PERFORMANCE TRAINING CENTRE NEWSLETTER
ISSUE # 98
THE POWER RACK
If I was to get a rack for PTC, it had to be insanely solid, compact and fairly priced. When Adrian from Gym Direct contacted me after reading a post on a forum, I was initially sceptical. I knew the kind of weights my clients would be using in this rack, and I was convinced what he had was good enough.
I checked out the specs on his website, decided it looked okay, so I took a gamble. If it wasn’t what it was cracked up to be, I could still get use out of it for my girls, and I would need somewhere else for competitors to warm up during my comps.
Well I got the rack on Monday, came with everything required, so I put it together alone in just over 90 minutes. Too say I was impressed by the finished product would be an understatement. This thing is easily capable of handling anything we can throw at it at PTC. We’ve already had 280kg rack pulls in it, 200kg partial squats, and many more exercises I will discuss later on.
Remember, this rack gets used for 6-7 hours a day by up to 25 lifters per night. It easily fits in a domestic home gym, yet will handle massive weights that are used at a commercial gym. It costs less than 2 years membership at a health spa, and will last 3 lifetimes.
Okay, enough about how impressed I am with it, how is it going to help my lifters. Now I’m going to discuss the virtues of this rack, if the one you’re using at home or your spa has the same features, you can replicate.
The main thing I look for in a lifter when it comes to improving their lifts is a weakness. I’ll use Alen as an example first. Last week Alen missed a 170kg squat so high, that I didn’t need to bend over to spot him. I had nearly turned to walk away thinking he was about to lock it out, when he started to go back down.
So, second squat session on the Wednesday after I got the rack, I wanted to test lifters at different heights. Max and Kelly usually fail their squats low, as do most lifters. Ryan fails a bit higher and Alen fails high. So I set the pins at a height that had a lifter squatting well below parallel once the bar hit the pins, lower than most squat. Kelly managed 150kg, as did Alen, Max got 130kg. These squats were performed from a dead stop. No bounce was available. These figures are about what I expected, having spotted the lifters on plenty of occasions.
Next I moved the pins to about half way up the squat, half way between parallel and lock out. Kelly managed 200kg and Max 180kg, both adding 50kg to their effort from below parallel. The surprise came next. On the first round of ramping the weights up, Alen actually failed with 130kg, thats 20kg less than he squatted from real deep. I knew he would be weaker at this height than the others, but this result really surprised me. After plenty of **** stirring, he tried it again on the next round and made it, eventually finishing with 160kg.
That’s a 10kg increase while Kelly and Max managed 50kg more. Can everyone see the benefits of the rack for finding a weakness? I can set the pins and many different heights, allowing a lifter to work on his weak spot. When Alen gets to this spot on a regular squat, the bar has momentum as it’s coming up from a deep spot with a bounce. It slows at this point, then he powers through. His squat PB is 165kg, Max’s is 160kg, yet Alen was able to squat 20kg more than Max at the bottom. Once Alen develops strength at this point, his squat will skyrocket to over 180kg. Max and Kelly both squat double bodyweight, the only clients at PTC that can. Alen will join them shortly. Ryan is in exactly the same position as Alen. He can squat 125kg x 20, yet only manages 145kg x 1. The most he will ever squat is what he can get past his sticking point. He could possibly squat 125kg x 30, but he still won’t get past his 145kg UNTIL he gets stronger at the point where his leverages and strength can’t overcome the weight.
While we’re on the squat, another area where lifters need help is their head. Most lifters fail a big one rep max attempt in their head, well before they start their descent. I have spotted plenty of lifters who actually fail on the way down. The best exercise I can think of to build confidence here are band de load squats. In the past, without a rack, all I had were miniscule lockouts and walk outs. It’s the descent where I need to build confidence. The courage to unlock your knees with a heavy weight on your back. This cannot be overestimated.
