Just in my second week of The Bridge v2.0. Everything is going well and making sense except for the mid-shin Rack Pulls.
After acclimatization I was expecting a reduced-ROM rack pull to be done with heavier weights than the deadlift, and to generally be more stressful than the DL and therefore not typically used as a supplemental exercise on the same week as a competition deadlift being performed for multiple sets. This created some uncertainty for me, so I watched the video of Jordan demonstrating the movement. It looked surprisingly light and explosive, but that seems not to match with the RPE 9 instructions.
What’s the intent here? Is this a grind-it-out classic RPE 9 rack pull? Or should I have some other mental image and/or loading on the bar?
Most people are surprised that the mid-shin rack pull doesn’t end up being the massive overload movement they expect. That start position gets the bar up off the floor just far enough that your quads aren’t able to contribute as much to initiating the pull and building momentum off the floor. So if you load it up as if you’re doing a rack pull from the knees, with, say, 10-15% above your 1RM … it’s gonna be really, really hard.
So, 1) no, we don’t want you to be grinding – this is going to make them a bit lighter. We like using the RPE scale as an estimate of how many clean reps with good form you have left in the tank. RPE 9 = 1 clean rep left in the tank. Usually, if you’re already grinding, attempting to do another rep or two is going to result in significant form breakdown. For the vast majority of lifters, routinely grinding in training is not a good idea. And 2) they’re typically done beltless when prescribed in that program, which takes a bit more weight off the bar as well. This is OK.
Finally, your assumption that because it’s “more stressful than the deadlift and therefore not typically used as a supplemental exercise on the same week as a competition deadlift being performed for multiple sets” is not correct. People, in general, can adapt to much higher training stresses than they expect if they’re dosed properly. We pull multiple sets of competition-style deadlifts and other supplemental pulling movements in the same week routinely without much trouble. You can adapt to this and do just fine.
I thought the same thing man, learning a lot from this forum and the podcasts
I too had similar questions on the mid shin DL, thanks for the information.