Some powerlifters can grind out a heavy lift, others can’t; if they start to lose momentum during the middle of a heavy lift, they have trouble completing the lift.
Richard Hawthorne is an example of a lifter who can grind out a heavy lift when it looks like he’s never going to get the weight up. You can see this in the following videos.
Mike Tuscherer is a great powerlifter, but he seems to need continual momentum to complete a lift when benching and deadlifting. Perhaps there are times when he experiences success when grinding, but in the video posted below, he appears not to be a grinder. Even if his first lift goes up with incredible ease in a powerlifting competition, the second and third attempt with a heavier weight are in jeopardy if he experiences any hesitation or stalling during the lifting motion. You can watch at about 1:50 in the following video and see that his first bench press attempt looked like a joke it was so easy, yet he misses his second lift when the weight is increased. He experiences a similar phenomenon when deadlifting:
Richard Hawthorne: Heavy Lifting Under Fatigue
At one point, I believed that if you practiced grinding as a regular part of your training, you would be good at it. At the same time, if you only practiced explosive lifting, you would be good at blasting through a lift, but you may not be able to grind out the slow heavy single attempts. However, in spite of the fact that Richard Hawthorne can grind out incredibly slow heavy singles, he rarely grinds in any of his training videos where he is doing a workout, and he has lots of videos of his training. Richard trains with perfect form and usually plows right through every rep. Occasionally he does grind, but it is just that, it’s occasional.
One thing that Richard stresses about his training is that he does a lot of reps in every workout. He does this by starting out with light warm up sets in which he performs up to 20 reps. He then switches to sets of tens, eights, and sixes, but it often takes him about ten sets to reach his top weight. By doing a lot of sets and reps before reaching his top weight, he believes it forces him to maintain form while in a state of fatigue. The result is that he has the endurance to maintain form and lifting drive when grinding out a slow single rep.
Regular Grinders Should Switch Exercises
Others develop the ability to grind by practicing it. Some of the Westside lifters grind out heavy singles almost every week, but one of the keys to being able to do this without experiencing the side-effects of overtraining is to switch exercises every week. In other words, don’t grind on standard back squats every week; keep switching exercises on a weekly basis by doing other forms of squatting such as half squats, belt squats, trap bar squats, fronts squats, safety bar squats, and any other form of squats when going for an all-out single rep that causes you to grind. You can look at some examples of Westside lifters grinding through various exercises in the video below:
Some lifters don’t like to grind and feel that it messes up their training so they completely avoid it. Others seem to benefit from it. If you do grind, be wise about it; either do it occasionally, or develop your endurance to hold your form while training in a state of fatigue like Richard Hawthorne does. You can also practice grinding on a fairly regular basis with the condition that you don’t keep grinding with the same exercises every workout.
Strength training demands a self-discovery process. It takes time and experience to learn what type of training works best for you. This is true of several aspects of training, including whether you should or shouldn’t grind, and if you do, discovering the best way to include it in your training. Best of training to you.