In that pic at the top, Max has 220kg on his back, that’s over triple bodyweight. At the top of the lift, when the lifter is standing erect, the bands are loose, offering no assistance. As the lifter descends onto the 33cm box, the bands take up resistance, they offer help in allowing a lifter to stand up from the sitting position with triple bodyweight on their back. As you stand up further, the help lessens, forcing the lifter to lock the weight out himself, a weight he won’t be squatting for quite a while.
It’s safe to say that next time Max has 170kg on his back, it won’t feel too daunting. Without a doubt, the squat is the exercise that scares lifters most, understandably. This rack will help me alleviate most lifters fears.
These principles are exactly the same with the bench press. We can set the pins at numerous heights, to find out where a lifter needs most help. We can strap the bands to the chin bar above and use the exact same de load principle. Annie was repping 80kg in the bench press with these bands the other day. It’s also much easier to set up the bands for speed bench. Ryan and Dave were using the blue bands the other night. We couldn’t set up the blue bands before when we hooked the bands up to DB’s
When it comes to the deadlift, I love rack pulls. We were already pulling off blocks, but this makes it far easier. Kelly pulled 280kg off the pins. No wrist wraps or belt, just insane strength. He weighs 85kg. I think Kelly will become the heaviest client to deadlift triple bodyweight. He missed by 1kg at BATB3 when he managed 245kg @ 82kg. He now weighs 85kg, he will get 255kg soon.
Rack pulls build an incredible amount of muscle in the upper back area. I’ve talked about pulling the trigger in previous newsletters. With Kelly and Max pulling around 3 ½ times bodyweight in the rack, it’s more like firing off a bazooka.
I remember at BATB2, Simon deadlifted 240kg @ 79kg. He was doing some incredibly heavy rack pulls at the time, and he had some of the best trap development I’ve seen. I will also be able to set up the bands in the power rack to de load deadlifts as well as load up the top of the lift by running the bands the other way.
I haven’t spoken about using bands in the rack to load a lift. Altering the curve of the lift will reap great benefits to the lifter. We have done this with great success on the bench press before, but haven’t been able to do it on the deadlift and squat. Ryan and Alen will benefit greatly from this, making the squat harder as they rise.
I haven’t covered the safety afforded by the rack, at PTC we always have plenty of spotters, and not one incident in training, two years of maximum attempts with hundreds of lifters, and no issues.
Training alone isn’t always the easiest place to test yourself. In the past people have asked me about racks and I’ve told them I don’t like them. One used by a friend is so light that he flips it on its side to dips in. This one weighs over 200kg, nobody will be flipping it on its side.
Another great feature of this rack is the chinning apparatus. It’s really solid and offers up to 10 different grip options. It’s so solid that I have already supported 220kg from it with bands, with plans to go much heavier. Not good news for the clients. I can imagine Nick using 250kg for his squats.
Other features are 4 sets of hooks, so you can train inside the rack or outside. It may not mean much to you, but it sure saves a lot of hassles, plus allows more than one lifter at a time to squat. I have clients of differing heights, this eliminates the need to reset the hooks for each lifter.
The spotting pins also stick out a fair way, ideal as hooks for floor presses. A hassle with floor pressing is you need someone to deadlift the weight into position, and hold it while you get your grip right. Now it’s as simple as bench pressing. You can also do floor presses alone now.
Throw in the pins to allow plate stacking, cleaning up the gym area, and you have a very, very versatile piece of equipment.
You guys may sense some excitement here, let me tell you, this rack, and the way I use it, is going to really accelerate the lifts of all my clients.
I have sold out of my “How we roll” DVD around 10 times. Even though it keeps selling, I may start a new instructional DVD. This one will be for the home lifter. I want to demonstrate how much can be done with a bench, a rack, some bands and a bar.
It won’t be a boring bench, squat and deadlift inside the cage DVD, but will illustrate the many other uses a lifter can reap great benefits from.
In the last DVD, it was purely instructional. The next one will show some pretty impressive lifts as well, just to spice it up a bit.
STAY STRONG, STAY RAW
Markos, Max and Nina
