The devil is in the details.

Have your lifts stalled?  Do you have a weak link in your chain somewhere?  Well here is a short and sweet talk about some accessory lifts for you to improve performance.

Romanian Dead Lift:

This one will light up the hamstrings.  And lets be honest with the high bar back squat, front squat, snatch, and clean and jerk being the quad dominating lifts they are, your hamstrings might have been left behind somewhere.  Time for you to catch up.  Just once a week do 3x5 of these as heavy as possible (preferably around 100% of your max clean weight).

 Really squeeze the Lats back while doing this lift to keep the weight close.  If done correctly the next day you hamstrings and lats should be pretty angry with you.  That means you are doing it right.  Again 1 time a week at your 1rm clean weight for 3x5.


Front Squats:

Front squats are an awesome way to develop the mid to upper back and core.  Make sure to do these without a belt for maximum accessory muscle development.  Make sure to keep the reps low in front squat work.  Never more than 5 reps at a time.  Fatigue breaks down form very quickly.  My favorite is 2 or 3 rep sets for 3-5 sets.  (3x3 or 5x2).  Keep the weight in the 85-90% range.

Pendlay Rows:

What better person to teach you the Pendlay Row than Glen Pendlay.  Just skip ahead to about 2:20 and he finally makes the lifter do the stupid lift.  The first 2:20 he is talking about the name and other nonsense that doesn't really matter when lifting stuff off the ground.
Anyways, onto programming these.  keep it to 3-5 sets of 5 reps.  Keep it as heavy as possible (here on out referred to as AHAP).  Awesome full back exercise.  Make sure not to cheat it and increase the back angle.
You should stay parallel to the ground through whole exercise.


The GHD (glute ham developer):

If this machine doesn't create that little sick feeling in the bottom of your stomach when thinking about it then you have
a: never used it or
b: never used it correctly
And in case you don't know it is those two machines in the corner of the gym that most people stay away from because us "functional exercisers" are too good for a stupid exercise machine. (In truth you probably just don't know how to use it and are scared of embarrassing yourself).

There are three awesome exercises for developing your "core".

1. Sit ups.  Go through a full range of motion.  Go slow.  Do not cheat  kip this machine.
2. back extensions: think of this as the opposite of a sit up.  You are intentionally bring the back down into full flexion, then raising it into full extension.  again no cheating  kipping or swinging.  Any time you are intentionally flexing/extending the spinal erectors you don't want to overload them. Here is Matt Chan doing an awesome demo

So just do what he does.
3. Finally hip extensions:  With these you are keeping the spine stable (not flexing like with the back extension) and bending at the waist.  Then you are extending at the hips to bring the back angle above parallel.  Here you go, the video explains it better than me. The first half of the video is sit ups, the second half is hip extensions.

With all three exercises on the GHD keep it around 3 sets of 10 reps.  (3x10).  Do it after your main work for the day.

Okay Jason, all of these exercises are awesome, but when do I do them? How do I program them into my already awesome routine?

Well I am glad you asked.  There are two ways you can do accessory lifts.  You can do one or two after your main workout, or you can dedicate 1 day/week to doing only accessory lifts. 

Option 1:

Day 1: snatch, Jerk from blocks, Squats,  RDL, pendlay row

Day 2: Clean, push press, Squats.  GHD work

Day 3: snatch, Clean and Jerk, Front squat. 

Option 2: 

Day 1: Snatch, Clean and jerk, Squats

Day 2: Snatch Clean and Jerk, Squats

Day 3: RDL, GHD, Front Squats, Pendlay Row.

Either way is about the same amount of volume.  If you consistently go heavy on your accessory work I guarantee gains in the next few weeks.   Never stop training the technique but never forget to go heavy too.  

I will leave you with some runner up exercises that are also awesome for lifting or just being awesome in general.:

Weighted Strict pull ups.

Snatch and Clean 1st pulls

snatch and clean from blocks (above and below the knee)

weighted box jumps (this isn't your rapid fire crossfit box jump either, step down damnit). Alright, you have been on the internet long enough today.  Go outside and lift something over your head.

Form isn't just for light weight.

(please note that I just posted a very similar subject on the facebook page from fitbird.com.  This is a good supplement to their post).

Through my short time in the fitness community I have both seen and been told that for 1 rm maxes you have to "grind it out".  That for heavy singles it is okay to let the form break because it is so heavy that you have to lift it mentally.  I have even posted some 1 rep maxes that people in various online communities (I am looking at you reddit) said "you have a lot more in you. your form didn't even break down".  At first I look at my videos and think to myself "yeah I should have gone for more, I made those look easy".  But then after some actual thought I realized that I can lift the weight BECAUSE I have good form.  Every squat that I perform from an empty bar, to my max weight should look identical. I might be faster lifting 45# vs 440# but the technique should look identical.

Why is this?  Somewhere down the line, weightlifting (or lifting weights in general) got a macho reputation.  I can see why.  It is a pretty badass thing to take the heaviest barbell you can and pick it up off the ground or squat it or put it over your head.  If you get on youtube and look at professional lifters squatting or benching you will see a lot of "grinding it out".  Basically the barbell slows down to a crawl and the lifter must keep the barbell headed in the right direction.  It seems to take forever but eventually they get through the sticking point and successfully complete the rep.  It is inspiring to watch and makes you wanna go throw weights around.  But what most people aren't paying attention to is that their form never gets out of whack.  Ever.  When squatting or benching 3x your body weight, if form slips at all it is a failed lift or an injury.  There is no "ugly grind".  It doesn't happen.  But most amateur weightlifters don't see this.  They only see " the grind".  They think that for all maximal weights it is okay to break form a bit and grind it out.

I am not sure when this became the cultural norm when lifting anything heavy but get online and look at and strong individual lifting heavy weights.  Their form doesn't change just because the weight gets heavy.  It just doesn't happen.  Lets look at some videos.

I would like you to point out the time where Misha's form breaks down after 3 reps at 880lbs.  Oh you can't do it because it didn't happen?  Not even on the 3rd rep where he had to "grind"?  Weird.  That must be a fluke.

Here is another one where he slows down significantly in the last couple reps.  Yes his chest starts to slightly point down a little bit by the last rep, but this is 528lbs on his back.  Do you think he could do this by letting his chest drop and knees cave and lower back rounded just because it was heavy?  I think not.


So back to my original and final point.  These guys can lift heavy weight because their form is perfect.  Not because of some magical intangible mental toughness.  They lift heavy because they lift perfect with every single rep from the empty bar to the 1 rep max.

If you still don't believe me, here is a video with a bunch people having to "grind it out" with significantly less weights.  You don't look nearly as cool as you thought you did when grinding out heavy weight with shitty form. (especially with yakkity sacks playing in the background).

Get out there and lift big and pretty.