Athletes, and all those alike, have strived endlessly to find that extra 5%: the smallest performance enhancer that will give them the slightest edge over their competition.
Coaches have argued for years that basic lifts produce the most significant results. Prolifically stating that spending two hours on workouts that produce 5% of total performance is a waste of time, and athletes should focus on the bulk lifts that produce 95% of the gains. Squats, sprinting, presses, pull ups and deadlifts. If this is you: nod your head, smile, and read on.
If what coaches are saying is true, then every athlete should be performing at 95% capacity after a structured strength and conditioning off-season. Unfortunately this is rarely the case.
Why?
We neglect one of the most fundamental lifts known to weightlifting: The Deadlift.
Every power lifter on the planet deadlifts, and deadlifts heavy. Every bodybuilder, every strongman, hell even cross fitters deadlift heavy, often.
Why is it that sporting organizations limit the amount they allow athletes to deadlift when force production through the ground is the single most translatable lift to athletic performance?
The answer is actually simple: Scalability.
Coaching deadlift technique is not scalable. Meaning one coach — or a small group of coaches — cannot teach a horde of athletes (football teams for example can exceed 50 people in the weight room at any given time) to correctly deadlift without fear of injury. I have experienced this in multiple settings, but particularly when I was a collegiate athlete at both the D1 and D2 levels playing football. Athletes simply don’t deadlift often. It’s too hard to coach. The limiting factor is not the coach’s ability to coach the lift, but his/her ability to proctor the lift repetitively with 50+ athletes.
On top of that, athletes are expected to power clean and snatch, week in week out, when they have limited fundamental deadlift training. Does this sound as backwards to you as it does to me? The risk of injury is elevated in almost all posterior chain movements, which is an odd phenomenon of its own. Through extensive self-research and discussing this weird pseudo-law with other strength coaches I’ve come to one conclusion:
People like looking at themselves in the mirror!
Vanity is not lost on athletes; actually, it’s probably exacerbated in them. Coupled with motor development through this visual feedback medium, it makes complete sense that people can move their ‘front’ muscles better than they can move their ‘back’ muscles. Visual feedback leads to better control. The perfect example is reflected in people building Abs without caring for their transverse abdominis. If you can ‘see’ it, it’s better. Is it any wonder why so many hamstring injuries occur in professional athletics? Athletes care more about what they can see.
So what if we could use this innate desire to our advantage as coaches? Over the past few months I have been playing with mirrors and posterior visual feedback cues to develop my athletes and every day users in a different fashion: by allowing the user full vision of their posterior chain. Not only does this excite the areas of the brain focused on visual cues, it also introduces a new concept to athletes; The Fourth Wall.
The Fourth Wall refers to the dimension we rarely see; our Back. Giving athletes and performers the view of their back instantly gives them the ability to manipulate its positioning, leading to greater control. This also directly relates to the age old strength and conditioning proverb; basic lifts first, then the pretty stuff. Using mirrors behind an athlete while in the act of deadlifting for example, gives the user ultimate control over their posture and posterior chain, thus allowing for that FULL 95% of performance based lifts to be utilized.
If you don’t believe me, try it. Place two mirrors angled at 45 degrees behind you on either side, with a flat mirror on the wall in front of you, while you deadlift. You will instantly feel a heightened level of control simply by seeing what you are doing. It is rare in the sporting world that a stimulus produces an instant result. We are so used to training for months before we see the fruits of our labor, but with this simple technique, an immediate feedback loop is created and available to tap into.
