Starting Strength

strap passes through the loop. They will continue to tighten on your wrists during the set. Loop-ended straps are never really secure with a heavy weight, tend to wear out quickly and tear during a heavy set, and never stay in adjustment on the bar.

    Figure 4-50. Our favorite straps are simple pieces of seat-belt webbing or other 1½-inch strapping. They are 2 feet long, are never made of cotton, and ride down on the hands, not on the wrists.

    The position of your belt in a deadlift might be slightly different from that used in the squat. For deadlifting, most people seem to prefer to wear the belt a little lower in the front and a little higher in the back than they do for squatting. In fact, some people might prefer a different belt altogether, a thinner, narrower one that allows the deadlift’s start position to be assumed more easily. The bottom position of the squat is acquired after the descent under load, while the start position in the deadlift must be acquired unloaded; a tight belt helps the squat stay together, but for some people, a tight belt will interfere with squeezing into the start of a pull. A different, lighter belt may be necessary for deadlifting, and some people even prefer no belt at all for most pulling if it prevents a good lumbar set position. Big deadlifts have been pulled with no belt, and you may find this best for your situation.
     

    Step 1: non-dominant hand.

    Step 2: dominant hand.

    Figure 4-51. Using the straps is sometimes a challenge for novice lifters. Here’s how it’s done.

    A caveat
     
    Finally, the author was a moderately good deadlifter during his career in the sport and learned many valuable lessons about strength off the floor during this time. Among them is that not everybody needs to do heavy deadlifts. People with injured backs that are prone to re-injury, and people who cannot learn to perform the movement correctly, don’t need to deadlift with maximum loads. It’s better if you can, since functional back strength is best built with functional back work, and the heavier you pull, the stronger you’ll get. But if you are not powerlifting, you don’t have to do limit singles. From a training standpoint, there is little to be gained by doing 1-rep max deadlifts, and your 1RM can be inferred from a 5RM if obtaining this information is somehow necessary. That having been said, deadlifts are still the best way to develop useful back strength. Apply yourself to learning them correctly.

    Figure 4-52. The deadlift.

Chapter 5: The Bench Press
     
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    There are few gyms left in the world that don’t have a pressing bench. For good reason: The bench press, since the 1950s, has become the most widely recognized resistance exercise movement in the world, the one exercise most representative in the public mind of barbell training, the exercise the vast majority of trainees are most likely to want to do, and the exercise most often asked about by most people if they are interested in how strong you are.
    Many incredibly strong men have benched big weights, long before the advent of modern supportive shirts and even good benches. Men like Doug Hepburn, Pat Casey, Mel Hennessy, Don Reinhoudt, Jim Williams (who lifted in excess of 700 pounds in a thin, cheap, white T-shirt), and Ronnie Ray were strong back in the early days of powerlifting, although the weights they lifted would, sad to say, scarcely turn a head at a 21st-century national meet. Accomplished powerlifters of the 1980s – men like Larry Pacifico, the incredible Mike McDonald, George Hechter, John Kuc, Mike Bridges, Bill Kazmaier, Rickey Dale Crain, and the late, great Doug Young – were masters of the bench press, using all the tricks at their disposal to establish national and world records in the lift ( Figure 5-1 ).

    Figure 5-1. The bench press has a long, rich history. Left to right, top to bottom: Bill Kazmaier, Rickey Dale Crain, Pat Casey, Doug Young, Mel Hennessy, Jim Williams, Mike Bridges, Mike MacDonald, Ronnie Ray.

    The modern version of the bench press, like the squat, depends on an additional piece of equipment other than the bar for its execution. Until the upright support bench came into widespread use in the 1950s, the lifter had to lie on the floor and pull the bar into position, or lie on a flat bench and pull the bar up from the floor, over the head, and into position over the chest. Controversy abounded as technique was evolving, with questions about the legitimacy of assistance