Weight Trainers United

Partial lifts for Partial results?

Posted By: Martin Smith
Date: Tuesday, 7 January 2003, at 8:18 a.m.

Just been reading this article on partials. I notice a lot of people here do them, but do all of you find them benificial? I was thinking of adding partials (safety pin bench/board press) to my bench workout, but now I'm questioning their worth.

http://www.deepsquatter.com/strength/archives/ddani1.htm

Any opinions gladly welcomed.

Thanks
Martin

From my own limited experience, I agree with him on deadlifts and squats.....but not on bench.
Bench partials have gotten me through a couple of plateaus.
S.

:I think they have their place. I agree with everything Doug Daniels said in his article about them. I think they need to be thought of as an assistance movement and not one that replaces the full range of motion one. But I believe they can be useful. I added 25lbs to my benchpress last year using the gaugler routine which calls for board presses.

Hi Martin,
I think partials are helpful but as with any exercise choice, stressing your particular weakness is the key. Doing board presses at a height that isn't working where you are weak, isn't going to do you a lot of good. Rack lockouts done to improve the last few inches of a bench press aren't going to help much if you don't have the chest strength to get the bar to that height in the first place. If a person has a weak deadlift lockout yet can lift considerably more with a rack lockout, odds are the form between the two is not the same. I think paying close attention to form and training partials at a point 2"-3" below where one fails are the keys. Board presses allow a person to match their bench form rather easily in my opinion. I feel it is better to press in a straight line though, while Mr. Daniels feels pressing the bar towards the head is better. Perhaps this difference is why I don't have a problem matching my competition form while doing them. I think having a valid purpose for doing partials is important. I see many lifters performing them in the gym and from what I can tell, their main purpose is ego, they can handle more weight. While those that have trouble controlling heavy weights might have a very valid reason for doing them to work on this weakness, the majority in my gym haven't put that much thought into it. They like them because they can lift more, end of story. Properly implemented, I think partials can be very beneficial.

For me, partials have been extremely helpful. Board presses in particular, have allowed me to handle weight that was clearly out of reach before.They also allow severe overloads in a fairly safe manner. easy on moving parts too.

I think partial lifts should supplement the full range lifts, not replace them.

I sorta remember that article. I believe it was inline with my statement above.

Jeff out ...

i do not think partial movements help at all for a beginner....and only some for an advanced lifter.......the form is different.......which hurts.........they should only be used sparingly and as a supplement to your regular training......most people we have trained over the years that have used them are hurt more by them than helped...training wise...........lifters cannot seem to just do normal training..they think all the mickey mouse stuff is going to produce results when more times than not it just stalls their training and the results suffer.........out of the literally thousands of people we have trained we see almost a zero rate of injury due to the actual training itself.....why...??????.....K>I>S>S>
some injuries are going to happen...when you handle big weights..the more advanced you become (in any sport)...injuries will happen.....but down time is minimal...
when you read and study about power training......read and follow advice by the ones who have done it and write on it.....not so much by bodybuilders or other fitness trainers etc......the dr hatfields know a lot more than some of the others who claim results

rdc

I think that if you bench with a denim shirt boards presses are the single best assistance exercise you can do for bench besides benching itself.

I have never found them to be very useful for powerlifting.

When my bench press was around 225# I did 2" lockouts for a while with up to 500+#'s and thought I was really getting somewhere because 225# felt "really light" in my hands now. I kept doing this for months thinking that "Wow, this is going so great, my bench will be well over 300# now that 225# feels so damn light". When I finally did try an actual bench press it was still 225# and hadn't budged a pound.

I also tried Paul Andersons idea (rewritten by Pavel Tsatsouline a few years ago) about doing 2 sets of 25 squats for limited ranges and lowering the bar every week. Well I got to where I could do easily two sets of twenty five with 550# untill I got down to my sticking point eventually and then it stalled every time in the same way. No matter what I did or could do above that point (2-3" above para.) it didn't matter. If I could do 25 partials with 1200# it would have been the same. I got a new idea after this and worked only on the 8" or so around the sticking point and all I got for the effort was a "really hinky squatting style" that was one really hard habit to break.

I think a partial lift is a distinctively different lift than a full range one and there is no way to compensate for this realistically. You may think you are starting in the same position but you are not, you can't.

I have read all kinds of stuff from way back about this kind of training and about Don Rhienhoudt's "deadlift 1" at a time" cycle, but have never been able to actually make this work or see anyone else make it work. Everyone I know who says it helped them just refuses to actually quantify by how much, saying stuff like "well I know it helped me".

Its probably does work for somebody but without trying it yourself and wasting a bunch of time and effort, how do ya know?

Bryce