Powerlifting Technique is Not That Hard

On this episode of “Tackling Gym Logic; How the Hell Did We Even Get Here?”, I am going to address something that is overemphasized. Technique in the powerlifts…and really any other movement you could put under the same umbrella. Squat, bench, deadlift, stiff-legs, glute bridge, incline, hell even exercises like lateral raises and biceps curls, they’re just not that hard to do. But, the strong sentiment towards powerlifting technique expressed by the war-torn veteran powerlifters of the “good ole days” never seems to go away.

In fact, I used to accept wisdom like “technique is everything” and “finding the perfect squat technique” as truisms. I remember thinking to myself when I first started my powerlifting journey, “I can’t wait to be able to coach the perfect squat technique. To be able to look at anyone’s squat and be able to dissect and critique it in only a matter of minutes”. Wanna know what I think now?

There is no perfect technique.

There is good technique, and there damn sure is bad technique, but a perfect technique? No such thing exists.

Before you go tattle-telling on me to your favorite lifting buddies at your local gym and you all curse my existence for saying such blasphemy, let me say outline my argument more clearly. I am not saying that technique is not important. It is very important. Being technically proficient will allow you to lift more weight due to biomechanical variables and keep you safer for longer, in your lifting life-time. Two things in the long run that are going to get you stronger. What I am saying is that technique’s importance and learning curve are made out to be more impactful and difficult than they actually are.

The mindset of being on this perpetual journey of masterful technique creates a problem that should not exist. This problem is the lack of focus on things that are actually going to get you stronger. Instead of focusing on good nutrition, learning about periodization, and psychological attributes like discipline and consistency, lifters are focusing on the precise angle of their toe pitch, sitting back a little more while maintaining tension in their hamstrings, and the flawlessly timed firing of their muscles. People get really, really deep into their technique like this. Just ask any powerlifter about their thoughts on squat technique and get ready for a harangue that would rival any old dude’s rants on the “kids these days”. This stuff is just clutter. Not only does it not matter that much, but it can actually inhibit your performance (especially if you’re in a competition).

Here is why.

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The Environment We Lift In

The first blow to the foundation of the technique-oriented ideologues actually has nothing to do with motor learning, but the dynamics of the environment that we lift in.

But first, let’s talk about chess and baseball.

Chess is a highly organized game with rigid rules. Every piece can only operate through a preset movement pattern, players must take turns moving their pieces, and the game is won when one player checks the other player’s king. And those are only the rules I can think off of the top of my head, I haven’t played chess since Eisenhower. Plus, the game is always played on the same board – things like the colors of the pieces and size of the board don’t change the rules of the game – so the environment itself is rigid as well. There are no external influences on the game…unless there is a malicious feud between chess and checker players and they show up at each other’s matches hellbent on destroying each other’s existence.

Baseball, while it does have a clear set of rules, exists in a much more dynamic environment. A player can spend hours and hours hitting a ball off of a tee in an attempt to “perfect” their swing. This all changes when there is an absolute donkey on the mound who slings one pitch 95 miles per hour and the next pitch breaks one off that makes you buckle to your knees. Pop flies and ground balls can generally be judged, but baseballs tend to have a mind of their own and sometimes defy a baseballer’s expert intuition and even physics itself. Then throw in the drunken fans, intermittent weather, and play of each respective ballpark and you are left with a much more unpredictable environment.

Robin Hogarth coined the terms kind and wicked learning environments (1). A kind learning environment manifests itself in something like chess. There are clear boundaries the participants must operate inside of. There are similar patters that are expressed repeatedly, and feedback is highly accurate and expedient. A wicked environment is more in tune to something like baseball. The rules of the game may be oblique, patterns may be intermittent or unrecognizable, and feedback may be inaccurate or nonexistent. Of course, it is better to view this concept as a continuum instead of a dichotomy because every sport has clearly defined rules, but sports show variability when considering patterns and feedback.

Powerlifting is a lot like chess. There are clearly defined rules. You must squat to depth, you must pause your bench, and you must lock out your hips in the deadlift. Patterns are extremely recognizable. In fact, so much so that the very motor pattern you train in practice is the same one you are going to do in competition (hopefully, unless you choke, which we will talk about later). And this is the one that really grinds my gears. Yes, there can be minor differences from lifter to lifter in squatting technique. Fundamentally however, a squat still looks like a squat and I would never mistake a squat for a deadlift. Again, patterns are VERY recognizable; plus, the environment is controlled.

As much as people like to personify the weights, they don’t have a mind of their own. The weights cannot juke, jump, cut, dive, punch, kick, or throw like a human opponent can. Even if you have to lift in a different gym than you are used to, the weight is still the weight and you still squat it the same way, you baby. Finally, performance feedback is always immediate. You either completed the lift or you didn’t. You could have “misgrooved” as a lot of people would like to say, but I tend to think you were just not strong enough at that moment in time to lift the weight. A much more sobering criticism, but one I think is generally closer to reality.

This matters because the contextual environment of skill acquisition, wicked or kind, provides insight into the most effective ways of learning a skill in that environment. I highly recommend reading the book Range by David Epstein for an in-depth and thorough analysis, but the environment plays a large role in how learning is done. Because powerlifting is done in a kind environment, you can get really good at powerlifting by just powerlifting. You do not have to have a wide breadth of motor skills to execute a fundamentally sound squat, bench, or deadlift. The more repetitions, or practice, you accumulate the better you are going to be. Elite chess players are really good at chess because they play chess, a lot. They have spent thousands and thousands of hours practicing the game.

