I hit a frustrating plateau when I was deadlifting, I was about to give up and accept my limits when I stumbled across a ridiculous fitness comment on a weightlifting forum.
“I love deadlifting because I get to push the earth down,” some user had written. This seemed counterintuitive. Isn’t the goal to pull the bar up? But with nothing to lose after weeks of being stuck at the same weight, I gave it a shot.
I set up in proper form and instead of trying to pull the bar up, I planted my feet on the ground and pushed as hard as I could, driving the earth down. Immediately, I hit a new personal record. I kept using this cue for weeks on end and kept hitting new records.
The concept of pushing down to rise up seemed counterintuitive at first, but I was determined to see if there was more to it, considering how I’d been able to break through my previous plateau so easily.
The next time I hit a wall, this time on bench press, I drove my shoulder blades down into the bench instead of trying to pu…