Different Length Arms - Starting Strength Radio Clips

[Bre Acosta]

[JFord]

I think the easiest fix might be to prop up the short arm side plates up by two inches. This might preserve some of the biomechanics of the lift although now the bar is at an angle. It may be the that angle wouldn't be enough to bother the lifter. This may be a job for experimentation.

I have about a half inch arm length discrepancy. Obviously not as pronounced as this woman but i doesn't affect my deadlift at all as far as I can tell. Sometimes I can tell that the long arm side plate touches the ground first on descent but even that's hardly noticeable. When I did the seminar, like many people, my deadlift seemed to show the best form of all the lifts and no one even noticed.

Two asides:

1) I DO notice the difference with my bench press. I have to put my longer arm a few inches further out from the center of the bar than my shorter side in order to balance the bar at the top. I absolutely cannot balance the bar with both hands equidistant from the center.

2) At the seminar, although the deadlift was my best lift, my power clean was...inelegant. I actually felt sorry for Niki for having to deal with my incompetence. Mark, was watching my appalling performance the whole time. In perhaps his most tactful and gentle attempt to either not make me feel so bad (or more likely to rescue her from the futility of training such an inept guy) he quietly asked me how old I was. When I told him 58, he rather politely told me that at my age, perhaps I didn't really need to learn this particular lift.