I appreciate this article very much and I plan to start using rack pulls. Do you see any risk of damaging the bar or the pins with rack pulls? I have an R3 Rack and a B&R Bar.
"The first modification to most guys’ Starting Strength Novice Linear Progression will either be a change to deadlift programming or to press programming. And no matter which comes first, the second is always close behind."
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I appreciate this article very much and I plan to start using rack pulls. Do you see any risk of damaging the bar or the pins with rack pulls? I have an R3 Rack and a B&R Bar.
Hi Mr Delgadillo, I've applied your press programming advice with great success and will try my hand at your DL advice, since it's gotten veryhard to do 5 reps every week now that it's over 330 pounds.
Could I replace the "light deadlift" by an RDL, or is the latter not stressful or specific enough?
I’m glad to hear the press stuff is working for you. I haven’t programmed RDLs or used RDLs myself in a very long time outside of a high hamstring rehab situation. And even then, rarely. I think that given that you’re working with a 330 lb deadlift, you’d be better off keeping deadlifts on the light deadlift day. Once your deadlift or rack pull is up way over 450-500, start doing RDLs if you want to. Your RDLs won’t be heavy enough to do much for very long, where the light deadlifts will keep pace with the rack pull.
Do you have a video that can accompany this article?
Specifically, I am looking for a visual on exactly where the bar is located at the start of the pull.
You’ll do this by setting the bar up on the pins so that the bar is right below your knees at about the tibial tuberosity
Tuberosity of the tibia - Wikipedia
Hi Nick, thanks for the video. There is a difference between where Chase sets up for the rack pull (mid-shin) in the video and your set up at the tibial tuberosity. Because your set up is higher on the shin does that help reduce the lower back fatigue?
There is a difference, but the consideration in rack height doesn’t have to do with lower back fatigue. Pulling from the mid-shin will be harder than pulling from a little higher. But for the purposes discussed in my article, it doesn’t matter. Pick one and run with it. When you get far enough along you’ll alternate rack heights.
Nick, in general how far would you run rack pulls before reverting to deadlifts? Background, 49yr old, 5'10", 205#, I'm focusing on pulling a 1RM of 500 before I turn 50 in February. I hit 1x5 at 420, 1x4 at 425 and 1x3 430 and 435 doing weekly heavy pulls. My thought was to shift over to rack pulls along the lines of your article and then when those are say mid/high-500's revert to full deadlifts. Does this sound reasonable? Food is good, sleep depends on the day due to conference calls at 0400 and form remains on track.