Today in part 2 of the How To Lift series we tackle a topic that seems quite intuitive, but as it turns out is something people get wrong all the time. I see it every day in the gym, people lifting using things other than the muscles they are training. Hell, I even catch myself doing it sometimes.

So where is the problem? Well, no matter what lift we are doing we lift with our hands and our arms (with some minor exceptions). If you grab a weight without REALLY thinking about it, whether you are doing bench presses or deadlifts or curls or whatever, the natural inclination is to move that weight with your hands….but you are not working on hand day!

It is a very tricky bit of business, proper lifting. If you are doing a bench press you cant just move the weight from point a to point b. It simply wont have the impact you need. You need to remember that your arms are just accessories (like hooks for pulling lifts or like lifts for pushing ones). Before you unrack the weight you focus. This is a bench press. What does that mean? It means that our primary muscle is the pectorals and the secondary are the triceps and the anterior deltoids. You are not lifting with your arms, you are lifting with your pecs. The tris and delts will take the overload all on their own. Focus, unrack the weight and hold it. Do not move it with your hands. Your hands and your arms are stone. They grip the weight. Now keep that focus and lower the weight using your chest muscles. At the bottom of the movement raise the weight again using the chest muscles.

At no point should the energy for the lift be pushed through your arms. You are not moving the weight with your arms you are moving it with the primary targeted muscles. For a good example of this we will look back at Kai Greene, this time doing Jefferson Squats. Look closely at his quads and back and arms. Look where he is generating the lift from. His arms are just hanging there like hooks. He has the weight in his hands such that it will not drop. After that, the arms and hands are totally removed from the equation and he is lifting with nothing but the muscles targeted which is pure quadriceps. Again, the rest of his body is not moving. It is only engaged insofar as the bar needs to be held and not dropped. The only part of him that is being actively used is the quadriceps.

For each and every lift you do, you need to remember that the mechanism for holding the weight is just that…it is not the mechanism for moving the weight. Are you doing a curl? Curl with your biceps. Are you doing a kickback? Triceps. A squat? Quads. A deadlift? hamstrings. A Bench press or some flyes? Your chest.

Next time you are in the gym remember to focus on this. Every bit of weight you put into your hands and arms or on your joints or on muscles other than the ones you are focused on takes gains off the table…and no one takes the gains of the table for people on Team WB!