Become Instantly Stronger: Creating Bar Tension/Picking Up the Slack

In our opinion, if you could only pick one exercise in the gym, it has to be the Corelift (or Trapbar/hexbar deadlift) You can go heavy, you can go fast, it trains the entire body, but best of all, it's probably the best thing you can do in the gym for getting an effective transfer into your vertical leap and into your sprinting speed, but it needs to be done right.

The biggest mistake we see, is people try to yank the bar off the ground in an attempt to break its inertia and they lose neutral in their lumbar spine.

Neutral spine is something we're pretty serious about here at Core Advantage. We don't let anyone lose lumbar neutral when they're lifting under axial loads, even when they're loading plates or putting a kettlebell away.

The best way to avoid this flexion force is to teach people how to take tension or the slack out of the bar on that first rep.

If you try to yank the bar off the ground, those small muscles around your spine that are trying to stabilize it and lock it in won't be able to do their job fast enough, so as you yank on the bar, that spine will buckle and come out of position.

Instead, by dialling up the speed gradually, you can take the tension or the slack out of the bar. That allows those muscles that stabilize the spine to do their job and hold everything locked into position.

Then you can accelerate into the top of that lift where velocity really matters.