If you are someone who wants to be a better powerlifter, this should be exciting to you. It means that there is no secret sauce or formula for learning good technique. Powerlifters are fortunate in that the very training they do is the very practice they need to perform on the platform. All you have to do is keep lifting.

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The Movements Aren't That Complex

The movements just aren’t that complex, so stop trying to make them complex!

Once upon a time, I was a young and naïve lifter watching an elite lifter squat. After he was done with his set, I mustered up the courage to ask him to walk me through his squat technique. If I had known the can of worms I was just about to open, I would have gone fishing after (I know, I know, that was the best I can do there. At least it tried).

His reply started off with something like “Yea so the first thing I try to do is take in a big diaphragmatic breath and push that air down filling up my obliques and abs with air as I simultaneously start to sit back while maintaining tension in my hamstrings…”. I began to slip in and out of consciousness, I felt like a boxer getting jabbed to death because of a lack of head movement, but I picked back up at “then I start to push up with my quads and allow my glutes to finish the job at the end”.

Damn.

I am glad that I asked that question though, because that long-winded reply eventually allowed me to break free from the esoteric circle-jerk of this kind of thinking. That answer just didn’t make sense to me. And it still doesn’t. And whenever people try to talk about technique like that, without proper context, it will never make sense.

Here is my two part answer to why.

The first part is something I have already said, which is that the powerlifting movements are intrinsically not that complex. They are actually pretty simple. I love powerlifting, I really do. I almost wish that good squatting technique was more akin to the arduous task of learning how to do a double back handspring or even something more similar like a clean and jerk, but it’s not.

We live in a world where humans have extended their capability of movement into some really amazing feats. Humans have done backflips on bicycles. Humans have walked across valleys on tight ropes, where just a single mistake could mean your life. Humans can even do a 360 degree spin and kick you in the face! These are some seriously complex motor patterns.

The powerlifting movements are motor patterns that exist within a vacuum, so to speak. There is a clear starting and finishing point to each, and we know the most efficient path to get from those two points. The movements do not require any displacement of the body outside of bar path, and most of that is done through flexion and extension of the associated joints. If you want a hilarious real-life example of the simplicity of squatting, just watch a toddler try to pick up their favorite toy. There is a good chance they will execute a good-looking squat when they do.

The second part of my answer has to do with the heart of my argument and what really made me want to write this. Keep the movements simple and not making them more complex than they are. When we reduce a motor pattern that involves a large mass of musculature across the entire human body to the isolated function of each specific muscle (in the context of learning and executing that motor pattern) we create more confusion than good.

In reference to motor learning, there are two forms of memory in which motor patterns are stored. They are they explicit and implicit memory (2). The explicit system deals with the conscious memorization of facts and rules in relation to a motor skill. The answer that I was given about squat technique was explicit (i.e. at the bottom of the squat you want your quads to start extending the knee). The implicit system is comprised of subconscious memories associated with a motor skill. It means doing because you know how to do without necessarily knowing how to verbalize the action. I played baseball my entire life, and if I picked up a bat right now, I know I would still have a decent swing. But, if you asked me to coach someone how to swing a bat, I would have no idea. This is because the ability to perform a movement is not dependent upon one’s ability to describe that movement. So, you can perform a really good-looking squat without knowing how to say all of the technical mumbo jumbo.

In fact, it has been shown that a sort of “neural competition” can exist between these two memory systems (2). This happens when an athlete attempts to think about how to execute a movement in which there is an already engrained motor patten. In doing so, the thinking disrupts the instinctive self-organization of the motor pattern in the current environment and “choking” can occur. When you get on the platform, you don’t want to be thinking about “maintaining tension in your hamstrings” and “pushing with your quads”. You want to be thinking about, pretty much nothing (other than you are going to blow this shit up). As long as you have worked hard on developing good technique and kept it consistent throughout your training, then that technique will be ready for the call of duty when competition comes.

Of course, it can be beneficial to learn how to verbalize your technique, and this is especially true when you are first starting out. A novice or more experienced lifter CAN benefit from coaching that is more explicit in nature. This style of coaching is almost necessary at first, in the context of learning powerlifting and constrained motor patterns. It would be difficult to coach someone who has just started squatting through the more abstract cues, that are used with more experienced lifters. But it should never be as convoluted as we tend to make it. Keep things simple and focus on just one or two things at a time.

As you practice more that motor pattern will begin to be stored implicitly. As the training sessions go on your technique will become so entrenched in your subconscious memory that you don’t have to think about “hamstring tension” and “pushing with your quads”. All of these things will just happen, because your body understands how to do it without having to think about it.

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The Way Forward

Once all of this is understood, it should set you up for unbridled progress. It will remove the chains that are cast on you from the perfect technique mindset. I love Verkhoshansky’s 80% rule here. As long as your technique is 80% correct (really what this means is that there are no egregious issues) move on and try to get stronger.

One last time, good technique is good and bad technique is not good. Bad technique will cause more issues than the good things that come from good technique. But after good technique becomes really good, its time to focus on getting stronger and stop chasing something that doesn’t exist. The implementation of proper nutrition and periodization is going to make you much stronger than “perfect technique” ever will.

Keep things simple. Don’t make the powerlifts harder than they have to be.

References

Hogarth, Robin M. Educating Intuition. University of Chicago Press, 2010.

Turner, Anthony, and Paul Comfort. Advanced Strength and Conditioning: an Evidence-Based Approach (pp. 327-334). Routledge, 2018.