Trouble with Rack Pulls

[Aconnolly]

Good afternoon,

This morning I completed W3 D1 of The Bridge 1.0 and have been having great results so far. I feel that I have a good grasp now of RPE on most of my lifts, with he possible exception of rackpulls.

Today I did:
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] (Last two sets as you know where supposed to be [email protected])

I had a similar experience last week, where I went up slightly in weight for my first set @8 and failed to get all of my reps, dropped the weight back to (or slightly below) my @7 weight and performed even fewer reps. This seems odd to me because I am working with ~10-15% less weight than I do with my deadlifts for similar volume/intensity.

This may be consult territory, in which case, I understand if there isn't an easy answer. But I was wondering if some people just can't tolerate this much DL/DL-variation volume... maybe I could set the pins 1 notch higher... or maybe I am just blowing RPE on my initial worksets on this particular exercise (I know, more of a theory than a question).

Your input is appreciated.

[Leah Lutz]

Hi there! It sounds like you are working with too much weight for your rack pulls from the get go. Based on these experiences, it seems unlikely that your 315x7 was a true 8, meaning you definitely had two more reps in you. I drop the weight on all those working sets so you can get the volume in with no misses. Don't assume it should be a percentage of your regular DL, and remember that this is a supplemental lift, so you are likely performing this movement with more training fatigue as well.

[Aconnolly]

Thanks Leah for the quick response! I will give that a go, trying to keep in mind that this is a supplemental lift. Fatigue also makes sense, as I used to perform rack pulls with much higher weight, but they were the primary lift of the day (poor self-programming back then).

And thanks to Dr. Baraki for his advice a couple weeks ago regarding my abdominal cramps, I belted up for my supplemental lifts for the next week as per his advice and everything cleared up! By the time I went to thank him the thread was closed.