Home training - how much harder is NOT dropping ?

Not many of us are currently training in the ideal setting. It’s hard to determine whether the hardest part about training at home is the weather, the uneven surface, the distinct reduction in motivation or simply not being able to drop a bar from overhead.

Lifting vs lowering

Weightlifting is characterised by a much more dominant concentric force production requirement than the opposite eccentric force. That is to say that the lifts themselves, the snatch, clean and jerk, all rely heavily on being able to produce force in an upwards motion by contracting the relevant muscles. You may know it as ‘triple extension’ but it’s essentially standing up fast while holding onto a weight.

As such, in most traditional weightlifting programmes there isn’t a huge amount of eccentric loading (typically lowering the weights back down under control). Most lifts are dropped from over head or the shoulders and pulls - having never made it that far - are often dropped from hip height.

This isn’t true of all training exercises or even all programmes but generally speaking weightlifters are concentric biased.

The problem we have now with training at home is that we can’t always drop weights (downstairs neighbours and landlords tend to frown upon bumper plates penetrating ceilings). We are forced to select exercises and loading parameters based on our surroundings instead. If not considered, the extra fatigue and novel movements can be the reason for getting injured.

It does, however, present an opportunity to get stronger. Within sensible limits, we can bring down weights from over-head under control, lower to our hips or thighs and slowly place the bar back to the floor thus gaining a huge amount of distanced travelled under a high degree of muscular tension. Strength training in a nutshell.

Almost doubling the amount of work we have to do on each lift obviously comes at a price. The energy required to lower weights is greater than simply dropping them so whilst it is a positive for gaining eccentric strength it can impact our total workload considerably.

Planning for lowering:

In my experience anything under 75% is pretty easy to lower and actually doesn’t always force us to control it fully the whole way down. Over 75% in the snatch and jerk becomes a bit more challenging on the shoulders and triceps as well as the upper back. It may mean more rest between sets, or reducing the number of sets in that loading range until you’re more used to it.

For the clean, as with when performing multiple reps from a hang, the adjustment can be tough. Be sure to chalk up properly and be careful to avoid dropping the bar too fast into your quads/knees. Yes, I speak from personal experience. If you can’t drop, or are having to use more hang work, be sensible with rep schemes and think about how many times you’ll need to re-rack/bring the bar down.

There’s a reason someone invented jerk blocks. Re-racking a heavy jerk is about the least fun thing you have to do in weightlifting. Technique is really important and often overlooked. Someone who does this really well is GB lifter Chris Murray so have a look at his videos if you need some examples. The important thing here is that you shouldn’t be able to press your jerk weight so the arms really shouldn’t be doing too much of the work. Learn to time the arms and legs to absorb the weight like a spring and you won’t be falling over backwards like a gym-fail gif.

Drop pads are great and they do help massively, but I have seen them used and still the tiles underneath have cracked so you still have to be careful.

I hope this helps you all stay injury free and you all get stronger !