One of the biggest misconceptions in the strength and conditioning world is that the only way to get better at Deadlifts or heavy pulling of any sort is to pull heavy.ย Often the benefit and gain of dynamic, lighter deadlifts and pulls is largely overlooked.ย The development of the faster twitch muscle fibers and the amount of work an athlete is able to reasonably handle is greatly benefited by dynamic days.
The explanation for why this is true can be simply laid out in 3 points.ย (Though each one is a dissertation in itself)
- ย The overall load is significantly less and therefore more work can be done.ย Pulling heavy sets of 5 or 3 or even a single puts the body under tension for an extreme amount of time.ย That impact of the body is massive and will impact results, especially in the others fields you are working in.
- A heavy load taxes the central nervous system in a completely different way than lighter faster loads do.ย That taxation on the CNS will not only limit your ability to work the Deadlift later in the week or the cycle but also impact your capability in other mods.
- The speed work helps the lifter with both aggression and strength through sticking points.ย Moving 40%-50% for speed will help develop strength and speed in areas that would traditionally stick under heavy load.ย Basically it allows a lifter to work his weak area/muscle groups that limit him when under heavy load.
Like I said, all of those points could be blogs in and of themselves but for that I will refer you to Google or the Westside Book of Methods.ย If you need proof watch this, previously his 1RM (most recent) was 510: