out with a weight on your back and squatting instead of attacking every. single. rep. This concept is hard to explain, but it’s most noticeable in the Olympic lifts. Many beginning Oly lifters are thinking of so many different things that it almost seems like they stand up with the weight, and then fall into their squat. Ripping through the second pull is the most important part of these lifts — that hip extension should be the fastest, most violent thing that person can generate out of their body. It’s the difference in trying to cut someone with your longsword or cleaving a head off (horse head, not real); the difference in trying to hit someone and knocking them the fuck out.

Lifting isn’t church. It isn’t afternoon tea. It’s a form of controlled rage directed at a barbell. In a squat, you need to attack the bottom position and make it sharp. In a press, you need to attack the bar at the beginning and try to make the entire rep fast. In the bench, you need explode off of your chest. In the Olympic lifts, you have to rip through the second pull as hard as you can. You should be applying the maximum amount of force possible at that moment. I hardly see recreational lifters actively attacking their reps.

There is a learning curve to attacking the bar — you have to be consistent with your technique. Yet, there’s a difference in mindset when you walk a bar out and think, “Man, this feels heavy, I hope we get it…here we go…” and actively wanting to hit the rep and repeating “Bounce” in your head. Hoping to get a rep and punching it in the fucking mouth are two different things.

Don’t sacrifice technique for the sake of intensity. When most inexperienced lifters think “bounce”, they fall into the squat, lose tightness, kill the bounce, and have a bitch of a rep. The person that attacks his squats the best is my friend AC; he maintains proper tempo and tightness in the descent but attacks the SHIT out of the bounce. This video is two years old, but you can see how he rips through the bottom of the squat — particularly on the second rep.

495x3 from A.C. on Vimeo.

Lift angry and attack the critical part of your reps. You need to volitionally hit the rep as hard as you can. If there was any question to how hard you hit it, then it wasn’t hard enough. Punch through the rep and lift angry.

Coach Justin
PerformanceQuestFitness@gmail.com