Hey BBM crew,
Why are rack pulls included in the Bridge instead of deficit deadlifts? Do rackpulls have a better carryover to the conventional deadlift or is it because more weight can be used?
We don’t expect that you can use more weight on rack pulls performed from the mid shin compared to regular deadlifts- especially not the first few times you do them.
As far as a better carryover, I don’t think I could make a strong argument for deficit pulls over rack pulls or vice versa, though the joint angles and muscle lengths are certainly more similar in the rack pull than the deficit DL.
We programmed in rack pulls because we wanted a movement with a relatively high amount of specificity, that was moderately fatiguing on the relevant muscle groups, and required minimal equipment. Deficit pulls probably have a little bit more fatigue associated with them given the ROM, but they would have been a viable choice in a different context.
After reading this quick exchange, I felt compelled to create my forum profile immediately and respond.
First off, as this is my first post, I’d like to thank Dr’s Jordan Feigenbaum and Austin Baraki for the amount of content they’ve made freely available. With all the crap out there on the internets, an accessible resource of real information is a treasure.
I’ve been following BBM for a while, and have become more and more serious about my lifting, programming, etc, much to my wife’s chagrin. Simply b/c, I want more results- real strength. I don’t compete in PL nor will I ever. I just like being strong.
This quote threw me off, and I really wish I had read it the moment it was published, as I pulled my back the very next day on rack pulls while doing The Bridge 2.0.
We don’t expect that you can use more weight on rack pulls performed from the mid shin compared to regular deadlifts- especially not the first few times you do them.
My weight was closer to the Rippetoe recommendation of “doing a set of 5 Rack Pulls at your 1RM for DL.” Understood that Rippetoe’s RP’s were from just below the knee cap, and BBM’s Rack Pulls are mid shin. But I simply couldn’t find guidance on where weight should come in, apart from RPE.
I was scanning the forums for guidance on how to choose weights for the variants (deficit DL, pause lifts, pin press, etc). I’m still a bit too new to RPE to accurately gauge my weights- and I really would like to know before I start loading random guesswork weight on a deficit DL.