What causes early arm bend?
Instead of verbal cues "arms like ropes" or "arms straight" you might want to try to reduce the primary or root cause.
There are several potential underlying issues that you need to address first:
- you lost position and arms are trying to put the bar in correct place
- your arms are not relaxed
- your wrists are not relaxed
- your grip is weak
And solution to the above is....
- complex issue, could be technical, could be large or small muscle weakness... you need your best coach's eye to assess, beyond scope of this article
- gently tap lifter's arms before lift, if they don't respond to verbal cue
- gently tap lifter's wrist, if they don't respond to verbal cue
- that's an easy one, figure it out yourself, I like one arm hangs from pullup bar, but many other exercises will do
And then you have to try to figure out corrective exercises...
Attack it with this complex
Here is one particular combination that I like for fixing this problem. This lifter has a problem with premature arm bend, but it's partially caused by small hands unable to hook the bar (not a big deal since she's still 10 years old.)
Robert Dolega, Polish National Coach, likes the video, his only suggestion is that she should slide the bar a little higher on upper thigh towards the hip before final acceleration.
My mentor Tao Chuang, after seeing an earlier video of her, discouraged regular clean high pulls, saying that it will lead to even more pulling with arms creating a bigger problem. Speed pulls are definitely better for arm relaxation.
Try it! Prerequisites are, of course, nice clean deadlift and nice speed pull with rebend.
Please send me a message if this combination doesn't make sense to you or if you would like to go over some elements of this video.