Some Thoughts and Musings on Proper Technique for Lifting Big, Along with Some Training Wisdom from Bill Starr In my recent article The Deadlift Ultimate —which has proven, so far, to be quite popular—I outlined a veritable smorgasbord of training methods and workout routines for building up the deadlift. The one thing that I didn’t cover in that article, however, was the form that one should use while deadlifting. Because there isn’t just one form that fits everyone. On all of your lifts, you need to find the form that works for you . And that is the form that you should use. In this essay, I’m going to discuss the importance of proper form but also how you need to find your form for the big lifts. There are some “musts” as far as form goes, such as the fact that you need to use a full range of motion on your lifts. Your squat should be a full squat, ass-to-the-grass. When you ben...
Ever since Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind was first published back in 1970—when very few folks in the West even knew what the heck Zen actually was; not that many know very much about real Zen even today—no telling how many Zen, Buddhist, or just “spiritual” books have been published since that time with similar-sounding titles. Plenty of them are outright rips on Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by using a four-word title with two words followed by a comma and then another couple words to round it off. Just the other day I read one titled Zen Mind, Franciscan Joy in my personal favorite sub-genre of Zen, “Catholic Zen.” Heck, while perusing the bookstore a couple weeks ago, I even came across one with the title Zen Mind, Zen Horse that was apparently about the “spirituality” of horse training. When I saw it, I wondered what the ranchers and cowboys of my ancestry—Texans through and through—wou...