Don't Overlook the Middle

[stef]

by Bill Starr




Article

Resources Page

[homerj742]

Interesting article, cool picture too.

[Michael Wolf]

Love the timing on this one - I was just watching a video of my 330x5x3 Squats this morning, and noticed a strong start and finish and a weak middle!

[John2336]

First off, Bill starr is a badass. Plain and simple.

I really enjoyed the article because its the first time I've ever heard an in-depth explanation of the middle portion of a lift. The articles on this site just keep getting better.

I bought The Strongest Shall Survive about 5 years ago, and it's still on my desk right next to my bed along with Rips books. I enjoyed the back story of his meeting with the "Giant Tongan" as he's mentioned frequently in SSS, but there was never an explaination of how it all began.

Great article, looking forward to more. I'm really hoping to see another book on weightlifting by Starr sometime in the near future.

[MDR2]

Excellent picture of Starr in the background.

[Dastardly]

Ive read about that 1975 world powerlifting championships before. I actually live in the city where it occured, would be cool to find out where the meet was held.

[Dastardly]

I just found out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interna..._Championships

It was in the town hall! This would never happen these days, the council (local govt) is actually seeking to remove all municipal weight training facilities in the city. They created a few decent gyms in the late 70's/80's when bodybuilding was in fashion. But they are replacing them with machines/vibrating platforms now.

[Misciagno]

"Same deal for the squats. Place the pins in the rack right at the midpoint of the squat, then get
under the bar and squat it five times. Make sure you come to a complete stop on every rep, otherwise,
the exercise will not bring the desired results."

Excellent article by Mr. Starr, as usual. I too have both his books on lifting, and they are classics. I'm just wondering if this passage, as well as others in the article related to different exercises, means that partial movements are okay? Obviously it's only for a limited period of time ("several months"), and there is a valid point to the exercise besides just lifting more weight. But in principle, partials have their place in our type of training?

[Bronan the Barbarian]

Have you seen the videos and posts on the halting deadlift + rack pull approach to training the deadlift?

[Misciagno]

Have you seen the videos and posts on the halting deadlift + rack pull approach to training the deadlift?

Good point. As I understand it, you would wait until the DL weight got high enough that it became difficult to recover in one week, so you alternate haltings and rack pulls weekly to keep progressing without burning out. Starr's article seems aimed toward fixing possible weak points in the lifts, which is a bit different. In any case, I think that answers my question: Partials are okay in certain circumstances.